I have been led into all this speculation, which you may well think wild, in reflecting upon the fate of Gregory; my feeling has given erring wings to my mind. He was a noble fellow and would have been a great man. His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increasing strength of mind. Why is this in the order of nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die and decompose, they produce a mould which becomes the bed of life to grass and to a more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals, the less perfect animals of the more perfect, but in man the faculties and intellect are perfected; he rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery, and then would seem to disappear without an end and without producing any effect. Another mention of Coleridge occurs in February, when Davy wrote to Mr. Poole: There has been no news lately from Coleridge; the last accounts state that he was well in the autumn and in Sicily. On that poetic ground we may hope and trust that his genius will call forth some new creations, and that he may bring back to us some garlands of never-dying verse. I have written to urge him strongly to give a course of lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution, where his feeling would strongly impress and his eloquence greatly delight. In January 1805 Davy presented his collection of minerals to the Royal Institution. They were valued at one hundred guineas. On February 4, as Director of the Laboratory, he received an addition of 100_l._ to his salary. He had two papers read at the Royal Society, one on a ‘New Mineral, consisting of Alumine and Water,’ and the other on a ‘New Mode of Analysing Minerals containing Fixed Alkali by Boracic Acid,’ and for these and his other papers he received the Copley medal. In September he thus wrote to Davies Gilbert: I came from Ireland by the Western Road about a fortnight ago. The Irish are a noble race degraded by slavery and bearing the insignia of persecution--extreme savageness or the lowest servility. Yet they are ingenious and active, and seem to me to possess all the elements of power and usefulness; but amongst the lower orders there is a most unfortunate equality, destructive of all great and efficient exertion, and amongst the higher classes the greatest degree of activity is awakened only by the desire of imitating the English, and that not so much in their virtues as in their luxuries and follies. And to his friend Poole he wrote, October 9: