Famous Men of Science Part 11

I believe I should never have married but for this charming woman, whose views and whose tastes coincide with my own, and who is eminently qualified to promote my best efforts and objects in life."

To his brother he writes: "I have been very miserable. The lady whom I love best of any human beings has been very ill. She is now well, and I am happy. Mrs. Appreece has consented to marry me: and when the event takes place I shall not envy kings, princes, or potentates.... I am going to be married to-morrow; and I have a fair prospect of happiness, with the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known." How love idealizes all things, makes a new heaven and a new earth for us! He found in her the two needed qualities for happiness; amiability, without which the life of a man is usually made wretched, and intellectuality, without which a cultivated man can have little companions.h.i.+p in a wife.

The marriage seems to have been a happy one, for he writes to John later: "Lady D. is a n.o.ble creature, and every day adds to my contentment by the powers of her understanding, and her amiable and delightful tones of feeling."

Like the wife of Herschel, she was a wealthy widow, so that after his marriage Davy was enabled to travel, and devote himself wholly to original investigation. He resigned his professors.h.i.+p at the Royal Inst.i.tution after twelve most useful years.

His "Elements of Chemical Philosophy" was now published, and dedicated to Lady Davy. After a pleasure trip with his wife to the highlands of Scotland, taking his portable chemical apparatus with him for study, they took a journey to France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany, accompanied by Mr. Michael Faraday, afterward so celebrated, then "his a.s.sistant in experiments and writing."

In Paris, where he spent two months, he discovered that iodine is a simple substance, a.n.a.logous to chlorine. Here he became the intimate friend of many distinguished men. "Humboldt," he said, "was one of the most agreeable men I have ever known; social, modest, full of intelligence, with facilities of every kind; almost _too fluent_ in conversation. His travels display his spirit of enterprise. His works are monuments of the variety of his knowledge and resources."

Gay-Lussac he placed "at the head of the living chemists of France."

At Fontainebleau, on the banks of the Rhone, at Mont Blanc, at Vaucluse, Sir Humphrey's artistic nature voiced itself in song. He had the poet's temperament, intense, quick, earnest, ardent, aspiring. He loved science, and paid her homage; he loved poetry, and made her his rest and solace and soul-companion.

At Florence he studied the diamond, and found it merely crystallized carbon. At Rome he met Canova, who showed him great attention, and to whom he wrote this sonnet:--

"Thou wast a light of brightness in an age When Italy was in the night of art: She was thy country; but the world thy stage, On which thou actedst thy creative part.

Blameless thy life--thy manners, playful, mild, Master in art, but Nature's simplest child.

Phidias of Rome! like him thou stand'st sublime: And after artists shall essay to climb To that high temple where thou dwell'st alone, Amidst the trophies thou from time hast won.

Generous to all, but most to rising merit; By n.o.bler praise awakening the spirit; Yet all unconscious of the eternal fame, The light of glory circling round thy name!"

At Milan he met Volta, nearly seventy years old. "His conversation was not brilliant," he said; "his views rather limited, but marking great ingenuity. His manners were perfectly simple."

Around Naples he investigated the phenomena of volcanic eruptions. On his return to London they bought a house in Grosvenor Square. He now published several papers: "Experiments and Observations on the Colors used in Painting by the Ancients"; "Experiments on a Solid Compound of Iodine and Oxygen, and on its Chemical Agencies"; "Action of Acids on the Salts usually called the Hyper-oxymuriates, and on the Gases produced from them."

All his life, besides his ambition to be great, he desired to aid his fellow-men, and in the year 1815 he made a discovery which placed him among the benefactors of the race. In 1812 a terrible explosion of gas had taken place in a mine, causing the death of nearly a hundred men.

The mine was on fire, and the mouth had to be closed, thus bringing sure death to the poor creatures within. Such accidents were so frequent, that a committee of mine proprietors visited the great chemist, to see if science could suggest a remedy.

He at once visited several mines, investigated fire-damp, and found it to be light carburetted hydrogen. After a long and careful series of experiments through several months, he invented the safety-lamp, "a cage of wire gauze, which actually made prisoner the flame of the fire-damp, and in its prison consumed it; and whilst it confined the dangerous explosive flame, it permitted air to pa.s.s and light to escape; and though, from the combustion of the fire-damp, the cage might become red hot, yet still it acted the part of a safety-lamp."

