laws of repulsion; hoping, by getting the true theory, to beat his young friends in practice.

The study of metaphysics had upon his mind the same effect that it had upon Benjamin Franklin's. Unsatisfied with a science which, as then pursued, led to uncertainty and confusion, he was drawn away to one which rewards the faithful student with positive and useful truths. At the beginning of the third year of his apprenticeship, and the nineteenth of his age, he began, with a boy's usual apparatus of tobacco-pipes, teacups, wine-glasses, and earthen crucibles, to study and experiment in chemistry.

Everything helped him. His master was a man of much scientific knowledge, and had a considerable library, to which the apprentice had access. A son of the celebrated James Watt came to reside in the town, whose conversation was a great advantage to the young chemist. The copper and tin mines of the vicinity, the sea-weed on the shore, the drugs employed in his profession, all furnished objects of investigation; and he pursued his studies with an ardor and devotion that never fail to produce important results. Chemistry was not then what it is now. He was able in a few months to master all that previous explorers had discovered, and then he struck boldly into untrodden paths.

His busi

So passed the last two years of his apprenticeship. At twenty, such was his provincial celebrity, he was invited to a post in a new medical institution at Bristol, founded for the purpose of administering various gases for the cure of disease. ness there was to prepare and administer the gases, ployment admirably calculated to give him dexterity in experimenting, and familiarity with fundamental principles; for what is chemistry but the science of gases? It was at this institu

an em

tion that he first inhaled the gas now called "laughing gas," but which he then styled "the pleasure-producing air." He was the first man in the world who ever enjoyed this species of intoxication. He used to inhale the gas from a bag, just as it is now administered, and it produced upon him precisely the effects which most of us have experienced or witnessed.

A volume of essays published by him at Bristol, extended his

fame to the metropolis, and led to his being appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution. Hence his appearance, at the early age of twenty-three, upon a London platform, where, as we have seen, his youth, his simplicity, his eloquence, and his dexterity in conducting experiments made him for many years a popular lion.

At the Royal Institution he had everything that a man of science can desire. A liberal income gave him the command of all his time. A complete laboratory afforded him the means of pursuing his investigations. A number of competent assistants were at hand to aid him. Sympathetic friends witnessed and encouraged his labors, and the applause of the public cheered and stimulated him. He went to the laboratory in the morning as a workman goes to his shop, labored all day amid his furnaces, his crucibles, and his retorts, and in the evening resumed his broadcloth, and either repaired to the lecture-room, or went out to dinner.

We cannot, of course, relate his discoveries. We can merely state, that it was Davy who gave the great impulse to agricultural chemistry, a branch of science which has already revolutionized farming in the Old World, and which is destined to be the farmer's best friend in the New. It was he who applied chemistry to the art of tanning. It was he who discovered that diamond is nothing but crystallized charcoal, and he who found out how to convert whiskey into tolerable brandy. His discoveries in galvanism and electricity were striking and valuable, and they have been further developed by his celebrated pupil and friend, Faraday.

Of all his inventions, the one which he and his contemporaries valued most was the safety-lamp, to prevent the explosion of fire-damp in mines. This lamp, which is merely a lantern made of wire-gauze, was the result of an exhaustive investigation of the nature and composition of the explosive gas.

At the age of thirty-two he married a widow of large fortune. By way of wedding-gift, the Prince Regent dubbed him a knight, so that he was known henceforth as Sir Humphrey Davy. After his invention of the safety-lamp, he was further distinguished by a baronetcy. He died in May, 1829, aged fifty-one,

at Geneva, in Switzerland, whither he had gone for the benefit He was buried at Geneva, where an obelisk was

of his health.

placed over his remains by his wife.

Two of his biographers assert that such constant and remarkable good fortune had an injurious effect upon his character. They say that he became proud, arrogant, and irritable, neglected his old friends, and paid servile court to the titled and rich. His brother, who was also his biographer, denies this with warmth. Certainly his published letters appear to show that he remained to the last a dutiful son, a generous, affectionate brother, and a steadfast friend to the companions of his early years. It may be, however, that associating with a society which acknowledged George IV. as its chief, he may not wholly have escaped an evil influence which perverted and misled Sir Walter Scott.

