“I shall be very glad to see you again. I intend in June to pass through Scotland and to visit the Western Isles; but I hope I shall spend a part of the autumn with you. “Pray write to me and give me a little news. Beg Kitty and Grace and Betsy and John to recollect me. “I am, my dear mother, your very affectionate son “H. DAVY.” The interest and spirit of enthusiasm thus roused was sedulously cultivated by Davy, and turned to the purposes of the Institution which he served. Rumford was no longer its moving and controlling spirit: his duty to the Elector of Bavaria, and his ill-starred devotion to Madame Lavoisier, had gradually drawn him away from London, and in 1803 he ceased to take any active part in the fortunes of his offspring. Shortly afterwards Sir Joseph Banks also withdrew. In a letter written April, 1804, he tells Rumford that his continued absence from England is a great detriment to the Institution:-- “It is now entirely in the hands of the profane. I have declared my dissatisfaction at the mode in which it is carried on, and my resolution not to attend in future. Had my health and spirits not failed me, I could have kept matters in their proper level, but sick, alone, and unsupported, I have given up what cannot now easily be recovered.” Sir John Hippesley, who became treasurer, strove to make the Institution above all things fashionable. He had a project for placing private boxes in the theatre, and was concerned about its want of a proper coat-of-arms. Mr. Bernard still continued to hope that Sydney Smith’s lectures on Moral Philosophy might somehow better the condition of the poor. They would, at least, said Horner, “make the real blue-stockings a little more disagreeable than ever, and sensible women a little more sensible.” But the real directing power was Davy, and he gradually stamped upon the place the character it now possesses. How he felt his power and used it, may be gleaned from the following extract from a lecture in 1809, in reference to a fund which had been raised to supply him with a great voltaic battery:--