Sir Humphrey at thirty-seven had immortalized himself. At a public dinner given in his honor at Newcastle, a service of plate worth over twelve thousand dollars was presented to him. After his death this service was given to the Royal Society by his widow, to be sold, and the proceeds applied to the encouragement of science. Emperor Alexander of Russia sent him a splendid silver-gilt vase, with a personal letter; his own sovereign conferred a baronetcy upon him.

When Davy was urged by some friends to take out a patent upon the safety-lamp, and thus make five or ten thousand a year for himself, he said, "I never thought of such a thing: my sole object was to serve the cause of humanity; and if I have succeeded, I am amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so. I have enough for all my views and purposes; more wealth could not increase either my fame or my happiness. It might undoubtedly enable me to put four horses to my carriage; but what would it avail me to have it said that Sir Humphrey drives his carriage and four?"

He said later of his discovery of the safety-lamp: "I value it more than anything I ever did: it was the result of a great deal of investigation and labor; but if my directions be attended to, it will save the lives of thousands of poor men. I was never more affected than by a written address which I received from the working colliers when I was in the North, thanking me on behalf of themselves and their families for the preservation of their lives."

Sir Humphrey used to say: "Whoever wishes to enjoy _peace_, and is gifted with great talents, must labor for posterity. In doing this he enjoys all the pleasures of intellectual labor, and all the desire arising from protracted hope. He feels no envy nor jealousy; his mark is too far distant to be seen by short-sighted malevolence, and therefore it is never aimed at.... To raise a chestnut on the mountain, or a palm in the plain, which may afford shade, shelter, and fruit for generations yet unborn, and which, if they have once fixed their roots, require no culture, is better than to raise annual flowers in a garden, which must be watered daily, and in which a cold wind may chill or too ardent a suns.h.i.+ne may dry.... The best faculties of man are employed for futurity: speaking is better than acting, writing is better than speaking."

In the spring of 1818 he took his second continental journey with his wife, going through Austria, Germany, and Italy. Commissioned by his king, he made some researches on Herculaneum ma.n.u.scripts.

On his return to England he was made President of the Royal Society, the position so ably filled by Sir Isaac Newton. Every Sat.u.r.day evening, poets, artists, and men of science gathered at his receptions. This office he held for seven years, till his declining health compelled his resignation.

In December, 1821, Davy paid a visit to his old home in Penzance, and saw his mother for the last time before her death. A public dinner was given him by his townsmen, which honor he greatly appreciated. He was no longer the poor lad among them. "Every heart, tongue, and eye were as one to do honor to him who had not only rendered the name of their _town_ famous and imperishable as science itself, but who had added l.u.s.tre to the intellectual character of their _country_."

From year to year he continued his experiments. Urged by the commissioners of the navy to remedy the corrosion of copper sheathing on vessels by sea water, he succeeded in rendering the copper negatively electrical by small pieces of tin, zinc, or iron nails. Sh.e.l.ls and seaweeds adhered to the non-corroded surface, but the principle of galvanic protection has been applied to various important uses.

In 1824, Sir Humphrey took a journey to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, visiting Berzelius of Sweden, "one of the great ornaments of the age,"

he said, and Oersted of Denmark, distinguished for his discovery of electro-magnetism.

Towards the close of 1826, when he was only forty-eight, Davy was attacked by paralysis in the right side, having suffered for a year with numbness and pain in his right arm. During his confinement in his room, he corrected the proof sheets of his "Discourses to the Royal Society,"

published in January, 1827.

In this year, having improved, he went through France, Italy, and Switzerland, hunting and fis.h.i.+ng as in his boyhood, and writing "Salmonia, or Days of Fly Fis.h.i.+ng," giving descriptions of his journey and his observations on natural history.

In the spring of 1828, he made another journey, to Southern Austria, spending the winter in Italy, and writing his "Consolation in Travel,"

which Cuvier called the work of a dying Plato. "I was desirous," he says, "of again pa.s.sing some time in these scenes, in the hope of reestablis.h.i.+ng a broken const.i.tution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet, at least, I expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring; a thunder storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent: but these effects are rare and transient; in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated; and Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the const.i.tution of humanity,--no hopes forever blighted in the bud,--no beings full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man, and so like the fabled apples of the Dead Sea,--fresh and beautiful to the sight, but, when tasted, full of bitterness and ashes."

