“This day they were accompanied by an illustrious philosopher [Davy], who was also a true poet--and might have been one of the greatest of poets had he chosen; and I have heard Mr. Wordsworth say, that it would be difficult to express the feelings with which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn alone, found himself standing on its summit with two such men as Scott and Davy.” But the greater part of this summer he spent in the north of Ireland, examining the extraordinary geological features of that district. Lady Brownrigg, the sister of the Bishop of Raphoe, has given a spirited little account of her impressions of his appearance and manner at that period. She was, she says, very young at the time. “We had been invited (I say _we_, for I was then with the Bishop of Raphoe) by Dr. Richardson to go to his cottage at Portrush, ‘to meet the famous Mr. Davy.’ We arrived a short time before dinner. In passing through a room we saw a youth, as he appeared, who had come in from fishing, and who, with a little note-book, was seated in a window-seat, having left a bag, rod &c., on the ground. He was very intent upon this little book, and we passed through unnoticed. We shook hands with our host and hostess, and prepared for dinner. I went into the drawing-room, under some little awe of this great philosopher, annexing to such a character at least the idea of an elderly grave gentleman, not perhaps, with so large a wig as Dr. Parr, or so sententious a manner as Dr. Johnson,--but certainly I never calculated on being introduced to the identical youth, with a little brown head, like a boy, that we had seen with his book, and who, when I came into the drawing-room was in the most animated manner recounting an adventure on the Causeway which had entertained him and from his manner of telling it was causing loud laughing in the whole room.” Davy also spent much of the summer of 1806 in Ireland, and the journal which he kept during his tour contains many interesting notes of his impressions of the country and the people. In the course of his journey he visited Edgeworthstown--“the moral and intellectual paradise of the author of ‘Castle Rackrent,’” as he calls it. That gifted lady tells her cousin Sophy Ruxton that as the result her head “was stuffed full of geological and chemical facts.” “Mr. Davy,” she adds, “is wonderfully improved since you saw him at Bristol; he has an amazing fund of knowledge upon all subjects, and a great deal of genius.” There was much in Davy’s own temperament to make him understand and appreciate the Irish character; himself a man of quick impulse and active sympathy, he was profoundly moved by the spectacle of Ireland’s political degradation. In a letter to his friend Poole, written after his return to London, he says:--