He finishes this essay with an allegory. God is described as
deliberating with the angels on the propriety of creating woman.
Justice, Peace, and Virtue plead against her creation, as through her
Adam will be driven out of Paradise. Then Divine Love stands before
Jehovah, her countenance covered with smiles. "Create her," she says,
"for Paradise itself will afford no delight to man without woman. She
will be the cause of his misery, but she will likewise be the cause of
all his happiness. She will console him in affliction; she will comfort
and harmonize his soul; she will wipe the tears from his eyes, and
compose the fury of his passions. Her friendship shall make him
virtuous, and her love shall make him happy; and, lastly, the tree of
their transgression, and the plant of immortality, nourished by the
blood of her son, shall flourish, and grow out of Paradise, and
overspread the earth: man shall eat of their fruit, and be immortal and
happy."
All through these early note-books are scattered his poems, showing a
passion for the blue sea at Penzance, and an unbounded love of nature.
Just as he was entering his nineteenth year, young Davy began the study
of chemistry, as a branch of his profession. He read "Lavoisier's
Elements of Chemistry," and "Nicholson's Dictionary of Chemistry."
Suddenly a new world seemed to open before him. He began to think for
himself, and to make experiments. As his means were limited, his
apparatus consisted of vials, wine-glasses, tea-cups, tobacco-pipes, and
earthen crucibles.
His first experiments were the effects of acids and alkalies on
vegetable colors, the kind of air in the vesicles of common seaweed, and
the solution and precipitation of metals. These were made in his bedroom
in Mr. Tonkin's house, or in the kitchen, when he required fire. This
old gentleman had brought up his mother and her two orphan sisters, and
now was like a father to Humphrey. He said, "This boy, Humphrey, is
incorrigible. Was there ever so idle a dog! He will blow us all into the
air." He was at this time probably making a detonating composition,
which he called "thunder power," his sister Kitty being his assistant.
At this time, a young man came to board at the house of Mrs. Davy,
Gregory Watt, the only child of James Watt, the inventor of the
steam-engine. He was the idol of his parents; possessed of a mind so
unusual in its passionate love for knowledge, and a nature so
companionable, that everybody loved him. He was twenty-one, and Humphrey
nineteen.
Between these two young men there grew a most ardent and lasting
friendship; lasting because it had the only sure foundation, moral and
mental worth. They were always together. They visited the neighboring
mines and mountains, and came home with their pockets filled with
minerals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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