VISIT TO EUROPE: RESIDENCE IN LONDON. 151 



Professor Davy. My principal object was to see that cele- 

 brated man, whom we found in his laboratory in the base- 

 ment of the building (in Albemarle Street), beneath the 

 lecture-room. He received me with ease and affability, his 

 manners being perfectly polite and unassuming. In person 

 he was above the middle size, with a genteel figure and an 

 open countenance. In our brief interview, we conversed 

 on chemical topics and upon his late tour in Ireland, from 

 which he had only recently returned, having been absent 

 through the summer. He showed me an ingenious article 

 of apparatus which he had lately invented. His appear- 

 ance at the age of twenty-six (nearly my own age) was 

 even more youthful than the years indicate. He inquired 

 about Dr. Woodhouse, who was here in 1802. I have 

 already mentioned that the obscure town of Penzance, in 

 Cornwall, was his birthplace, and, although without social 

 position or university education, he had by his own efforts 

 and talents, arisen to his present eminence among the most 

 distinguished philosophers of Europe. I wrote at the time 

 about him, thus : " He is now very much caressed by the 

 great men of London, and by the fashionable world ; and it 

 is certainly no small proof of his merit that he has so early 

 attained such favor and can bear it without intoxication." 

 It is not agreeable therefore to add, that after his elevation 

 to the title and rank of an English baronet, and to the 

 Presidency of the Royal Society, he became haughty, and 

 his biographer and eulogist, Dr. Paris, records that he bore 

 himself so loftily during a visit in Paris, as to repel the 

 advances of the Parisian philosophers, who were them- 

 selves so distinguished for unassuming courtesy of man- 

 ners. I have been credibly informed, also, as I believe, by 

 the late Dr. Mantell of London, that when Faraday, then 

 Davy's assistant, was with him in Paris, he was repressed 

 by him, who was unwilling that he should appear in French 

 society as his companion and equal, although he then gave 

 promise of equalling if not surpassing the attainments, 



