or

like Schiller, turn men into robbers by the force of his genius. Irving, however, has lately appeared, in the graver character of an historian. He has more than compensated for his failure in the preceding work, by this sound and substantial contribution to the mass of literature. No doubt he entered upon the execution of his task with all that vivid filial affection, which each American feels for the memory of Columbus. But his style is much more subdued in this, than in his other performances. Not a few seriously scrupled, whether Irving held a pen sufficiently strong to record the deeds of the great Genoese adventurer. But he has put all doubts to flight, and proved himself as elegant an historian as Gillies, Roscoe Southey. Nor is this the first time that a man of taste and sentiment has distinguished himself in history. The ancient historians are immensely valuable, though they sometimes give too much play to fancy. In Homer, Virgil, and Lucan, we see taste united with the basis of historical facts; and in Tasso and Camoens, among the moderns, poetry and history, like twin birds, sing in unison. The author of the Henriade has given us, in his Charles XII. a summary but complete view of a bustling hero. The style of Cæsar is well suited to recording the unceremonious march of an army; but the historian should be able to expatiate with eloquence, on each inspiring event. Hume was a distinguished historian; but he had too much bigotry to be impartial, and too much crafty philosophy to be eloquent. In some places, where he should have been glowing and animated, he is unpardonably tame. His rigid monarchical principles and his prejudices against Puritans, prevented him from seeing the glory of the commonwealth. He is more sagacious in scanning the prerogatives of the crown, than in duly estimating the rights of the subject.

Entertaining such views, we

should have regretted exceedingly, if the life of a noble adventurer, like Columbus, had fallen into the hand: of any meagre, coinpendious annalist. It is no mean praise to say, that Irving has succeeded in a field of literature, in which Sir Walter Scott has undeniably failed. The period embraced in this history was a stirring period, in the progress of the human mind. The boundaries of science and commerce, were simultaneously enlarged. It was no unimportant event, when Vasco de Gama crushed the spices of the east, and Columbus rifled the fruits of the West. But to events like these, our author has done justice; and in the chapter which brings us, to the night of the Discovery, he rises into the sublime. Here we lay aside the book, to mingle our feelings and identify our thoughts with the meditations of the mariner, during that eventful night. Had the Ruler of men, sent him thus far to look on a world to be created in his sight, his sensations could scarcely have been more exquisite, than when the light of day broke over the orange groves and the speckled birds of the Indies. What a debt of gratitude do we owe to this august man? We have not forgotten what we owe to William Penn, to Lord Baltimore, to Smith, or Sir Walter Raleigh. But in some paintings of the landing of Columbus, his portly form towers over the group by which he was accompanied; and these inferior colonists dwindle into insignificance by his side. For such events then, give me as an historian, a man, who can throw over them the fragrance of novelty and the charms of taste; and others may compile their statistics, or carve simple dates on the bark of trees.

The Conquest of Granada, is the last work which Irving has given to the world, but we have not yet had the pleasure of seeing it. We presume, it is not so much a regular history of that event, as a collection of traditionary facts. We can readily suppose, that its writer would

be at home, on any point of Spanish literature, or any epoch of Spanish history. The treasures of the Escurial, testify to the past riches of Spain. Her rivers are not unknown to song, and her wild pastoral districts have been consecrated by Florian Cervantes, and by other less celebrated writers. To these pas

tures fresh, we cannot accompany Irving, even in the way of brief remark, and we leave him amidst meadows, intersected by limpid waters in the olive and the lemon grove, and amidst the marble ruins of Moorish magnificence.

(To be continued.)

We have thought that this department of the Advocate could not better be filled for the present month, than by giving a biographical sketch of a man who for many years has been pre-eminent in the literary and philosophical world.

Sir Humphry Davy was born December 17, 1779, at Penzance, in Cornwall. The name is of ancient respectability in the West of England, and his family was above the middle class; his paternal greatgrandfather had considerable landed property in the parish of Ludgvan, and his father possessed a small paternal estate opposite St. Michael's Mount, called Bartel, 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 Tomkin, 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 paternal. His genius was originally inclined to poetry; and there are many natives of Penzance who remember his poems and verses, written at the early age of nine years. He cultivated this bias till his fifteenth year, when he became the pupil of Mr. (since Dr.) Borlase, of Penzance, an ingenious surgeon, intending to prepare himself for graduating as a physician at Edinburgh. At this early age 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. Having made some experiments on the air disengaged by sea-weeds from the water of the ocean, which convinced him that these vegetaVOL. VII.-Ch. Adv.

bles 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 was at this time 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 this proposal the young man consented, on condition that he should have the uncontrolled superintendence of the experiments; and by the judicious advice of Davies Gilbert, Esq., a gentleman of high scientifick attainments, and now President of the Royal Society, whose eye had watched him from the commencement of his studies, having known his parents and family, he continued with application and perseverance in the study of chemistry. With Dr. Beddoes Mr. Davy resided for a considerable time, and was constantly occupied in new chemical investigations. Here, he discovered the respirability of nitrous oxide, and made a number of laborious experiments on gaseous bodies, which he afterwards published in his "Chemical and Philosophical Researches," 8vo. 1800, a work which was universally well received in the chemical world, and created a high reputation for its author, at that time only twenty-one years of age. This led to his introduction to Count Rumford; and having delivered some lectures at Clifton previously, he was elected Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Institution in Albemarle-street. On obtaining this appointment Mr. Davy gave up all his views of the medical profession, and devoted himself entirely to chemistry.

