ABSTRACT
Davy had been born during the American War of Independence; had been a boy when, in Blake’s words, ‘Shadows of Prophecy shiver along the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean: “France, rend down thy dungeon.”’ The audience is assembled by the influence of fashion merely; and fashion and chemistry form a very incongruous union. At the same time it is a trophy to the sciences; one great advance is made towards the association of female with masculine minds in the pursuit of knowledge, and another domain of pleasing and liberal inquiry is included within the range of polished conversation. The very variety of the work of necessity undertaken by Davy during the first six years of his residence at the Royal Institution was made by him to serve his main object – original research in galvanism and electrochemistry.
