Chapter the Fifth.-Scientific Discoverers and Mechanicians. Ir great proficiency in tongues, skill to depicture human thought and character, and enthusiastic devotion to art be worthy of our admiration, the toiling intelligences who have taught us to subdue the physical world, and to bring it to subserve our wants and wishes, claim scarcely less homage. Art and literature could never have sprung into existence if men had remained mere strugglers for life, in their inability to contend with the elements of nature, because ignorant of its laws; and an acquaintance with the languages of tribes merely barbarous would have been but a worthless kind of knowledge. To scientific Ꮮ discoverers, the pioneers of civilization, who make the world worth living in, and render man's tenancy of it more valuable by every successive step of discovery, our primary tribute of admiration and gratitude seems due. They are the grand revealers of the physical security, health, plenty, and means of locomotion, which give the mind vantage-ground for its reach after higher refinement and purer pleasures. Should the common observation be urged that many of the most important natural discoveries have resulted from accident, let it be remembered, that, but for the existence of some of our race, more attentive than the rest, nature might still have spoken in vain, as she had undoubtedly done to thousands before she found an intelligent listener, in each grand instance of physical discovery. Grant all the truth that may attach to the observation just quoted, and yet the weighty reflection remains, that it was only by men who, in the sailor's phrase, were "on the look-out," that the revelations of nature were caught. The natural laws were in operation for ages, but were un discovered, because men guessed rather than enquired, or lived on without heed to mark, effort to comprehend, industry to register, and, above all, without perseverance to proceed from step to step in discovery, till entire truths were learnt. That these have been the attributes of those to whom we owe the rich boon of science, a rapid survey of some of their lives will manifest. Sir Humphrey Davy, the son of a wood carver of Penzance, was apprenticed by his father to a surgeon and apothecary of that town, and afterwards with another of the same profession, but gave little satisfaction to either of his masters. Natural philosophy had become his absorbing passion; and, even while a boy, he dreamt of future fame as a chemist. The rich diversity of minerals in Cornwall offered the finest field for his empassioned enquiries; and he was in the habit of rambling alone for miles, bent upon his yearning investigation into the wonders of |