The haggard Cormorant shrieks. And far beyond
Are seen the cloud-like Islands, grey in mists.*
Thy awful height, Bolerium, is not loved
By busy Man, and no one wanders there
Save he who follows Nature, he who seeks
Amidst thy crags and storm-beat rocks to find
The marks of changes teaching the great laws
That raised the globe from chaos; or he whose soul
Is warm with fire poetic, he who feels
When Nature smiles in beauty, or sublime
Rises in majesty, he who can stand

Unawed upon thy summit, clad in tempests,
And view with raptured mind the roaring deep
Rise o'er thy foam-clad base, while the black cloud
Bursts with the fire of Heaven-

He whose heart

Is warm with love and mercy,-he whose eye
Drops the bright tear when anxious Fancy paints
Upon his mind the image of the Maid,

The blue-eyed Maid who died beneath thy surge.
Where yon dark cliff † o'ershadows the blue main,
THEORA died amidst the stormy waves,

And on its feet the sea-dews wash'd her corpse,

And the wild breath of storms shook her black locks.

Young was THEORA; bluer was her eye

Than the bright azure of the moonlight night;

Fair was her cheek as is the ocean cloud

Red with the morning ray.

Amidst the groves,

And greens and nodding rocks that overhang
The grey Killarney, pass'd her morning days
Bright with the beams of joy.

To solitude,

To Nature, and to God, she gave her youth;

The Islands of Scilly.

† A Rock near the Land's End, called the Irish Lady.'

Hence were her passions tuned to harmony.
Her azure eye oft glisten'd with the tear
Of sensibility, and her soft cheek

Glow'd with the blush of rapture.

Hence, she loved
To wander 'midst the green-wood, silver'd o'er

By the bright moonbeam. Hence, she loved the rocks
Crown'd with the nodding ivy, and the lake
Fair with the purple morning, and the sea
Expansive mingling with the arched sky.
Kindled by Genius, in her bosom glow'd
The sacred fire of Freedom. Hence, she scorn'd
The narrow laws of custom that control
Her feeble sex. Great in her energies,

She roam'd the fields of Nature, scann'd the laws
That move the ruling atoms, changing still,
Still rising into life. Her eagle eye,
Piercing the blue immensity of space,

Held converse with the lucid sons of Heaven,

The day-stars of creation, or pursued
The dusky planets rolling round the Sun,
And drinking in his radiance light and life.
Such was the Maiden! Such was she who fled
Her native shores.

Dark in the midnight cloud,
When the wild blast upon its pinions bore
The dying shrieks of Erin's injured sons,*
She 'scaped the murderer's arm.

The British bark

Bore her across the ocean. From the West

The whirlwind rose, the fire-fraught clouds of Heaven
Were mingled with the wave. The shatter'd bark

Sunk at thy feet, Bolerium, and the white surge
Closed on green Erin's daughter.

The Irish Lady was shipwrecked at the Land's End, about the time of the massacre of the Irish Protestants by the Catholics, in the reign of Charles the First.

That the Genius who presided over the destinies of Davy should have torn him from these flowery regions of Fancy, and condemned him to labour in the dusky caverns of the mineral kingdom, has furnished a fruitful theme of lamentation to the band of Poets, and to those who prefer the amusements to the profits of life, and who cherish the hallucinations of the imagination rather than the truths of science. If, however, we regret that Davy's Muse, like Proserpine, should have been thus violently seized, and carried off to the lower regions, as she was weaving her native wild flowers into a garland, we may console ourselves in knowing that, like the daughter of Ceres, she also obtained the privilege of occasionally revisiting her native bowers; for it will appear in the course of these memoirs, that in the intervals of more abstruse studies, Davy not unfrequently amused himself with poetical composition. But, in sober truth, is it possible that any reasonable being can regret the course in which he has been impelled? A great poetic Genius has said, “If Davy had not been the first Chemist, he would have been the first Poet of his Upon this question I do not feel myself a competent judge: but where is the modern Esau who would exchange his Bakerian Lecture for a poem, though it should equal in design and execution the PARADISE Lost?

age."

As far as can be ascertained, one of the first original experiments in Chemistry performed by him at Penzance, was for the purpose of discovering the quality of the air contained in the bladders of sea-weed, in order to obtain results in support of a favourite theory of light; and to ascertain whether, as land vegetables are the renovators of the atmosphere of land-animals, seavegetables might not be the preservers of the equilibrium of the atmosphere of the ocean. From these experiments he concluded, that the different orders of the marine Cryptogamia were capable of decomposing water, when assisted by the attraction of light for oxygen.

