“MY DEAR MOTHER,--We are just going on a very interesting journey. I am first to visit the coal miners of Flanders, who have sent me a very kind letter of invitation and of thanks for saving their lives. We are then going to Austria, where I shall show Vienna to Lady Davy, and then visit the mines; and lastly, before I return, we are going to visit Naples. “I have the commands of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent to make experiments upon some very interesting ancient manuscripts, which I hope to unfold. I had yesterday the honour of an audience from his Royal Highness, and he commissioned me to pursue this object in the most gracious and kind manner.... “We shall be absent some months. With kindest love to my sisters and my aunts, “I am, my dear mother, “Your most affectionate son, “H. DAVY.” A few months after this visit to the Prince Regent he received the intimation that he had been created a baronet. He arrived at Naples in the autumn, and began his researches on the Herculaneum manuscripts referred to in his letter. His first results were sufficiently encouraging to induce him to make some prolonged experiments with a view of discovering a method of unfolding them. He found that the papyri had suffered not so much from fire, as was believed, as from a gradual change in vegetable structure, similar to that which accompanies the transformation of vegetable matter into lignite. He managed to unroll a number, and an account of his results was communicated to the Royal Society in 1821. But from the fragmentary character of the papyri these were found to be of little value to literature. Subsequently difficulties were put in his way by the curators of the museum, and ultimately his investigations were abandoned, not without some little exhibition of temper and resentment on his part. During his stay at Naples he again interested himself in the volcanic phenomena of Vesuvius, and his observations constitute the material of a paper which was published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ in 1827, and many of his personal experiences in connection with the subject are referred to in his last work, “Consolations in Travel.”