From Rome he writes to a friend, a year later, in the spring of 1829: "I am here _wearing away_ the winter,--a ruin amongst ruins!... I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. I have this conviction full on my mind, that intellectual beings spring from the same breath of infinite intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses. Like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven, and lost in the deep and eternal ocean,--some in youth, rapid and short-lived torrents; some in manhood, powerful and copious rivers; and some in age, by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career, and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths."

Davy was destined to go back to the Infinite Intelligence in manhood, "a powerful and copious river," however much he "fought against sickness and fate."

On February 23, 1829, he dictated a letter to his brother John: "I am dying from a severe attack of palsy, which has seized the whole body, with the exception of the intellectual organ." He added in his own hand, just legible, "Come as quickly as possible."

When the brother arrived, and was overcome with grief, Sir Humphrey received him with a cheerful smile, and bade him not to grieve, but consider the event like a philosopher. He talked more earnestly than ever, and his mind seemed all aglow as with the brilliancy of a setting sun.

At one time he was so near death, that he said "he had gone through the whole process of dying, and that when he awoke he had difficulty in convincing himself that he was in his earthly existence." Reviving somewhat, they journeyed from Italy to Geneva, by slow and easy travel, arriving May 28, 1829. In the night, at half-past two, Sir Humphrey was taken very ill, and died almost immediately.

He was buried June 1, in the cemetery outside the walls of the city, having requested to be interred where he died, without any display. The grave is marked by a simple monument erected by his wife. She also founded a prize in his honor, to be given every two years, for the most original and important discovery in chemical science. Only fifty, and his work finished,--no not finished,--for his books and his discoveries, his character, with its earnest perseverance, its tenderness, its sympathy, its n.o.ble aspirations, and its helpfulness to mankind, will live forever!

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.]

The problem why certain men and women come to eminence, and why others, with apparently as much ability, remain forever in obscurity, is an interesting one to solve. Most persons desire fame; most persons desire wealth; but, for one reason or another, thousands fail to achieve what they desire. They lack either singleness of aim, or adequate perseverance, or determined will, or sound judgment, or, instead of mastering circ.u.mstances, they permit circ.u.mstances to master them.

It is so easy to be turned aside in life by trivial matters; to be interested in our neighbor's wedding, or our neighbor's profits and losses. Those who oversee the affairs of others rarely oversee their own. Men become very busy over clubs and pastimes; women, over social gatherings and appearance, and die with little accomplished.

Audubon's life furnishes a unique ill.u.s.tration of the result of having a definite purpose, and bending all one's energies to it, till success is attained.

John James Audubon was born at New Orleans, May 4, 1780, in the land of orange groves and magnolias, of birds and suns.h.i.+ne. His grandfather was a poor fisherman of La Vendee, France, with twenty-one children. Unable to support them, they made their way in life as best they could.

When John's father was twelve years old, the fisherman gave him "a s.h.i.+rt, a dress of warm clothing, his blessing, and a cane, and sent him out to seek his fortune." He went to Nantes, s.h.i.+pped before the mast; at twenty-one commanded a vessel, and at twenty-five was owner and captain of a small craft.

Going to St. Domingo, West Indies, he purchased a small estate.

Ambitious, as are all persons who succeed, he soon secured an appointment from the Governor of St. Domingo, returned to France, made the acquaintance of influential men, and obtained an appointment in the Imperial navy, with the command of a small vessel of war.

He had what all persons need, true self-appreciation; quite another quality from self-conceit. To believe that we can do things, having kept our characters such that we respect ourselves, is a strong indication that we shall prosper if we make the attempt.

Frequently visiting America in his s.h.i.+p, Audubon purchased land in Louisiana, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. In the former State he married a lady of Spanish extraction, Anne Moynette, both beautiful and wealthy.

Of their three sons and one daughter, John James was the youngest son.

The mother was not spared to rear the distinguished naturalist, but perished a few years after his birth, in the insurrection of the colored people of St. Domingo. The father, having purchased a beautiful estate on the Loire, nine miles from Nantes, married a second time, a woman who proved a most indulgent mother to her husband's children. Having none of her own, she humored John in every way, and allowed him to gather moss, curious stones, birds' nests,--indeed, everything which belongs to natural history,--to his heart's content.

On the return of Commodore Audubon to France, finding that the boy was following the bent of his own mind, to the neglect of a solid education, in spite of the tears and entreaties of his wife, he sent him away to school. For a year John was obliged to apply himself closely to mathematics, taking a ramble to collect specimens whenever it was possible. He studied drawing under the celebrated painter David, and learned to play well on the violin, flute, flageolet, and guitar.