tion* had recently been founded in London; and in May, 1802, "Mr. Davy (late of Bristol) was appointed Profes-or of Chemistry." In April following, he gave his first lecture on galvanic phenomena, Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and other distinguished philosophers, being present. "His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments," and the auspicious state of science, insured Davy great and instant success. In the previous year, he had read before the Royal Society a paper upon "Galvanic Combinations ;" and from that period to 1829, almost every volume of the Transactions contains a communication by him.

At the Royal Institution, then, Davy began his brilliant scientific career, and he remained there until 1812. His greatest labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and the reëstablishment of the simple nature of chlorine; his other researches were the investigation of astringent vegetables, in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of rocks and minerals, in connection with geology; the comprehensive subject of agricultural chemistry; and galvanism and electro-chemical science. His lectures were often attended by 1000 persons. He was knighted in 1812, and subsequently created a baronet.

Davy's best known achievement was his invention of the miner's Safety Lamp in 1815. He became President of the Royal Society in 1820; he resigned the chair in 1827, and retired to the Continent. He died after a lingering illness, in 1829, at Geneva, where he is buried. A simple monument stands at the head of his grave: there is a tablet to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and a monument at Penzance, his birthplace. He retained his love of angling to the last: not long before his death, he resided in an hotel at Laybach, in Styria, where the success with which he transferred the trout to his basket procured him the title of "the English wizard." He spent the greater part of the day in angling, or in geologizing among the mountains.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, THE RAILWAY ENGINEER, AND HIS SCHOOLMASTERS AND SELF-TUITION.

In the present age of great social changes, the application of steam to locomotive purposes, or, in other words, the invention

*The Royal Institution has been appropriately termed "the workshop of the Royal Society." Here Davy constructed his great voltaic battery of 2000 double plates of copper and zinc, four inches square, the whole surface being 128,000 square inches. The mineralogical collection in the Museum was also commenced by Davy. It must not be omitted, that he was one of the earliest experimenters in the Photographic Art.

of the railway, takes foremost rank, and confers upon its introducer the high merit of being a signal public benefactor. This honor is due to George Stephenson, who, from being a poor "cow-boy," raised himself to wealth and eminence, and without one solitary advantage except what he derived from his own genius, stamped his name upon the most wonderful achievement of our times. His early history is a surprising example of the triumph of singular and unerring sagacity over difficulties. His school instruction was little and late; but his education may be said to have begun almost from the moment he saw coal-wagons drawn upon the tramway before his father's cottage-door, and from his moulding clay-engines with his play

mates.

66

George Stephenson was born in 1781, in the colliery village of Wylam, about eight miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, amid slag and cinders, in an ordinary laborer's cottage, with unplastered walls, bare rafters, and floor of clay. His father was the descendant of an ancient and honorable line of working men, and his mother, Mabel, was a rale canny body;" but the wages of the former as a fireman amounting to no more than twelve shillings a week, schooling for George was out of the question, and he was taken by his father birdnesting, or told stories about Sinbad and Robinson Crusoe as a substitute. His interest in birds' nests never left him to his dying day, nor were other sights of his childhood less identified with the serious business of his life. In the rails of the wooden tram-road before his cottage, on which he saw the coal-wagons dragged by horses from the pit to the loading-quay, half the destiny of an age was latent, to be evolved hereafter by the very boy, who, after his own probation was over, had to keep his younger brothers and sisters out of the way of the horses. Thus eight years passed away, when the family removed to Dewley-burn, and George, to his great joy, was raised to the post of cow-boy to a neighboring farmer, at the wages of twopence a-day. He had plenty of spare time on his hands, which he spent in birdnesting, also in making whistles out of reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the little water streams that ran into the Dewley Bog. There can be no doubt that he indicated thus early that bent which is termed a mechanical genius. His favorite amusement, and this deserves to be noted, was the erection of clay engines, in conjunction with a certain Tom Tholoway. The boys found the clay for their engines in the adjoining bog, and the hemlock which grew about supplied them with abundance of imaginary steam-pipes. The place is still pointed out "just aboon the cut end," as the people of the hamlet describe it, where the future

engineer made his first essays in modeling. As the boy grew older, and more able to work, he was set to lead the horses in plowing, and to hoe turnips, at the advanced wages of fourpence a-day. Then he was taken on at the colliery as a "picker," at sixpence a-day, whence he was advanced to be driver of the gin-horse at eightpence; and there are those who still remember him in that capacity as a "grit bare-legged laddie," whom they describe as "quick-witted and full of fun and tricks." He himself had some misgivings as to his physical dimensions, and was wont to hide himself when the owner of the colliery went round, lest he should be thought too little a boy to earn his small wages. His fixed ambition was to be an engineman; and great, therefore, was his exultation when, at about fourteen years of age, he was appointed fireman, at the wages of one shilling a-day.

Thenceforth his fortunes took him from one pit to another, and procured him rising wages with his rising stature. At Throckley-bridge, when advanced to twelve shillings a-week, "I am now," sad he, "a made man for life." At seventeen he shot ahead of his father, being made an engineman or plugman, while the latter remained a fireman. He soon studied and mastered the working of his engine, and it became a sort of pet with him. His greatest privilege was to find some one who could read to him by the engine-fire out of any book or stray newspaper which found its way into the colliery. Thus he heard that the Egyptians hatched birds' eggs by artificial heat, and endeavored to do the same in his engine-house. He learnt also, that the wonderful engines of Watt* and Boulton were to be found described

