reaching at once to the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions. Thus these illustrious men, though differing essentially in their natural powers and acquired habits, and moving, independently of each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish the same great ends--the evolving new elements; the combining matter into new forms; the increase of human happiness by the improvement of the arts of civilized life; and the establishment of general laws, that will serve to guide other philosophers onwards, through vast and unexplored regions of scientific discovery." [125] Mr. Babbage considers it as a great mistake to suppose that Dr. Wollaston's microscopic accuracy depended upon the extraordinary acuteness of the bodily senses; a circumstance, he says, which, if it were true, would add but little to his philosophical character. He is inclined to view it in a far different light, and to see in it one of the natural results of the precision of his knowledge and of the admirable training of his intellectual faculties. * * * * * My history draws towards a conclusion.--Sir Humphry Davy, during the latter days of his life, was cheered by the society and affectionate attentions of his godson, the son of his old friend Mr. James Tobin.[126] He had been the companion of his travels, and he was the solace of his declining hours. [126] This inestimable man died on his plantation at Nevis, on the 19th of October 1814, in the forty-eighth year of his age. He had been resident for some months at Rome, where he occupied the second floor of a house in Via di Pietra, a street that leads out of the Corso. During this period, he declined receiving any visitors, and had constantly some one by his side reading light works of interest to him, an amusement which was even continued during his meals. As soon as the account of Sir Humphry having sustained another paralytic seizure was communicated to Lady Davy, who was in London at the time, she immediately set off, and so rapidly was her journey performed, that she reached Rome in little more than twelve days. Dr. John Davy, also, hastened from Malta, on receiving intelligence of his brother's imminent danger.