CHAPTER XIII 



THE SCIENTIST SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 



HUMPHKY DAVY (1778-1829) was born in Corn- 

 wall, a part of England known for its very mild cli- 

 mate and the combined beauty and majesty of its 

 scenery. On either side of the peninsula the Atlantic 

 in varying mood lies extended in summer sunshine, 

 or from its shroud of mist thunders on the black 

 cliffs and their time-sculptured sandstones. From the 

 coast inland, stretch, between flowered lanes and 

 hedges, rolling pasture-lands of rich green made all 

 the more vivid by the deep reddish tint of the 

 ploughed fields. In Penzance, then a town of about 

 three thousand inhabitants, and in its picturesque 

 vicinity, the early years of Davy's life were passed. 

 Across the bay rose the great vision of the guarded 

 mount (St. Michael's) of which Milton's verse 

 speaks. Farther to the east lay Lizard Head, the 

 southernmost promontory of England, and a few 

 miles to the north St. Ives with its sweep of sandy 

 beach ; while not far to the west of Penzance Land's 

 End stood sentry " 'Twixt two unbounded seas." 

 The youthful Davy was keenly alive to the charms 

 of his early environment, and his genius was sus- 

 ceptible to the belief in supernatural agencies native 

 to the imaginative Celtic people among whom he 

 was reared. As a precocious child of five he impro- 

 vised rhymes, and as a youth set forth in excellent 

 verse the glories of Mount's Bay: 



