“RESPECTED SIR, ... Natural philosophy has lately been enriched with many curious discoveries, amongst which galvanism, a phenomenon that promises to unfold to us some of the laws of our nature is one of the most important. In medicine, the inoculation for the cow-pox is becoming general, not in England alone, but over the whole of Europe; and taking circumstances as they now stand, it promises gradually to annihilate small-pox. My discoveries relating to the nitrous oxide, the pleasure-producing air, are beginning to make some noise; the experiments have been repeated, with the greatest success, by the professors of the University of Edinburgh, who have taken up the subject with great ardour; and I have received letters of thanks and of praises for my labours from some of the most respectable of the English philosophers. I am sorry to be so much of an egotist; yet I cannot speak of the Pneumatic Institution and its success without speaking of myself. Our patients are becoming daily more numerous, and our Institution, in spite of the political odium attached to its founder, is respected, even in the trading city of Bristol.... I am at this moment very healthy and very happy; I have had great success in my experiments and I gain a competence by my pursuits, at the same time that I am (in hopes at least) doing something towards promoting the public good. If I feel any anxiety, it is that of being removed so far from you, my mother, and my relations and friends. If I was nearer, I would endeavour to be useful to you: I would endeavour to pay some of the debts of gratitude, I owe to you, my first protector and earliest friend. As it is, I must look forward to a futurity that will enable me to do this; but, believe me, wherever I am, and whatever may be my situation, I shall never lose the remembrance of obligations conferred on me, or the sense of gratitude which ought to accompany them. “I remain, respected Sir, with unfeigned duty and affection, yours “H. DAVY.” CHAPTER III. THE PNEUMATIC INSTITUTION, BRISTOL, 1798-1801 (_continued_). Perhaps at no time of his life was Davy more keenly sensible of the joy of living than at this period--“in the flower and freshness of his youth,” as Southey says. That he was eager, active, buoyant, happy, is obvious from his letters. He had the sweet consciousness of success, and all the sweeter that it had so quickly followed the bitterness of disappointment. He had been able to measure himself against some of the ablest minds of the time--of men who were making the intellectual history of the early part of this century--and the comparison, we may be sure, was not altogether unpleasing to him.