His will was proved under £30,000, and Lady Davy was appointed sole executrix. Paris says that he left £100 to the Penzance Grammar School, the interest to be devoted to a prize for the best scholar, provided the school kept holiday on the anniversary of his birthday; but I do not find this in the will. I believe that the interest on the money is still paid, but that the holiday is omitted. A public funeral was decreed him by the authorities and literati of Geneva, including his friends Decandolle and Sismondi, who highly appreciated him; and his mortal remains were deposited in the cemetery at Plain-Palais, close to those of Professor Pictet.[119] It was Davy's wish, as expressed in his will, to be buried wherever he might die: 'Natura curat suas reliquias,' he wrote; and on his monument will be found the reason of this lofty reliance--namely, because he was 'Summus arcanorum Naturæ indigator.'[120] Thus died, without issue, and within a few months of his great friends Wollaston and Young, Sir Humphry Davy, poet and philosopher, before he had completed his fifty-first year--a man (to use the words of Dr. Paris) 'whose splendid discoveries illumined the age in which he lived, adorned the country which gave him birth, and obtained from foreign and hostile nations the homage of admiration and the meed of gratitude.' His genius it would be presumptuous in me to endeavour to analyze or describe. I have attempted a biographical sketch rather than an essay on Davy's proper place in the ranks of science;[121] but he was undoubtedly one of the master-spirits of his age; and I gladly select, from among many other similar accounts, the peroration of the _éloge_ pronounced upon him by Baron Cuvier before the Institute of France: 'Ainsi a fini à cinquante ans, sur une terre étrangère, un génie dont le nom brillera avec éclat parmi cette foule s'éclatante de noms dont s'enarguillit la Grande Bretagne. Mais, que dis je, pour un tel homme aucune terre n'est étrangère; Genève surtout ne pouvait pas l'être, où, depuis vingt ans, il comptait des amis intimes, des admirateurs sans cesse occupés de répandre ses decouvertes sur le Continent; aussi, le deuil n'eût pas été plus grand ni les obsèques plus honorables pour un de leur concitoyens les plus respectés.'