Humphry Davy

the mists disperse and where a sullen cloud hung on the mountain's verge the sun bursts forth in all its majesty of purple light it is a winter's evening and the year is fast departing yet the hues of heaven are bright as in the summer's warmest month it is the season of the sleep of things but nature in her sleep is lovely still the trees display no green no forms of life and yet a magic foliage clothes them round and purest crystals of pellucid ice all purple in the sunset mist the wood fantastically rise the towering cliffs that in another season had been white but now contrasted with the brilliant ice shine in aerial tints of purest blue the varied outline has a thousand charms here rises high a venerable wood where oaks are seen with massy ice-girt round and birches pendent with their glittering arms and graceful beeches clinging to the soil there massy forms exist of rocks alone rising as if the work of human art the pride of some great paladin of old in awful ruins nearer i behold the palace of a race of mighty kings but now another tenants on these walls where erst the silver lily spread her leaves the graceful symbol of a brilliant court the golden eagle shines the bird of prey emblem of rapine and of lawless power such is the fitful change of human things an empire rises like a cloud in heaven red in the morning sun spreading its tints of golden hue along the feverish sky and filling the horizon soon its tints are darkened and it brings the thunder-storm lightning and hail and desolation comes, but in destroying it dissolves and falls, never to rise.

A Fragment by Humphrey Davy Read for LibriVox.org it is alone in solitude we feel and know what powers belong to us by sympathy excited and constrained by tedious ceremony in the world many whom we are fit to lead we follow and fools and confident men and those who think themselves all-knowing from the littleness of their own talents and the sphere they move in which is most little these do rule the world even like the poet's dream of elder time the fabled titans imaged to aspire unto the infinitely distant heaven because they raised a pile of common stones and higher stood than those around them the great is ever obscure indefinite and knowledge still the highest the most distant most sublime is like the stars composed of luminous points but without visible image or known distance e'en with respect to human things and forms we estimate and know them but in solitude the eye of the worldly man is insect-like fit only for the near and single objects the true philosopher in distance sees them and scans their forms their bearings and relations to view a lovely landscape in its whole we do not fix upon one cave or rock or woody hill out of the mighty range of the wide scenery we rather mount a lofty knoll to mark the varied whole the waters blue the mountains gray and dim the shaggy hills and the embattled cliffs with their mysterious glens awakening imagination wild interminable End of poem.

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the sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields are hung as if with golden shields bright trophies of the sun like a fair sister of the sky unruffled doth the blue lake lie the mountains looking on and sooth to say yon vocal grove albeit uninspired by love by love untaught to ring may well afford to mortal ear an impulse more profoundly dear than music of the spring for that from turbulence and heat proceeds from some uneasy seat in nature's struggling frame some region of impatient life and jealousy and quivering strife therein a portion claim this this is holy while i hear these vespers of another year this hymn of thanks and praise my spirit seems to mount above the anxieties of human love and earth's precarious days but lest though winter's storms be nigh unchecked is that soft harmony there lives who can provide for all his creatures and in him even like the radiant seraphim these choristers confide The Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott.

The name of Liedenbrock was honorably mentioned in colleges and learned societies.

Humphrey Davy, Humboldt, Captain Sir John Franklin, General Sabine never failed to call upon him on their way through Hamburg.

Becquerel, Abelman, Brewster, Dumas, Milne Edwards, St. Clair Deville frequently consulted him upon the most difficult problems in chemistry, a science which was indebted to him for considerable discoveries.

For in 1853, there had appeared at Leipzig an imposing folio by Otto Liedenbrock entitled A Treatise Upon Transcendental Chemistry, with plates.

But is it the same with facts? Is it not known that the number of volcanoes has diminished since the first days of creation? And if there is central heat, may we not thence conclude that it is in the process of diminution? My good uncle, if you will enter into the legion of speculation, I can discuss the matter no longer.

But I have to tell you that the highest names have come to the support of my views.

Do you remember a visit paid to me by the celebrated chemist Humphrey Davy in 1825? Not at all, for I was not born until nineteen years afterwards.

Well, Humphrey Davy did call upon me on his way through Hamburg.

Early in the 19th century, Wedgwood, a son of the famous English potter, made some interesting experiments with silver salts.

Wedgwood was assisted in some of these experiments by the great Sir Humphrey Davy, who did so much pioneer work for chemistry and electricity.

These two experimenters coated paper and also white leather with a weak solution of silver salts.

They then laid opaque objects upon the prepared surface and thus caused the shadows of the objects to imprint themselves.

The result was a white print upon a black ground.

These experimenters tried some of their prepared paper in a camera obscura, but without any result.

Their failure was no doubt due to the want of intensity in the light which passed into the camera obscura, for Davy afterwards succeeded in producing images of objects placed in a solar microscope which had a more concentrated light.

With a modern camera and ordinary photographic paper, it is quite easy to take a photograph directly onto the paper in the camera, provided a sufficiently long exposure is given.

curiously enough at the very time when george stephenson

was busy inventing his lamp at killingworth sir humphry davy was working at just the same matter in london and the two lamps though a little different in minor points of construction are practically the same in general principle now sir humphrey

was then the great fashionable natural philosopher of the day the favourite of london society and the popular lecturer of the royal institution his friends thought it a monstrous idea that his splendid life-saving apparatus should have been independently devised by an engine wright of killingworth of the name of stephenson a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry This sounds very odd reading at the present day, when the engine-wright of the name of Stevenson has altered the whole face of the world, while Davy is chiefly remembered as a meritorious and able chemist.

But at the time Stevenson's claim to the invention met with little courtesy from the great public of London, where a meeting was held on purpose to denounce his right to the credit of the invention.

And in the premises he already rents in Newark, he establishes a new chemical laboratory as well.

And you see Edison now really focusing a lot of his research on understanding sort of the underlying physics and chemistry that are affecting his efforts to improve telegraph technology.

Still only in his twenties, Edison has laid down the blueprint for a full-service facility extending from fundamental research to product development to production and sales, a thoroughly modern setup.

Nonetheless, the economy hits a slump and times get harder.

the pile was not creating energy from nothing nor had it captured lightning and persuaded it to remain it was drawing on the chemical possibilities of its materials gradually changing them as it worked that distinction would become the foundation of an entirely new field, electrochemistry, the study of the relationship between chemical change and electricity.

In the early 19th century, Humphry Davy used powerful batteries to investigate substances and isolate elements.

including sodium and potassium.

The battery was becoming more than an object to study.