As a philosopher, his claims to admiration and respect were allowed in all their latitude; but when he sought for the homage due to patrician distinction, they were denied with indignation. How strange it is, that those whom Nature has placed above their fellow men by the god-like gift of genius, should seek from their inferiors those distinctions which are generally the rewards of fortune. When we learn that Congreve, in his interview with Voltaire, prided himself upon his fashion rather than upon his wit; that Byron was more vain of his heraldry than of his "Pilgrimage of Childe Harold;" that Racine pined into an atrophy, because the monarch passed him without a recognition in the ante-room of the palace, and that Davy sighed for patrician distinction in the chair of Newton, we can only lament the weakness from which the choicest spirits of our nature are not exempt. Will philosophers never feel, with Walpole, that "a genius transmits more honour by blood than he can receive?" Had the blood of forty generations of nobility flowed in the veins of Davy, would his name have commanded higher homage, or his discoveries have excited greater admiration? But great minds have ever had their points of weakness: an inordinate admiration of hereditary rank was the cardinal deformity of Davy's character; it was the centre from which all his defects radiated, and continually placed him in false positions; for the man who rests his claims upon doubtful or ill-defined pretensions, from a sense of his insecurity, naturally becomes jealous at every apparent inattention, and he is suspicious of the sincerity of that respect which he feels may be the fruit of usurpation. If with these circumstances we take into consideration the existence of a natural timidity of character, which he sought to conquer by efforts that betrayed him into awkwardness of manner, and combine with it an irritability of temperament which occasionally called up expressions of ill-humour, we at once possess a clue by which we may unravel the conduct of our philosopher, and the consequences it brought upon himself during his presidency of the Royal Society. Nor must we leave out of sight that inattention to certain forms which, amongst those who are incapable of penetrating beyond the surface of character, passes for the offensive carelessness of superiority. Davy, after the example of Sir Joseph Banks, opened his house on one evening of the week for the reception of the Fellows of the Royal Society, and of other persons who were actively engaged in any scientific pursuit; but the invitations to these _soirées_ were so irregularly managed, that they frequently gave offence, where they were intended to convey a compliment.