*James Watt, the great improver of the Steam-engine, born at Greenock, in 1736, received his early education mostly at home; although he attended for a time the public elementary schools in his native town. His ill-health, which often confined him to his chamber, appears to have led him to the cultivation, with unusual assiduity, of his intellectual powers. It is said that when only six years of age, he was discovered solving a geometrical problem upon the hearth with a piece of chalk; and other circumstances related of him justify the remark elicited from a friend on the above occasion, that he was "no common child." About 1:50, he amused himself by making an electrical machine; and it is related that his aunt upbraided him one evening at the tea-table for what seemed to her to be listless idleness: taking off the lid of the tea-kettle and putting it on again; holding sometimes a cup, and sometimes a silver spoon, over the steam; watching the exit of the steam from the spout; and counting the drops of water into which it became condensed. Hence, the boy pondering before the tea-kettle has been viewed as the embryo engineer prognosticating the discoveries which were to immortalize him. During his youth he indulged his love for botany on the banks of Loch Lomond, and his rambles among the mountain scenery of his native land aroused an attention to mineralogy and geology. Chemistry was a favorite subject when he was confined by ill-health to his father's dwelling He read eagerly books on natural philosophy, surgery, and medicine. Leaving, however, all these studies, Watt applied himself to the profession of a mathematical instrument maker, and after a time settled in Glasgow, where, displaying much ingenuity and manual dexterity, his superior intelligence led to his shop being a favorite resort for the most eminent scientific men in Glasgow. Watt needed only prompting to take up and conquer any subject; and Professor Robinson states that he learnt the German language in order to peruse Leupold's Theatrum Machinarum, because the solution of a problem on which he was engaged seemed to require it; and that similar reasons led him subse

in books, and with the object of mastering these books, though a grown man, he went to a night-school at threepence a-week to learn his letters. He also practiced "pot-hooks," and at the age of nineteen was proud to be able to write his

own name.

Stephenson may be said to have anticipated a Mechanics' Institute at the bottom of a coal-pit: for he, and others of the workmen less gifted, made their companions who could read give them some little instruction, and read any stray paper which might reach their remote village in the days of the Fist Napoleon's first efforts to conquer Europe.

In the winter of 1799, George removed to the night-school kept by a Scotch dominie, named Andrew Robertson, who was a skilled arithmetician. Here George learnt "figuring" much faster than his school-fellows-"he took to figures so wonderful.” He worked out his sums in his bye-hours, improving every minute of his spare time by the engine-fire, solving the arithmetical problems set him upon his slate by his master, so that he soon became well advanced in arithmetic. At length, Robertson could carry Stephenson no further, the pupil having outstripped the master. He went on, however, with his writing lessons, and by the next year, 1802-when he signed his name on his marriage-he was able to write a good, legible round hand.

By improving his spare hours in the evening, he was silently and surely paving the way for being something more than a mere workman, by studying principles of mechanics, and the laws by which his engine worked. By steady conduct and saving habits, he not only sustained the pressure of the times, but procured the coveted means of educating his son. Soon after

ward he signalized himself by curing a wheezy engine, at which "all the engineers of the neighborhood were tried, as well as Crowther of the Ouseburn, but they were clean bet." He got 107. for this job, and from this day his services as an engineer came into request.

In 1814, he placed a locomotive on the Killingworth Railway; and this engine, improved in 1815, is the parent of the whole race of locomotives which has since sprung into existence. This was, indeed, a year of double triumph to Stephenson, for in it he produced his Safety Lamp for miners; though Sir Humphry Davy's lamp was reported to be something more per

quently to study Italian. Without neglecting his business in the daytime, Watt devoted his nights to various and often profound studies; and the mere difficulty of a subject, provided it was worthy of pursuit, seems to have recommended it to his indefatigable character. Thus was passed the early life of Watt, previous to his seriously directing his attention to the properties of steam.

fect than what was called "invention claimed by a person, an engine-wright, of the name of Stephenson."

In 1825, Stephenson's locomotive was worked on the Stockton and Darlington Railway; and in 1830, he drove his engine, "The Rocket," upon the Liverpool and Manchester line, across Chat Moss, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and thereby gained the prize of 500l. Thirty years after he had been a worker in a pit at Newcastle, he traveled from that city to London, behind one of his own engines, in nine hours; and Liverpool and London have raised statues of George Stephenson, the Engineer, to whose intelligence and perseverance we owe the introduction of this mighty power,'

*

BOYHOOD AND EARLY DEATH OF HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Few instances of early death from ardor in the pursuit of knowledge are so touching as that afforded in the brief span of the life of the amiable and gifted Henry Kirke White. He was born in 1785, at Nottingham, where his father followed the business of a butcher. He was sent to school at three years of age, and soon became so fond of reading that he could be scarcely got to lay down his book, that he might take his meals. At the age of seven, he attempted to express his ideas upon paper; his first composition being a tale, which, however, he only communicated to the servant, whom he had secretly taught to write. Before the age of eleven, in addition to reading and writing, he outstripped his school-fellows in arithmetic and French. Soon after this he began to write verse. He assisted at his father's business for some time, carrying the butcher's basket; but he so disliked this occupation, that at the age fourteen, he was apprenticed to a stocking-weaver. But, to use his own words, he "wanted something to occupy his brain;" still, he scarcely dare complain, for he knew that his family could hardly afford to educate him for any higher employment. His mother, however, moved by his wretchedness, after he had been about a year at the loom, prevailed upon his father to place him in an attorney's office at Nottingham; where, notwithstanding he attended the office twelve hours a day, he applied his leisure to studying the Greek and Latin languages, and was able, in ten months, to read Horace. He also made considerable progress in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; in chemistry, electricity, and astronomy; while his less severe studies were drawing, music, and practical mechanics; and in extempore speaking, he

of

*The narration of these events has been principally condensed from Mr. Smiles's Life of Ge rge Stephenson (published in 1857); an admirable specimen of biographical writing, earnest and unaffected, and in every way worthy of its great subject.