ancient Rome, and in the ruins of Pompeii. By the kindness of his friend
Canova, who was charged with the care of the works connected with ancient
art in Rome, he was enabled to select with his own hands specimens of the
different pigments, that had been formed in vases discovered in the
excavations, which had been lately made beneath the ruins of the palace
of Titus, and to compare them with the colours fixed on the walls, or
detached in fragments of stucco. The results of all these researches were
published in the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1815, and are
extremely interesting. The concluding observations, in which he impresses
on artists the superior importance of permanency to brilliancy in the
colours used in painting, are especially worthy the attention of artists.
On his examination of the Herculaneum manuscripts, at Naples, in 1818-19,
he was of opinion they had not been acted upon by fire, so as to be
completely carbonized, but that their leaves were cemented together by a
substance formed during the fermentation and chemical change of ages. He
invented a composition for the solution of this substance, but he could
not discover more than 100 out of 1,265 manuscripts, which presented any
probability of success.

Sir Humphry returned to England in 1820, and in the same year his
respected friend, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, died.
Several discussions took place respecting a proper successor, when
individuals of high and even very exalted rank were named as candidates.
But science, very properly in this case, superseded rank. Amongst the
philosophers whose labours had enriched the Transactions of the Royal
Society, two were most generally adverted to, Sir Humphry Davy and Dr.
Wollaston; but Dr. Wollaston very modestly declined being a candidate
after his friend had been nominated, and received from the council of the
Society the unanimous compliment of being placed in the chair of the
Royal Society, till the election by the body in November.[3] A trifling
opposition was made to Sir Humphry Davy's election, by some unknown
persons, who proposed Lord Colchester, but Sir Humphry was placed in the
chair by a majority of 200 to 13. For this honour no one could be more
completely qualified. Sir Humphry retained his seat as President till the
year 1827, when, in consequence of procrastinated ill health, in great
measure brought on by injuries occasioned to his constitution by
scientific expe