His second paper contains an account of experiments instituted with a view to gain some distinct knowledge on the subject of the relations of the different conductors to the magnetism produced by electricity. The results were decisive; but, without entering minutely into the theory of the subject which they so ably illustrated, these experiments cannot be clearly described, or successfully explained. The same observation will apply to the researches detailed in his third paper, announcing the discovery of a _new electro-magnetic phenomenon_; for, since they are inseparably connected with Mr. Faraday's beautiful experiments on _Magnetic Rotation_, I could scarcely expect to render my analysis of the memoir sufficiently intelligible, without entering at length upon that curious subject; I am unwilling, however, to refer the reader to the original paper in the Transactions, without offering a remark upon the _phenomenon_, which he says "is the _principal_ object of the paper," but which we might conclude, from the hasty and imperfect manner in which he dismisses it, to have occupied a very subordinate place in his estimation. In his anxiety to examine and describe the rotations produced during this experiment, he bestows far too little attention upon the more, indeed I might say the _only_, important phenomenon of the cone of mercury which was elevated above each of the wires proceeding from the battery; and which, arising as it evidently did from a repulsive influence, clearly shows that the presence of electricity establishes between the particles of matter a repulsive energy, whether that matter be conducting, or non-conducting in its functions. This law, M. Ampère subsequently illustrated by a different form of experiment, and unfairly, as I must think, omitted even to notice Davy's prior result. On the 20th of December 1821, Davy communicated to the Royal Society a memoir "On the Electrical Phenomena exhibited _in vacuo_." It had been stated by Mr. Walsh, and the opinion had been subsequently supported by the researches of Mr. Morgan, that the electrical light was not producible in a perfect Torricellian vacuum; the latter gentleman also concluded that such a vacuum prevented the charging of coated glass. An enquiry of greater importance can scarcely be imagined; involving in its train several of the most abstruse and difficult questions of corpuscular philosophy; as, whether electricity be a subtile fluid, or electrical effect the mere exhibition of the attractive powers of the particles of bodies; for, if it can be shown that these effects take place in a perfect vacuum, we shall advance towards the conclusion, that electrical phenomena depend upon the agency of an ethereal and transcendental fluid. It was under such an impression that Davy proceeded to determine, if possible, "the relations of electricity to space, as nearly void of matter as it can be made on the surface of the earth."