The year 1813 is memorable in the history of the Royal Institution, from the fact that Faraday’s long and honourable association with it dates from that time. The circumstances which led to this connection were subsequently stated by himself in the following letter to Dr. Paris:—

“Royal Institution, Dec. 23rd, 1829.

“My dear Sir,—You ask me to give you an account of my first introduction to Sir H. Davy, which I am very happy to do, as I think the circumstances will bear testimony to his goodness of heart.

“When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of experiment and very averse to trade. It happened that a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume.

“My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he would favour my views; at the same time I sent the notes I had taken at his lectures.

“The answer, which makes all the point of my communication, I send you in the original, requesting you to take great care of it, and to let me have it back, for you may imagine how much I value.

“You will observe that this took place at the end of the year 1812, and early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just vacant.

“At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress; and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on that matter.

“Finally, through his good efforts I went to the Royal Institution early in March of 1813, as assistant in the laboratory; and in October of the same year went with him abroad as his assistant in experiments and in writing. I returned with him in April 1815, resumed my station in the Royal Institution, and have, as you know, ever since remained there.

“I am, dear Sir, very truly yours
“M. Faraday.”

The answer which Faraday characteristically says makes all the point of the foregoing communication is as follows:—

“December 24th, 1812.

“Sir,—I am far from displeased with the proof you have given me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power of memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of town, and shall not be settled in town till the end of January: I will then see you at any time you wish.

“It would gratify me to be of any service to you. I wish it may be in my power.

“I am, Sir, your obedient humble servant,
“H. Davy.”

The immediate cause of the connection was very trivial and commonplace.

Mr. W. Payne, whose name may be recalled in connection with Davy’s memorandum respecting the state in which the Laboratory of the Institution was kept, in the latter part of February, 1813, had a disagreement with Mr. Newman, the instrument-maker, and so far forgot himself as to strike that gentleman. Whereupon the Managers immediately resolved that Mr. Payne should be dismissed from the Royal Institution, and that a gratuity of £10 should be paid him in consideration of his long services. Davy appears then to have called to mind the modest, bright-eyed, active youth with the pleasant smile, who had expressed his desire to devote himself to science.

In the minutes of the meeting of Managers on March 1st, 1813, we read—

“Sir Humphry Davy has the honour to inform the Managers that he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name is Michael Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age. As far as Sir H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain, he appears well fitted for the situation. His habits seem good, his disposition active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent. He is willing to engage himself on the same terms as those given to Mr. Payne at the time of quitting the Institution.

“Resolved—That Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the situation lately occupied by Mr. Payne on the same terms.”

In the minutes of the general monthly meeting of the members on April 5th, 1813, for putting in nomination from the chair the professors for the year ensuing, we read:—

“Sir H. Davy rose, and begged leave to resign his situation of Professor of Chemistry; but he by no means wished to give up his connection with the Royal Institution, as he should ever be happy to communicate his researches in the first instance to the Institution ..., and to do all in his power to promote the interest and success of this Institution. Sir H. Davy having retired, Earl Spencer moved That the thanks of this Meeting be returned to Sir H. Davy for the estimable services rendered by him to the Royal Institution. This motion was seconded by the Earl of Darnley, and, on being put, was carried unanimously. Earl Spencer further moved, That in order more strongly to mark the high sense entertained by this Meeting of the merits of Sir H. Davy, he be elected Honorary Professor of Chemistry; which, on being seconded by the Earl of Darnley, met with unanimous approbation.”

Mr. Brande was subsequently elected Professor.

During the autumn Davy obtained permission from Napoleon to pass through France in the course of an extended tour on the Continent which Lady Davy and he now projected. He thus announced his intention to his mother:—

“Andover, Oct. 14, 1813.

“My dear Mother,—We are just going to the Continent upon a journey of scientific inquiry which I hope will be pleasant to us and useful to the world. We go rapidly through France to Italy, and from there to Sicily; and we shall return through Germany. We have every assurance from the governments of the countries through which we pass, that we shall not be molested, but assisted. We shall stay probably a year or two....

“As soon as I have settled a plan of correspondence abroad, I will write to you, and shall hear of you from John as often as possible. As I am permitted to pass through an enemy’s country, there must be no politics in any letters to me; and you had better not write except through the channel I shall hereafter point out....

“When I return I shall peacefully fix my abode for life in my own country. Pray take care of Betsy. When the wind is cold she should not think of going out. Tell Grace not to be afraid, though I am going through France. My love to Kitty, and to Grace and Betsy. I am, my dear mother, wishing you all health and happiness, your very affectionate son

“H. Davy.”

