It is a singular fact, that although Davy's attention had never been confined to his favourite science, for he had studied general literature as well as poetry, yet he was of so uncouth an exterior and manners, notwithstanding an exceedingly handsome and expressive countenance, that Count Rumford, a leading director of the Institution, on seeing him for the first time, expressed no little disappointment, even regretting the part he had taken in promoting the engagement. But these feelings were of short duration. Davy was soon sufficiently humanized, and even refined, to appear before a London and a fashionable audience of both sexes with great advantage, and by his ingenuity, and happy facility of illustration, he rendered his lectures so popular, that at the early age of twenty-two, he found his company courted by the choicest society of the metropolis. An anecdote is told illustrative of his popularity, even among the more humble classes. While passing through the streets one fine night, he observed a man showing the moon through a telescope to the surrounding bystanders; Davy stopped to have a look, and having satisfied his curiosity, tendered a penny to the exhibitor. The man had, however, in the meanwhile, learnt the name of his customer, and exclaimed, with an important air, that he could not think of taking money from a 'brother philosopher.' Davy's style of lecturing was animated, clear and impressive, notwithstanding the naturally inharmonious tones of his voice; whilst the ingenuity of his happily devised experiments, the neatness of their execution, and above all the ingenious enthusiasm which he displayed for his subject, fixed and arrested the attention of his hearers. At this time, experimental chemistry began to be the fashion of the day. Voltaic electricity had just been found to possess extraordinary powers in effecting the decomposition of chemical compounds; and by the liberality of the Royal Institution, Davy was put in possession of a battery consisting of 400 5-inch plates, and one of 40 plates, 1-foot in diameter, with which batteries his early and most brilliant investigations were conducted. In 1801 he made his first important discovery, which was communicated to the Royal Society under the title 'An Account of some Galvanic Combinations formed by an Arrangement of Single Metallic Plates and Fluids,' read in June of the same year. In this paper, he showed that the usual galvanic phenomena might be energetically exhibited by a single metallic plate, and two strata of different fluids; or that a battery might be constructed of one metal and two fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing the surface of the metal. In the following year to this, Davy was appointed professor to the Board of Agriculture, and in 1803 was admitted a member of the Royal Society, of which he became first the secretary, and ultimately the president.