SIR HUMPHRY DAVY AT PENZANCE: HIS SCHOOLS AND

SELF-EDUCATION.

Humphry Davy, whose genius is unrivaled in the annals of modern chemistry, was born in 1778, at Penzance, in Cornwall, where his father was a carver. He was a healthy, strong, and active child; he "walked off” at nine months old, and before he was two years old he could speak fluently. Before he had learned his letters, he could recite little prayers and stories, which had been repeated to him till he got them by heart; and before he had learned to write, he amused himself with copying the figures in Æsop's Fables, and reading the Pilgrim's Progress; of the latter book he could repeat a great part, even before he could well read it. When scarcely five years old, he made rhymes and recited them in Christmas gambols, fancifully dressed for the occasion. His disposition as a child was remarkably sweet and affectionate. He had an extraordinary strong perception, which is attested by Dr. Paris, who, in his Life of Davy, tells us that "he would, at the age of five years, turn over the pages of a book as rapidly as if he were merely engaged in counting the leaves or in hunting after pictures, and yet on being questioned, he could generally give a very satisfactory account of the contents. The same facility was retained by him through life."

He first was sent to a school at which reading and writing only were taught. Thence he was removed to the grammarschool at Penzance, kept by the Rev. W. Coryton; and subsequently to Truro, under Dr. Cardew, whose school produced more men of distinguished ability than any other in the West of England. Young Davy took the lead in his class, and composed Latin and English verse with facility; but he was more remarkable out of school, and by his comrades, than for any great advance in learning. He excelled in story-telling, partly from books, especially the Arabian Nights, and partly from old people, particularly from his grandmother Davy, who had a rich store. of traditions and marvels. These stories were narrated by Davy to his boyish companions under the balcony of the Star Inn; and here, with his play-fellow, Rowe, a printer, of Penzance, Davy also exhibited his earliest chemical experiments; and by means of those of an explosive nature, many a trick was played on the innkeeper, and some other testy folks in the neighborhood. This and another boyish pursuit followed him into manhood namely, fishing; for when a child, with a crooked pin, tied to a stick by a bit of thread, he would go through the movements of the angler, and fish in the gutter of the street in which he

lived; and, when he was able to wield a fishing-rod, or carry a gun, he roamed at large in quest of sport in the adjoining country. Under the same favorable circumstances, his taste for natural history was indulged in a little garden of his own, which he kept in order; and he was fond of collecting and painting birds and fishes.

Davy's early love of romantic scenery is shown in a poem composed by him, descriptive of St. Michael's Mount, and the traditionary history of its having been in the midst of a forestin the following extract:

"By the orient gleam

Whitening the foam of the blue wave, that breaks
Around his granite feet, but dimly seen,

Majestic Michael rises! He whose brow

Is crowned with castles, and whose rocky sides

Are clad with dusky ivy: He whose base,
Beat by the storms of ages, stands unmoved
Amidst the wreck of things-the change of time.
That base, encircled by the azure waves,
Was once with verdure clad, the towering oaks,
Whose awful shades among the Druids strayed
To cut the hallowed mistletoe and hold
High converse with their Gods."

"Davy was thought at the time (says his brother) a clever boy, but not a prodigy."* His last master, Dr. Cardew, speaks of his regularity in his school duties, but not of any extraordinary abilities; his best exercises were translations from the classics into English verse. At the age of fifteen, his school education was considered completed, and his self-education, to which he owed almost everything, was about to commence.

He spent the greater part of the next year in fishing, shooting, swimming, and solitary rambles; but, at length, he settled to study. Early in 1795, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary in Penzance; and about this time he commenced his note-books, the earliest of which contains a plan of study, and hints and essays, in which, says Dr. Davy, " with all the daring confidence of youth, he enters upon the most difficult problems in metaphysics and theology, and employing a syllogistic method of reasoning (which, as he observes in his Consolations in Travel, young men commonly follow, in entering upon such inquiries), he arrives, as might be expected, at a conclusion contrary to the good feelings and common sense of mankind.”

In the following year, young Davy entered on the study of mathematics, and finished the elementary course; he was very systematic; the propositions are all entered very neatly, and the demonstrations given; the diagrams being done with a pen, without the aid of mathematical instruments, not even of a common

*Life of Sir Humphry Davy, by his brother, John Davy, M.D., F.R.S.

compass and ruler. But his favorite pursuit was metaphysics, and his rough notes show an acquaintance with the writings of Locke, Hartley, Bishop Berkeley, Hume, Helvetius, and Condorcet; Reid, and other Scotch metaphysicians. These studies he soon associated with physiology. In 1797, he commenced in earnest natural philosophy; and just as he was entering his nineteenth year, he began the study of chemistry with Lavoisier's Elements and Nicholson's Dictionary. He very soon entered on a course of experiments, his apparatus consisting mostly of phials, wineglasses, and tea-cups, tobacco-pipes, and earthen crucibles; and his materials chiefly the mineral acids and the alkalies, and some other articles in common use in medicine. He began to experiment in his bed-room, in Mr. Tonkin's house at Penzance; and there being no fire in the room, when he required it he went down to the kitchen with his crucible. Such was Davy's rapidity in this new pursuit, that in four months he was in correspondence with Dr. Beddoes, relative to his researches on "Heat and Light," and a new hypothesis on their nature, to which Dr. Beddoes became a convert. The result was Davy's first publication, Essays on Heat and Light, in 1799, which had been in part written a few months before he had commenced the study of chemistry.