His instruments, however, were of the rudest description, manufactured by himself out of the motley materials which chance threw in his way; the pots and pans of the kitchen, and even the more sacred vessels and professional instruments of the surgery, were without the least hesitation or remorse put in requisition.

While upon this subject, I will relate an anecdote which was communicated to me by my late venerable friend Mr. Thomas Giddy.* A French

⚫ I cannot allude to this name, without paying a tribute of respect to the memory of one who, for more than half a century, practised the profession of a surgeon in Penzance with as much credit to himself, as advantage to his neighbourhood.

vessel having been wrecked off the Land's End, the surgeon escaped, and found his way to Penzance; accident brought him acquainted with Humphry Davy, who showed him many civilities, and in return received, as a present from the surgeon, a case of instruments which had been saved from the ship. The contents were eagerly turned out and examined by the young chemist, not, however, with any professional view as to their utility, but in order to ascertain how far they might be convertible to experimental purposes. The old-fashioned and clumsy glyster apparatus was viewed with exultation, and seized in triumph!-What reverses may not be suddenly effected by a simple accident! so says the moralist. Reader, behold an illustration :—in the brief space of an hour, did this long-neglected and unobtrusive machine, emerging from its obscurity and insignificance, figure away in all the pomp and glory of a complicated piece of pneumatic apparatus: nor did its fortunes end here; it was destined for greater things; and we shall hereafter learn that it actually performed the duties of an air-pump, in an original experiment on the nature and sources of heat. The most humble means may certainly accomplish the highest ends: the filament of a spider's web has been used to measure the motions of the stars; and a kite, made with two cross sticks and a silk handkerchief, enabled the chemical Prometheus to rob the thundercloud of its lightnings; but that a worn-out instrument, such as has been just described, should have furnished him who was born to revolutionize the science of the age, with the only means of enquiry at that time within his reach, affords, it must be admitted, a very whimsical illustration of our maxim.

Nor can we pass over these circumstances, without observing how materially they must have influenced the subsequent success of Davy as an experimentalist. Had he, at 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 ever beset the philosopher in the unbeaten tracts of Science. In this art, Davy certainly stands unrivalled, and, like his prototype Scheele,* or that pioneer of pneumatic experi

Bergman, Professor of Upsal, was informed of a young man who resided in the house of an apothecary, and who was reproached for neglecting the duties of his profession, while he devoted the whole of his time to Chemistry. Bergman's curiosity was excited; he paid him a visit, and was astonished at the knowledge he displayed, and at the profound researches in which he

mentalists, Dr. Priestley,* he was unquestionably indebted for his address to the circumstances above related. There never, perhaps, was a more striking exemplification of the adage, that "necessity is the parent of invention."

It would however appear that, imperfect as must have been his apparatus, and limited as were his resources, his ambition very early led him to the investigation of the most abstruse and recondite phenomena. He was not more than seventeen when he formed a strong opinion adverse to the general belief in the existence of caloric, or the materiality of heat.

As I shall hereafter have occasion to draw a parallel between the intellectual qualities of Davy, and those of the celebrated Dr. Black, the father of modern chemistry, it may not be irrelevant to state, in this place, that the subject of heat was also amongst the first that attracted the attention of this latter philosopher; indeed, he tells us himself, that he "can scarcely remember the time, when he had not some idea of the disagreement of facts with the commonly received doctrines upon this subject." The tendency of his mind, however, was in direct opposition to that of Davy's, for he insisted upon the materiality of heat, and was the first to conceive the bold idea of its being capable, like any other substance, of entering into chemical combination with various bodies, and of thus losing its characteristic qualities.

Black's theory could not be more opposed to that of Davy than was his conduct upon the occasion; for, although an experiment suggested itself to his mind, by which, as he thought, he could at once establish the truth of his favourite doctrine, he delayed performing it, because there did not happen to be an ice-house in the town in which he lived. With Davy, on the other hand, the conception and execution of an experiment were nearly simultaneous; no sooner, therefore, had he formed his opinion, than his eager spirit urged him to put it to the test.

Having procured a piece of clock-work, so contrived as to be set to work in an exhausted receiver, he added two horizontal plates of brass; the upper

was engaged, notwithstanding the poverty under which he laboured, and the restraint under which his situation placed him. He encouraged his ardour, and made him his friend. This young man was the celebrated Scheele.

No man ever entered upon an undertaking with less apparent means of success, than did Priestley upon that of Chemistry. He neither possessed apparatus, nor the money to procure it. These circumstances, which, at first sight, seem so adverse, were in reality those which contributed to his ultimate success. The branch of Chemistry he selected was new; an apparatus had to be invented before any important step could be taken; and as simplicity is essential in every research, he was likely to contrive the best whose circumstances obliged him to attend to economy.