On October 4th we find that he reported to the Managers that—

“Michael Faraday had expressed a wish to accompany him on his scientific travels, but that he would not engage Mr. Faraday if the Professor of Chemistry considered his services as at all essential to the Institution, or if the Managers had the slightest objection to the measure.”

Mr. Brande reported that arrangements could be made to allow Mr. Faraday to leave,

“and that as he had shown considerable diligence and attention in cleaning and arranging the mineral collection he recommended his services to the Managers’ attention, as this was not his immediate duty.”

A few days afterwards the party, consisting of Sir H. and Lady Davy, Mr. Faraday, and Lady Davy’s maid, together with the chemical cabinet, crossed in a cartel from Plymouth to Morlaix. Here they were arrested, but after a week’s detention, allowed to depart for Paris, where they arrived on October 27th. Nothing could exceed the cordiality and warmth of Davy’s reception by the French savants. On November 2nd he attended a sitting of the First Class of the Institute, and was placed on the right hand of the President, who announced to the meeting that it was honoured by the presence of “Le Chevalier Davy.” Each day saw some reception or entertainment in his honour. On November 10th he dined with Rumford at Auteuil. How much had happened in the ten years since last they met, and how different their situations now! Davy at the very summit of his scientific eminence, courted and caressed by society, honoured and admired by his intellectual peers; Rumford, his former patron, a broken-hearted, disappointed man about to sink into the grave, worried to death, in fact, by his wife, and the victim of the spiteful persecutions she instigated. Of the remarkable men of science whom Davy met on these occasions he has left us some slight sketches composed during his last illness, some of which are of interest to the student who desires to know something of the men whose names are as household words in the history of chemistry. Guyton de Morveau—who played such a leading part in the political Revolution of France, as well as in the revolution of its chemistry, and who, with Fourcroy, popularised the doctrines of Lavoisier whilst bringing his head to the scaffold—was found to be a gentleman of mild and conciliatory manners.

Vauquelin gave him the idea of the French chemists of another age, belonging rather to the pharmaceutical laboratory than to the philosophical one.

“Nothing could be more singular than his manners, his life, and his mÉnage. Two old maiden ladies, Mdlles. de Fourcroy, sisters of the professor of that name, kept his house. I remember the first time that I entered it, I was ushered into a sort of bed-chamber, which likewise served as a drawing-room. One of these ladies was in bed, but employed in preparations for the kitchen; and was actually paring truffles.... Nothing could be more extraordinary than the simplicity of his conversation;—he had not the slightest tact, and even in the presence of young ladies, talked of subjects which, since the paradisaical times, never have been the objects of common conversation.”

“Cuvier had even in his address and manner the character of a superior man;—much general power and eloquence in conversation, and a great variety of information on scientific as well as popular subjects. I should say of him, that he is the most distinguished man of talents I have known; but I doubt if he is entitled to the appellation of a man of genius.”

“Humboldt was one of the most agreeable men I have ever known, social, modest, full of intelligence, with facilities of every kind: almost too fluent in conversation. His travels display a spirit of enterprise. His works are monuments of the variety of his knowledge and resources.”

Of his great rival his comment is as follows:—

“Gay Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious, and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of living chemists of France.”

“Berthollet was a most amiable man; when the friend of Napoleon even, always good, conciliatory and modest, frank and candid. He had no airs, and many graces. In every way below La Place in intellectual powers, he appeared superior to him in moral qualities. Berthollet had no appearance of a man of genius; but one could not look on La Place’s physiognomy without being convinced that he was a very extraordinary man.”

All accounts appear to show that Davy hardly treated his hosts with the cordiality and respect they extended to him. His Chauvinism seemed to get the better of his courtesy. There was, it is said, a flippancy in his manner and a superciliousness and hauteur in his deportment which surprised as much as they offended. Napoleon, with characteristic bluntness, told one of the members of the Institute that he had heard the young English chemist had a poor opinion of them all. Dr. Paris, who could certainly speak from personal knowledge, states that Davy’s unfortunate manner was not so much the expression of a haughty consciousness of superiority as the desire to conceal a mauvaise honte and gaucherie—an ungraceful timidity he could never conquer, and which often led him to force himself into a state of effrontery and with a violence of effort which passed for a sally of pride or the ebullition of temper.