Such," says Dr. Davy, "was the commencement of Humphry Davy's career of original research, which, in a few years, by a succession of discoveries, accomplished more in relation to change of theory and extension of science than, in the most ardent and ambitious moments of youth, he could either have hoped to effect or imagined possible."

Another of Humphry's early associates was Mr. Robert Dunkin, a saddler, and a member of the Society of Friends. He was an entirely self-taught man, and in addition to his making saddles, he built organs, constructed electrical machines, and wrote verses. He made experiments in company with young Davy, in which they were assisted by Mr. Tom Harvey, a druggist, at Penzance, who supplied Davy with chemicals for making detonating balls, etc. After a discussion on the notion of Heat, he was induced, one winter's day, to go to Larigan river, and try if he could develop heat by rubbing two pieces of ice together, an experiment which he repeated with much éclat, many years after, at the Royal Institution.

He had already become the friend of Mr. Gregory Watt (son of the celebrated James Watt), and with him visited the most remarkable mines near Penzance, collecting specimens of rocks and minerals. And here, working the Wherry Mine, underneath the sands, and its shaft in the sea, young Davy saw a

steam-engine at work-this being one of the earliest of Watt's steam-engines that had been introduced into Cornwall. About this time he became acquainted with Mr. Davies Gilbert, afterward Davy's successor as President of the Royal Society.

Meanwhile, Davy's progress in medicine was considerable; so that in the fourth year of his studies, he was considered by Dr. Beddoes competent to take charge of the patients belonging to the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, thus entering on his public career before he was twenty years old. Here he applied himself with great zeal to complete his experiments and essays on Light and Heat; and, above all, in investigating the effects of the gases in respiration. Of these, the nitrous oxide was one of the first he experimented upon; and his discovery of its wonderful agency was the origin of the researches which established his character as a chemical philosopher; though before it was published (in 1800), Davy had begun that series of galvanic experiments which ultimately led to some of his greatest discoveries. The materials for the Researches were rapidly collected: Davy says in a rough draft of the preface, "These experiments have been made since April, 1799, the period when I first breathed nitrous oxide. Ten months of incessant labor were employed in making them; three months in detailing them. The author was under twenty years of age, pupil to a surgeon-apothecary in the most remote town of Cornwall, with little access to philosophical books, and none at all to philosophical men."

So intense was his application, and so little his regard for health or even life, that he nearly lost it from the breathing of carburetted hydrogen, and was compelled for a time to leave the laboratory.

The following passage from a note-book shows the intellectual life he now led, as well as the variety of his pursuits:

"Resolution. To work two hours with pen before breakfast on 'The Lover of Nature ;' and 'The Feelings of Eldon,' from six till eight; from nine till two, in experiments; from four to six, reading; seven till ten, metaphysical reading (i. e., system of the universe)."

In a letter of

He now began to discontinue writing verses. this time, he says: "Do not suppose I am turned poet. Philosophy, chemistry and medicine are my profession." Yet he meditated a poem in blank verse on the Deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, the plan and characters of which he had sketched.

He had now during the short period of little more than two years, whilst he was at Clifton, published the Essays on Heat and Light, and contributed eight important papers to Nicholson's Journal. A higher distinction awaited him: the Royal Institu

tion* had recently been founded in London; and in May, 1802, "Mr. Davy (late of Bristol) was appointed Professor of Chemistry." In April following, he gave his first lecture on galvanic phenomena, Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and other distinguished philosophers, being present. "His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments," and the auspicious state of science, insured Davy great and instant success. In the previous year, he had read before the Royal Society a paper upon "Galvanic Combinations ;" and from that period to 1829, almost every volume of the Transactions contains a communication by him.

At the Royal Institution, then, Davy began his brilliant scientific career, and he remained there until 1812. His greatest labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and the reëstablishment of the simple nature of chlorine; his other researches were the investigation of astringent vegetables, in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of rocks and minerals, in connection with geology; the comprehensive subject of agricultural chemistry; and galvanism and electro-chemical science. His lectures were often attended by 1000 persons. He was knighted in 1812, and subsequently created a baronet.

Davy's best known achievement was his invention of the miner's Safety Lamp in 1815. He became President of the Royal Society in 1820; he resigned the chair in 1827, and retired to the Continent. He died after a lingering illness, in 1829, at Geneva, where he is buried. A simple monument stands at the head of his grave: there is a tablet to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and a monument at Penzance, his birthplace. He retained his love of angling to the last: not long before his death, he resided in an hotel at Laybach, in Styria, where the success with which he transferred the trout to his basket procured him the title of "the English wizard." He spent the greater part of the day in angling, or in geologizing among the mountains.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, THE RAILWAY ENGINEER, AND HIS SCHOOLMASTERS AND SELF-TUITION.

In the present age of great social changes, the application of steam to locomotive purposes, or, in other words, the invention

*The Royal Institution has been appropriately termed "the workshop of the Royal Society." Here Davy constructed his great voltaic battery of 2000 double plates of copper and zinc, four inches square, the whole surface being 128,000 square inches. The mineralogical collection in the Museum was also commenced by Davy. It must not be omitted, that he was one of the earliest experimenters in the Photographic Art.