It is remarkable that, with a highly poetical temperament, he seems to have been senseless to the beauties of art. The wonders of the Louvre extracted no sign of pleasure: he paced the rooms with hurried steps, in apathy, roused only by the sight of an Antinous sculptured in alabaster, “Gracious Heaven!” he then exclaimed, “what a beautiful stalactite.” From Paris, Dec. 29th, he proceeded without visiting Auvergne, to Montpellier, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples, which he reached May 8th, 1814. At various places he prosecuted his researches upon iodine; and at Florence, he availed himself of the great burning lens to experiment upon the combustion of the diamond, and other forms of carbon. At Naples and Rome he instituted a minute and laborious inquiry into the colours used in painting by the ancients; the results of which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1815. The autumn of 1815 is rendered memorable by the discovery of the safety-lamp, one of the most beneficial applications of science to economical purposes yet made, by which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives have been preserved. Davy was led to the consideration of this subject by an application from Dr. Gray, now Bishop of Bristol, the Chairman of a Society established in 1813, at Bishop-Wearmouth, to consider and promote the means of preventing accidents by fire in coal-pits. Being then in Scotland, he visited the mines on his return southward, and was supplied with specimens of fire-damp, which, on reaching London, he proceeded to examine. He soon discovered that the carburetted hydrogen gas, called fire-damp by the miners, would not explode when mixed with less than six, or more than fourteen times its volume of air; and further, that the explosive mixture could not be fired in tubes of small diameters and proportionate lengths. Gradually diminishing their dimensions, he arrived at the conclusion that a tissue of wire, in which the meshes do not exceed a certain small diameter, which may be considered as the ultimate limit of a series of such tubes, is impervious to the inflamed air; and that a lamp covered with such tissue, may be used with perfect safety even in an explosive mixture, which takes fire, and burns within the cage, securely cut off from the power of doing harm. Thus when the atmosphere is so impure that the flame of the lamp itself cannot be maintained, the _Davy_ still supplies light to the miner, and turns his worst enemy into an obedient servant. This invention, the certain source of large profit, he presented with characteristic liberality to the public. The words are preserved, in which when pressed to secure to himself the benefit of it by a patent, he declined to do so, in conformity with the high-minded resolution which he formed upon acquiring independent wealth, of never making his scientific eminence subservient to gain:—“I have enough for all my views and purposes, more wealth might be troublesome, and distract my