Whatever Davy’s manner might have been, it was not allowed to affect the admiration felt for his genius, and on December 13th, 1813, he was with practical unanimity elected a Corresponding Member of the First Class of the Institute.

During the last week of the preceding November AmpÈre had given Davy a small quantity of a substance which he had obtained from Clement, and which had been discovered by Courtois, a soap-boiler and manufacturer of saltpetre in Paris, in kelp or the ashes of sea-weeds. The substance had the extraordinary property of giving a violet-coloured vapour, but its true nature and relations were unknown, and it was commonly designated as X. Although actually known for some time previously, the first public notice of its existence was made by Clement at a meeting of the Institute on November 29th, 1813, and at the meeting on December 6th Gay Lussac presented a short note on the substance, to which he gave the name iode, and stated that it had analogies to chlorine. A week later—that is, on the day of Davy’s election to the Institute—a letter from him to Cuvier was read, in which he gave a general view of the chemical characters of the body; and on January 20th, 1814, a paper by him, dated Paris, December 10th, 1813, and entitled “Some Experiments and Observations on a new Substance which becomes a violet-coloured Gas by Heat,” was read to the Royal Society.

After reciting the above facts he explains why he has ventured to take up a subject on which Gay Lussac was still engaged. The explanation was no doubt necessary; he had evidently not forgotten Gay Lussac’s intrusion into his own field of work on the occasion of the discovery of the metals of the alkalis. He first draws attention to the peculiarities of the combination of the new substance with silver; this, he shows, is markedly different from silver chloride. He then forms this compound synthetically; forms also the combination with potassium by direct union, and describes its properties; studies the action of chlorine on the new substance, and notes the formation of the yellow solid chloride and the mode of its decomposition by water; prepares a number of metallic compounds; studies the action of the new substance on phosphorus, the nature of the product, and its mode of decomposition by water, with formation of the white crystalline phosphonium iodide and hydriodic acid gas. By acting on this gas with potassium he shows that it yields half its volume of hydrogen and forms the same product as by the direct union of the alkali metal with the new substance. He further finds that this gas is formed when the new substance and hydrogen are passed through a heated tube; it has a very strong attraction for water, which dissolves it to a large extent, and the concentrated solution rapidly becomes tawny. When the new substance is treated with potash solution it forms the same product as by its direct union with potassium, together with a salt precisely similar to potassium hyper-oxymuriate, and which, like that salt, is decomposed when heated, with evolution of oxygen. He shows that the new substance is expelled from its compounds when these are heated with chlorine. He studies the nature of the black fulminating compound discovered by Desormes and Clement by acting on the new substance with solution of ammonia, and concludes that it is analogous to the detonating oil of Dulong. He attempts to determine the combining proportion of the new substance, on the assumption that its compounds are analogous to those of chlorine, but he has to admit that his experiments have been made upon quantities too small to afford exact results. Nevertheless they prove that the value is much higher than those of the simple inflammable bodies, and higher even than those of most of the metals. He further shows that the combination with hydrogen must be one of the heaviest elastic fluids existing.

“From all the facts that have been stated, there is every reason to consider this new substance as an undecompounded body. In its specific gravity, lustre, colour, and the high number in which it enters into combination, it resembles the metals; but in all its chemical agencies it is more analogous to oxygen and chlorine; it is a non-conductor of electricity, and possesses, like these bodies, the negative electrical energy with respect to metals, inflammable and alkaline substances, and hence when combined with these substances in aqueous solution and electrized in the voltaic circuit, it separates at the positive surface; but it has a positive energy with respect to chlorine.... It agrees with chlorine and fluorine in forming acids with hydrogen.

“The name ione has been proposed in France for this new substance from its colour in the gaseous state, from ???, viola; and its combination with hydrogen has been named hydroionic acid. The name ione, in English, would lead to confusion, for its compounds would be called ionic and ionian. By terming it iodine, from ??d?? violaceous, this confusion will be avoided, and the name will be more analogous to chlorine and fluorine.”

The rapidity with which Davy ascertained the properties and relations of the new substance was characteristic of him. A fortnight’s work—done partly at his hotel and partly in the laboratory of the young Chevreul, amidst a succession of interruptions caused by fÊtes, levÉes, and visits of ceremony—sufficed to accumulate the material for his Royal Society paper, in which he gives with unerring precision, in spite of the small quantity of the matter at his disposal, the broad outlines of the chemistry of iodine. The paper shows him at his best: he seems to have seized, as if by instinct, upon the central fact of the analogy of iodine to chlorine, and he worked out the clue with a perspicacity and insight worthy of his genius.

