“And there is no country which ought so much to glory in its progress, which is so much interested in its success, as this happy island. Science has been a prime cause of creating for us the inexhaustible wealth of manufactures, and it is by science that it must be preserved and extended. We are interested as a commercial people,--we are interested as a free people. The age of glory of a nation is likewise the age of its security. The same dignified feeling, which urges men to endeavour to gain a dominion over nature, will preserve them from the humiliation of slavery. Natural, and moral, and religious knowledge, are of one family; and happy is that country, and great its strength, where they dwell together in union.” It was, of course, to be expected that amidst the general chorus of approval some discordant notes should be heard. People who preferred the severe and formal manner of his colleague, Dr. Young, who, in spite of his profound knowledge, could never keep an audience together, said that Davy’s style was too florid and imaginative; that his imagery was inappropriate, and his conceits violent; that he was affected and swayed by a mawkish sensibility. Dr. Paris would have us believe there was some show of justice in this accusation, but he thinks that “the style which cannot be tolerated in a philosophical essay may under peculiar circumstances be not only admissible but even expedient in a popular lecture.” The “peculiar circumstance” in Davy’s case was, in Dr. Paris’s opinion, the Royal Institution audience. “Let us consider for a moment,” he says, “the class of persons to whom Davy addressed himself. Were they students prepared to toil with systematic precision, in order to obtain knowledge as a matter of necessity?--No--they were composed of the gay and the idle, who could only be tempted to admit instruction by the prospect of receiving pleasure,--they were children, who could only be induced to swallow the salutary draught by the honey around the rim of the cup.” That Davy himself was not wholly unconscious of this fact may be gathered from a letter which he wrote to Mr. Davies Gilbert at about this time. He says:-- “My labours in the Theatre of the Royal Institution have been more successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them. In lectures, the effect produced upon the mind is generally transitory; for the most part, they amuse rather than instruct, and stimulate to enquiry rather than give information. My audience has often amounted to four and five hundred, and upwards; and amongst them some promise to become permanently attached to chemistry. This science is much the fashion of the day.”