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MEMOIR OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART. LL. D.

PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, &c.

THE life of a votary of science affords but scanty materials for the species of biography most interesting to the majority of readers. It presents no "hair-breadth 'scapes," no marvellous adventures-none of those brilliant" sketches of life," which evince a lamentable knowledge of the world; nothing, in short, which is calculated to satiate the thirst of irrational curiosity, or suspend the ennui of indolence and apathy. It is a history of the march of intellect, developing a concatenation of ideas, in natural order and succession; and the interest it is capable of exciting, can only be experienced by those who are qualified, by their own attainments, to participate in the triumphs of reason.

Of the sciences, which have been advanced by the discoveries and improvements of modern times, chemistry stands first; and so extensive, rapid, and important have been the late acquisitions in that branch of human knowledge, that the present age is almost entitled to claim it as its own exclusive discovery. These attainments are chiefly to be attributed to the substitution of the analytical for the synthetical method of philosophizing; and, in the next place, to the profound judgment and indefatigable ardour, with which the subject of this memoir has availed himself of that great improvement, in developing the mysterious constitution of the infinitely diversified matter, amongst which we are destined to exist. When we consider that by chemistry we are taught to combine and adapt to our use or pleasure the elements which surround us, and that every discovery in this infinite field of inquiry, confers new powers on man, we have a faint glimpse of a possible futurity, in which the human mind may find a far more extensive scope, for the employment of its energies, than we are now able to conceive. Such anticipations may impress us with a just estimation of this science, and of those eminent professors, to whose labours we are indebted for its present improved state.

The discoveries of Black, Priestley, and Cavendish, Lavoisier, Franklin, and Bergman, had already introduced into chemical science the long neglected requisites of close investigation and logical deduction; but it was reserved for Sir Humphry Davy to demonstrate the vast superiority of modern principles, by the most brilliant career of discovery, which, since the days of Newton, has graced the annals of science.

Sir Humphry Davy was born December 17, 1779, at Penzance in Cornwall. His family is ancient, and above the middle class; his paternal great grandfather had considerable landed property

in the parish of Budgwin, and his father possessed a small paternal estate opposite St. Michael's Mount, called Farfel, on which he died in 1795, after having injured his fortune by expending considerable sums in attempting agricultural improvements. Sir Humphry received the first rudiments of his education at the grammar-schools of Penzance and Truro: at the former place he resided with Mr. John Tonkin, surgeon, a benevolent and intelligent man, who had been intimately connected with his maternal grandfather, and treated him with a degree of kindness little less than parental.

He was always considered as a distinguished boy; and there are many natives of Penzance, who remember his poems and verses written at the early age of nine years. At that period, his mind seems to have received a bias in favour of poetry, which he continued to cultivate till his fifteenth year, when he became the pupil of Mr. (since Dr.) Borlase, of Penzance, a very ingenious surgeon and accomplished man, intending to prepare himself for graduating as a physician at Edinburgh. Conscious of uncommon powers, and resolved to attempt a nobler career than circumstances appeared to promise, or his friends could expect, Mr. Davy laid down for himself a plan of education, which embraced the circle of the sciences. By his eighteenth year, he had acquired the rudiments of botany, anatomy, and physiology, the simpler mathematics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and chemistry. But chemistry soon arrested his whole attention, for he at once saw that this science offered the best unexplored field for the exertion of talent. Having made some experiments on the air disengaged by sea-weeds from the water of the ocean, which convinced him that these vegetables performed the same part in purifying the air dissolved in water, which land vegetables act in the atmosphere; he communicated them to Dr. Beddoes, who had at that time circulated proposals for publishing a journal of philosophical contributions from the west of England. This produced a correspondence between Dr. Beddoes and Mr. Davy; in which the Doctor proposed, that Mr. Davy, who at this time was only nineteen years of age, should suspend his plan of going to Edinburgh, and take a part in experiments, which were then about to be instituted at Bristol, for investigating the medical powers of factitious airs; to which proposal Mr. Davy consented, on condition that he should have the uncontrolled superintendence of these experiments. About this time, he became acquainted with Davies Gilbert, Esq. M. P., a gentleman of high scientific attainments, with whom he formed a friendship, which has always continued. Mr. Davy consulted with Mr. Gilbert on his plan of study, and his attachment to chemistry, when that gentleman judiciously advised him to pursue his career in this science. With Dr

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