Davy was now (1810) thirty-two years of age, and near the summit of his scientific fame, and perhaps also, says his brother John, who was then in daily association with him, at the height of his happiness. “He had earned an unsullied and noble reputation; he was loved and admired by friends, who had cheered him on in his career; he had hardly passed the prime of manhood; he was in possession of excellent health; he had open to him almost every source of ordinary recreation and enjoyment; and he had, besides, the unfailing pleasures derived from the active and successful pursuit of science. His letters written at this time, [to his mother and sisters] strongly mark a happy contentment, as well as a very amiable and affectionate state of mind.” His popularity at the Royal Institution was unbounded; indeed, he was the very prop of its existence, and was so recognised. But honourable as his position was, it brought him little more than a competency; and however generously disposed the Managers might have felt towards him, the financial circumstances of the Institution afforded no certainty of a future independence. The Bishop of Durham and Sir Thomas Bernard sought to induce him to enter the Church, in the hope that his talents and eloquence would minister no less to the cause of religion than to his own prospects of preferment. At this period he had serious thoughts of again applying himself to the study of medicine, with a view of practising as a physician, and he actually entered his name at Cambridge and kept some terms there. But whether the unfortunate experience of his colleagues Wollaston and Young deterred him, or whether, as is more probable, Science had too strong a hold upon his affections, it is certain he made no resolute attempt to abandon her. Money was never an object with Davy, except as the means of procuring him the advantages which the moneyed classes can command; had he cared for it, his talents were a marketable commodity, and would have brought him riches in many ways. The smiling goddess now showed him one way as honourable as it was lucrative and pleasurable. The Dublin Society invited him to lecture to them on the discoveries which had made him famous, with the promise of a more substantial token of their appreciation than the sound of their applause. The following minutes from the Proceedings of the Society serve to explain this:-- “May 3, 1810. _Resolved_--That it is the wish of the Society to communicate to the Irish public in the most extended manner (consistent with the engagements of the Society), the knowledge of a science so intimately connected with the improvement of agriculture and the arts, which is their great object to promote; and that, with this view, it appears to them extremely desirable to obtain the fullest communication of the recent discoveries in electro-chemical science which have been made by Mr. Davy.