The basis of his character, however, both as a man and as a philosopher, was sound. As a man, he was honest, pure, and kind; as a philosopher, he truly loved and laboriously sought knowledge, and prided himself most upon having rendered some service to his species in lessening the perils of honest labor.

The following are a few sentences from a letter which he wrote to his brother, who was just entering college:

1

"MY DEAR JOHN, - Let no difficulties alarm you. You may be what you please. Preserve the dignity of your mind, and the purity of your moral conduct. Move straight forward on to moral and intellectual excellence. Let no example induce you to violate decorum- no ridicule prevent you from guarding against sensuality or vice. Live in such a way that you can always say, the whole world may know what I am doing."

20

SIR MARTIN FROBISHER.

WHEN Kossuth visited the tomb of Washington, he stood silent before it a for several minutes, and then said, as he turned to leave the place,

"How necessary it is to be successful!"

A braver man than Martin Frobisher never sailed the sea or trod the land. He exhibited all the grand traits of Columbus in the fullest measure, and possessed some sturdy virtues which the Italian navigator could not boast; but as no unique success rewarded his heroic endeavors, he is only known to ordinary readers as an adventurous sailor, who discovered and gave his name to Frobisher's Straits, one of the passages leading into Hudson's Bay.

He was born in Yorkshire about the year 1530, thirty-eight years after the discovery of America. Yorkshiremen are the Yankees of Old England; they are sharper, tougher, more enterprising and persevering, less amiable and polite, than the people of the more southern counties of England. Some of them are exceedingly hard bargainers, and very rough in their manners. Take them for all in all, however, they are the people that contribute most to the strength and prosperity of the British empire; and it is not uncommon to meet among them men in whom are happily united the force of a Yorkshireman with the suavity of a man of Kent or Sussex.

During the early years of this man's life, the one topic that absorbed the minds of intelligent men was the progressive discovery of the Western World. Geography was the favorite and the fashionable study; maps were among the most precious of possessions; and navigators who had taken part in the voyages to America were held in universal honor. Frobisher, being

himself a sailor, was naturally drawn to the consideration of what sailors were achieving.

Like Sebastian Cabot, and all other Englishmen of that day, Captain Frobisher attached small importance to the territory discovered in the West. The grand object of solicitude was to find a shorter way to the rich countries of Asia, the lands of spice, gold, diamonds, and the rich fabrics which adorned the palaces and persons of kings. So possessed was Captain Frobisher of the importance of discovering a north-western passage to Asia, that he felt it was the only thing remaining to be done by which a "notable mind might be made famous and fortunate."

Not having himself the means of fitting out an expedition, he endeavored to interest the merchants and nobles of England in the scheme; but for fifteen years he strove in vain. At length he found a patron in the powerful Earl of Warwick, by whose assistance and that of his friends three vessels were prepared, and Captain Frobisher was placed in command.

Nothing is more startling to the modern reader than the smallness of the vessels employed in the early voyages of discovery. Here was an expedition fitted out for a voyage of many thousand miles in unknown seas, and the largest of the three vessels was thirty tons burthen; the next twenty tons; and the smallest ten.

The boat carried on the deck of an emigrant ship is sometimes of twenty or thirty tons burthen; and ten tons is, I believe, about the capacity of a frigate's largest boat, such as we often see moving about the harbor, rowed by ten or twelve men. Frobisher's ten-ton pinnace was only decked in the forward part. She was, in fact, a great lubberly sail-boat, and nothing

more.

In the month of June, 1576, the little fleet dropped down the Thames, past the royal palace of Greenwich. Queen Elizabeth waved her hand to them as they glided by, and sent a message of good cheer to the commander. They cleared the channel in safety, and stood out on the broad Atlantic.

June, as sailors well know, is a treacherous month. The hardest blow I ever experienced on the ocean was in the month of June, and it was not far from the very spot where, two hun