As may be surmised, Davy’s action hardly contributed to his popularity with a certain section of the savants of Paris. Gay Lussac and Thenard were extremely angry with AmpÈre and Clement for having given him the material for his investigation, and the feeling broke out after the publication of Gay Lussac’s memoir in the Annales de Chimie in 1814. Davy in a note published in the Journal of the Royal Institution says:—

“Who had most share in developing the chemical history of that body [iodine], must be determined by a review of the papers that have been published upon it, and by an examination of their respective dates. When M. Clement showed Iodine to me, he believed that the hydriodic acid was muriatic acid; and M. Gay Lussac, after his early experiments, made originally with M. Clement, formed the same opinion, and maintained it, when I first stated to him my belief that it was a new and peculiar acid, and that Iodine was a substance analogous in its chemical relations to Chlorine.”

Davy left Paris towards the end of December, passing into Auvergne and thence to Montpellier, where he resumed his work on iodine. He then went to Genoa, where he made some experiments on the electricity of the torpedo, and about the middle of March arrived at Florence. In a letter to his brother John he says:—

“I have worked a good deal on iodine and a little on the torpedo. Iodine had been in embryo for two years. I came to Paris; Clement requested me to examine it, and he believed that it was a compound, affording muriatic acid. I worked upon it for some time, and determined that it was a new body, and that it afforded a peculiar acid by combining with hydrogen, and this I mentioned to Gay Lussac, AmpÈre, and other chemists. The first immediately ‘took the word of the Lord out of the mouth of His servant,’ and treated this subject as he had treated potassium and boron. The paper which I sent to the Royal Society on iodine I wrote with Clement’s approbation and a note published in the ‘Journal de Physique’ will vindicate my priority. I have just got ready for the Royal Society a second paper on this fourth supporter of combustion.

“The old theory is nearly abandoned in France. Berthollet, with much candour, has decided in favour of chlorine. I know no chemist but Thenard who upholds it at Paris, and he upholds it feebly, and by this time, probably, has renounced it.

“I doubt if the organ of the torpedo is analogous to the pile of Volta. I have not been able to gain any chemical effects by the shock sent through water; but I tried on small and not very active animals. I shall resume the inquiry at Naples, where I hope to be about the middle of May. In my journey I met with no difficulties of any kind, and received every attention from the scientific men of Paris, and the most liberal permission to go where I pleased from the government.

“I lived very much with Berthollet, Cuvier, Chaptal, Vauquelin, Humboldt, Morveau, Clement, Chevreul, and Gay Lussac. They were all kind and attentive to me; and, except for Gay Lussac’s last turn of publishing without acknowledgement what he had first learnt from me, I should have had nothing to complain of; but who can control self-love?

“It ought not to interfere with truth and justice; but I will not moralise nor complain. Iodine is as useful an ally to me as I could have found at home.”

At Florence he worked in the laboratory of the Accademia del Cimento on iodine and on the diamond. The results of his work on iodine he embodied in a paper read to the Royal Society on June 16th, 1814, which deals mainly with the iodates, or, as he preferred to call them, the oxyiodes. The object of his work on the diamond was to determine whether any peculiar matter separated from it during its combustion, and whether the gas formed in the process was precisely the same in its chemical nature as that produced by the combustion of plumbago and charcoal. At Florence he made use of the great burning-glass originally employed in the trials on the action of solar heat on the diamond instituted by Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany; he completed the research in the laboratory of the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome.

From the results of his different experiments, which were communicated to the Royal Society on June 23rd, 1814, it appeared that the diamond affords no other substance by its combustion in oxygen than pure carbonic acid gas, and that the only chemical difference perceptible between diamond and the purest charcoal is that the latter contains a minute proportion of hydrogen. “But,” he asks, “can a quantity of an element, less in some cases than 1/50000 part of the weight of the substance, occasion so great a difference in physical and chemical characters?” This he concludes is most unlikely, for, as he points out, even when the minute quantity of hydrogen is expelled by heating the charcoal in chlorine, the specific differences remain.

The doctrine at that time current, and which seemed indeed almost axiomatic, “That bodies cannot be exactly the same in composition or chemical nature, and yet totally different in all their physical properties,” received its first great shock. Davy’s work, no doubt, paved the way for the recognition of the fact of allotropy, and thereafter of isomerism.