Mr. Davy's first experiments as Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution were made on the substance employed in the process of tanning, with others to which similar properties were ascribed, in consequence of the discovery made by Mr. 3 T

Seguier, of Paris, of the peculiar vegetable matter, now called tannin. He was, during the same period, frequently occupied in experiments on galvanism.

În 1802 Mr. Ďavy commenced a series of lectures before the Board of Agriculture, which was continued for ten years. It contained much popular and practical information, and was among the most useful of Mr. Davy's scientifick labours; for the application of chemistry to agriculture is one of its most important results. So rapid were the discoveries of the author, that in preparing these discourses for publication, a few years afterwards, he was under the necessity of making several alterations, to adapt them to the improved state of chemical knowledge, which his own labours had, in that short time, produced.

In 1803 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1805 a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He now enjoyed the friendship of the most distinguished literary men and philosophers of the metropolis, and enumerated among his intimate friends, Sir Joseph Banks, Cavendish, Hatchett, Wollaston, Children, Tennant, and other eminent men. At the same time he corresponded with the principal chemists of every part of Europe. In 1806 he was appointed to deliver, before the Royal Society, the Bakerian lecture, in which he displayed some very interesting new agencies of electricity, by means of the galvanick apparatus. Soon afterwards, he made one of the most brilliant discoveries of modern times, in the decomposition of two fixed alkalies, which, in direct refutation of the hypothesis previously adopted, were found to consist of a peculiar metallick base, united with a large quantity of oxygen. These alkalies were potash and soda, and the metals thus discovered were called potassium and sodium. Mr. Davy was equally successful in the application of galvanism to the decomposition of the earths. On the 22d of January; 1807, he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society; and in the same year the National Institute of France allotted him a prize of 3000 livres, for his paper on Chemical Affinities. During the greater part of 1810 he was employed on the combinations of oxymuriatick gas and oxygen; and towards the close of the same year he delivered a course of lectures before the Dublin Society, and received from Trinity College, Dublin, the honorary degree of LL.D.

In 1812 Mr. Davy married. The object of his choice was Jane, daughter and heiress of Charles Kerr, of Kelso, Esq., and widow of Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece, Esq., eldest son of the present Sir Thomas Hussey Apreece, Bart. By his union with this lady, Mr. Davy acquired not only a considerable fortune, but the inestimable

treasure of an affectionate and exemplary wife, and a congenial friend and compsnion, capable of appreciating his character and attainments. On the 9th of April, only two days previously to his marriage, he received the honour of knighthood from the Prince Regent, being the first person on whom his Royal Highness conferred that dignity.

We now arrive at the most important result of Sir Humphry Davy's labours, the invention of the SAFETY-LAMP for coal mines, which has been generally and suecessfully adopted throughout Europe. The frequency of accidents, arising from the explosion of the fire-damp, or inflammable gas of the coal mines, mixed with atmos pherical air, occasioned the formation of a committee at Sunderland, for the purpose of investigating the causes of these calamities, and of endeavouring to discover and apply a preventive. Sir Humphry received an invitation, in 1815, from Dr. Gray, one of the members of the committee; in consequence of which he went to the North of England, and visiting some of the principal colleries in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, soon convinced himself that no improvement could be made in the mode of ventilation, but that the desired preventive must be sought in a new method of lighting the mines, free from danger, and which, by indicating the state of the air in the part of the mine where the inflammable air was disengaged, so as to render the atmosphere explosive, should oblige the miners to retire till the workings were properly cleared. The common means then employed for lighting the dangerous part of the mines consisted of a steel wheel revolving in contact with flint, and affording a succession of sparks: but this apparatus always required a person to work it, and was not entirely free from danger. The fire-damp was known to be light carburetted hydrogen gas; but its relations to combustion had not been examined. It is chiefly produced from what are called blowers or fissures in the broken strata, near dykes. Sir Humphry made various experiments on its combustibility and explosive nature; and discovered that the fire-damp requires a very strong heat for its inflammation; that azote and carbonick acid, even in very small proportions, diminished the velocity of the inflammation; that mixtures of the gas would not explode in metallick canals or troughs, where their diameter was less than one-seventh of an inch, and their depth considerable in proportion to their diameter; and that explosions could not be made to pass through such canals, or through very fine wire sieves, or wiregauze. The consideration of these facts fed Sir Humphry to adopt a lamp, in which the flame, by being supplied with only a limited quantity of air, should produce