physics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

"His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty-by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened; but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it for his own use to its true value and to its simplest form.

And thus it often happened, that a great deal more was learned from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever have derived from the most faithful study of the originals, and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance."

The monumental inscription written by Lord Brougham for the statue of Watt in Westminster Abbey, is as follows:

Not to perpetuate a Name

Which must endure while the peaceful Arts flourish
But to show

That mankind have learned to honour those
Who best deserve their gratitude
The King

His Ministers and many of the Nobles

And Commons of the Realm

Raised this monument to

JAMES WATT

Who directing the force of an original genius
Early exercised in philosophic research
To the improvement of the
Steam-engine

Enlarged the resources of his country
Increased the power of man

And rose to an eminent place

Among the most illustrious followers of Science
And the real benefactors of the world.

E

SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.

IR HUMPHREY DAVY was born in 1778, at Pen

zance, in Cornwall. His father followed the profession of a carver in wood in that town, where many of his performances are still to be seen in the houses of the inhabitants. All that we are told of Davy's school education is, that he was taught the rudiments of classical learning at a seminary in Truro. He was then placed by his father with an apothecary and surgeon in his native place. But, instead of attending to his profession, he spent his time either in rambling about the country or experimenting in his master's garret, sometimes to the no small danger of the whole establishment; and the doctor and he at last agreed to part. About his fifteenth year he was placed as pupil with another surgeon residing in Penzance; but it does not appear that his second master had much more success than his first in attempting to give him a liking for the medical profession. The future philosopher, however, had already begun to devote himself, of his own accord, to those sciences in which he afterwards so greatly distinguished himself; and proceeding upon a plan of study which he had laid down for himself, he had, by the time he was eighteen, obtained a thorough knowledge of the rudiments of natural philosophy and chemistry, as well as made some proficiency in botany, anatomy,

and geometry. The subject of metaphysics, it is stated, was also embraced in his reading at this period.

But chemistry was the science to which, of all others, he gave himself with the greatest ardour; and, even in this early stage of his researches, he seems to have looked forward to fame from his labours in this department. The writer of the memoir of Sir Humphrey to which we are indebted for these particulars, quotes an exclamation which broke from him one day in after-life, when contemplating, along with a friend, a picture of one of the mines of his native district, which shows what were the visions of his solitary rambles. "How often, when a boy," said he, "have I wandered about those rocks in search after new minerals, and, when tired, sat down upon those crags, and exercised my fancy in anticipations of future renown!" The peculiar features of this part of the country doubtless contributed not a little to give his genius the direction it took. The mineral riches concealed under the soil formed alone a world of curious investigation. The rocky coast presented a geological study of inexhaustible interest. Even the various productions cast ashore by the sea were continually affording new materials of examination to his inquisitive and reflecting mind. The first original experiment, it is related, in which he engaged, had for its object to ascertain the nature of the air contained in the bladders of sea-weed. At this time he had no other laboratory than what he contrived to furnish for himself, by the assistance of his master's phiais and gallipots, the pots and pans used in the kitchen, and such other utensils as accident threw in his way. These he converted, with great ingenuity, to his own purposes. On one occasion, however, he accounted himself particularly fortunate in a prize which he made. This was a case of surgical instruments with which he

was presented by the surgeon of a French vessel that had been wrecked on the coast, to whom he had done some kind offices. Examining his treasure with eagerness, Davy soon perceived the valuable aid he might derive in his philosophical experiments from some of the articles; and one of the principal of them was, in no long time, converted into a tolerable air-pump The proper use of the instruments was, of course, as little thought of by their new possessor as that of his master's gallipots was wont to be when he had got them up to his garret. Davy's subsequent success as an experimentalist, it is well remarked by the writer to whom we have referred above, was probably owing, in no small degree, to the necessity he was placed under in his earliest researches of exercising his skill and ingenuity in this fashion. "Had he," proceeds his biographer, "in the commencement of his career, been furnished with all those appliances which he enjoyed at a later period, it is more than probable that he might never have acquired that wonderful tact of manipulation, that ability of suggesting expedients, and of contriving apparatus so as to meet and surmount the difficulties which must constantly arise during the progress of the philosopher through the unbeaten tracks and unexplored regions of science. In this art Davy certainly stands unrivalled; and, like his prototype, Scheele, he was unquestionably indebted for his address to the circumstances which have been alluded to: there never, perhaps, was a more striking exemplification of the adage, that necessity is the parent of invention."

A curious catalogue might be made of the shifts to which ingenious students in different departments of art have resorted, when, like Davy, they have wanted the proper instruments for carrying on their inquiries or experiments. His is not the first