In May he went to Naples and made his first ascent of Vesuvius, which he revisited on several subsequent journeys. He commissioned one of the guides to inform him from time to time of the condition of the volcano, and the man’s letters, in spite of their phonetic address—“Siromfredevi-Londra”—duly found their way to Albemarle Street. He also interested himself in the excavations at Pompeii instituted by direction of Murat, then King of Naples, and he performed a number of experiments on the colours used by the ancients in painting, an account of which was communicated to the Royal Society on February 23rd, 1815.

He then passed northwards with the intention of spending the summer at Geneva. On his way he called at Milan to pay his respects to Volta. Of this visit he wrote:—

“Volta I saw at Milan, in 1814, at that time advanced in years,—I think nearly seventy and in bad health. His conversation was not brilliant; his views rather limited, but marking great ingenuity. His manners were perfectly simple. He had not the air of a courtier, or even of a man who had seen the world.”

If Dr. Paris’s story is to be credited, the lack of brilliancy in the conversation of the great Italian physicist may be attributed to the circumstances of this meeting. Davy, we are told, had written to announce his intended visit, and on the appointed day and hour Volta, in full dress, awaited his arrival.

“On the entrance of the great English philosopher into the apartment, not only in dÉshabille, but in a dress of which an English artisan would have been ashamed, Volta started back in astonishment, and such was the effect of his surprise, that he was for some time unable to address him.”

The party remained at Geneva until the middle of September, partaking freely of the intellectual life which that charming city afforded. Here he met Saussure Pictet, De la Rive, Madame de StaËl, Benjamin Constant, Necker, and Talma, whose society he greatly enjoyed. With the approach of winter he returned to Italy vi the Brenner and Venice, and on November 2nd arrived at Rome, where he remained until March 1st, 1815, occupying himself with his inquiry into the composition of ancient colours. In this he was greatly assisted by the kindness of his friend Canova, the celebrated sculptor, who was then charged with the care of the works connected with ancient art in Rome, and who supplied him with material from the colours found in the Baths of Titus and of Livia, and other palaces and baths of ancient Rome and Pompeii. Davy’s memoir, which appears in the Philosophical Transactions for 1815, displays considerable antiquarian and bibliographical research, and, considering his limited means, much analytical skill and ingenuity. The ancient reds he found to consist of minium, several varieties of iron ochre, and vermilion or cinnabar. The yellows were mixtures of ochres and chalks, or of ochre with minium. He was unable to discover that orpiment was used; a deep orange yellow on stucco in the ruins near the monument of Caius Cestius consisted of a mixture of massicot and minium. The blues were mainly mixtures of the Egyptian or Alexandrine blue, with more or less chalk. This Egyptian blue, he found, was a frit, made by heating soda, sand, and copper, either used as an ore or as metal. He gives a method of making it, and speaks highly of its permanence and beauty. The greens were, as a rule, compounds of copper. The exact nature of the purples he was unable to determine; they were probably organic, but whether obtained from shell-fish or madder could not be ascertained. The purplish reds in the Baths of Titus were found to be mixtures of red ochres, and the blues were copper compounds. The blacks and browns were mixtures of carbonaceous matter with oxides of iron or manganese. The whites were mainly chalk, or occasionally clay; cerusse, or white-lead, was apparently not used.

Before leaving Italy he again went to Naples, for the purpose of witnessing Vesuvius in eruption, and on several occasions he was as near the crater as he could get. He left Naples on March 21st, and came home by way of Verona, Innsbruck, Ulm, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and the Rhine, arriving in London April 23rd, 1815. A few days after his arrival he wrote to his mother:—

“We have had a very agreeable and instructive journey and Lady Davy agrees with me in thinking that England is the only country to live in, however interesting it may be to see other countries.

“I yesterday bought a good house in Grosvenor Street, and we shall sit down in this happy land.

“I beg you to give my best and kindest love to my sisters, and to remember me with all affection to my aunts.”

Faraday was again engaged as assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution and superintendent of the apparatus (at a salary of 30s. a week), and was accommodated with apartments at the top of the house.

In Dr. Bence Jones’s “Life of Faraday” we have more detailed information concerning this tour, derived from the journal which Faraday kept whilst he was abroad. Faraday describes in considerable detail the life in Paris and the work on Iodine; we have accounts of Chevreul’s laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes, and of Gay Lussac’s lectures at the École Polytechnique; of the work on the torpedo at Genoa; of the combustion of the diamond at the Accademia del Cimento, and a description of the great burning-glass, and how it was actually employed; of the experiments of Morichini on the alleged magnetisation of a needle by the solar rays; of his meeting Volta—“an hale, elderly man, bearing the red ribbon, and very free in conversation”; of the work at Rome on chlorous oxide and iodic acid, and on the pigments employed by the ancients.

“The constant presence of Sir Humphry Davy,” wrote Faraday to his friend Abbott, “is a mine inexhaustible of knowledge and improvement.” But he adds: “I have several times been more than half decided to return hastily home; but second thoughts have still induced me to try what the future may produce ... the glorious opportunities I enjoy of improving in the knowledge of chemistry and the sciences continually determine me to finish this voyage with Sir H.D. But if I wish to enjoy these advantages I have to sacrifice much, and though these sacrifices are such as an humble man would not feel, yet I cannot quietly make them.”

Faraday’s troubles arose from his anomalous position in the party. When Davy elected to go abroad, he arranged to take his valet with him; but at the eleventh hour this man, moved by the tears of his wife—to whom the “Corsican Ogre” was a kind of bogey—refused to proceed. “When Sir H. informed me of this circumstance,” says Faraday, “he expressed his sorrow at it, and said—that if I would put up with a few things on the road until he got to Paris, doing those things which could not be trusted to strangers or waiters ... he would get a servant.... At Paris he could find no servant to suit him,” nor was he more successful at Montpellier or at Genoa. It was, doubtless, difficult at this period to find a man in such places who understood English and was in other respects suitable. Faraday goes on to say:—

“Sir Humphry has at all times endeavoured to keep me from the performance of those things which did not form a part of my duty, and which might be disagreeable.... I should have but little to complain of, were I travelling with Sir Humphry alone, or were Lady Davy like him; but her temper makes it oftentimes go wrong with me, with herself and with Sir H....

“She likes to show her authority, and at first I found her extremely earnest in mortifying me. This occasioned quarrels between us, at each of which I gained ground and she lost it; for the frequency made me care nothing about them, and weakened her authority, and after each she behaved in a milder manner.”

How Davy and his wife appeared to the world at this time may be seen from the following extracts from Ticknor’s Life:—

“1815. June 13.—I breakfasted this morning with Sir H. Davy, of whom we have heard so much in America. He is now about thirty-three [he was actually thirty-seven], but with all the freshness and bloom of twenty-five, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of vivacity—talks rapidly, though with great precision—and is so much interested in conversation that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion. He has just returned from Italy, and delights to talk of it; thinks it, next to England, the finest country in the world, and the society of Rome surpassed only by that of London, and says he should not die contented without going there again.”

“15 June.—As her husband had invited me to do, I called this morning on Lady Davy. I found her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair and a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile; and when she speaks has much spirit and expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady. But, then, it has something of the appearance of formality and display, which injures conversation. Her manner is gracious and elegant; and though I should not think of comparing her to Corinne yet I think she has uncommon powers.”

In Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary we read, under date May 31st, 1813:—

“Dined with Wordsworth at Mr. Carr’s. Sir Humphry and Lady Davy there. She and Sir H. seem to have hardly finished their honeymoon. Miss Joanna Baillie said to Wordsworth, ‘We have witnessed a picturesque happiness.’”

In 1815 it was very evident the honeymoon had waned and that the picturesque happiness was at an end. However fitted her ladyship might be to shine in salons, at routs and fashionable gatherings, she lacked the homelier, kindlier charms which grace the placens uxor. An accomplished woman, of fastidious taste, fond of study, upright in her dealings, and charitable to the poor, she was withal cold and unsympathetic, self-willed and independent, “fitted to excite admiration rather than love, and neither by nature happy in herself, or qualified to impart, in the best sense of the term, happiness to others.” Such is the character given of her by Dr. Davy; and he adds, “There was an oversight, if not a delusion, as to the fitness of their union”; and “it might have been better for both if they had never met.” It was, no doubt, from the fulness of his own experience that Davy once wrote to a friend:—

“Upon points of affection it is only for the parties themselves to form just opinions of what is really necessary to ensure the felicity of the marriage state. Riches appear to me not at all necessary, but competence, I think is; and after this more depends upon the temper of the individual than upon personal, or even intellectual circumstances. The finest spirits, the most exquisite wines, the nectars and ambrosias of modern tables, will be all spoilt by a few drops of bitter extract; and a bad temper has the same effect in life, which is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.”