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Today's Featured Biography
Sir Humphry Davy
 The boyhood of Davy has been sketched in some of the most fascinating pieces of biography ever written: the annals of science do not furnish us with any record that equals the school-days and self-education of the boy, Humphry, in popular interest; and, unlike many bright mornings, this commencement in a few years led to a brilliant meridian, and, by a succession of discoveries, accomplished more in relation to change of theory and extension of science, than in the most ardent and ambitious moments of youth he could either hope to effect or imagine possible.
Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in 1778; was a healthy, strong, and active child, and could speak fluently before he was two years old; copied engravings before he learned to write, and could recite part of the "Pilgrim's Progress" before he could well read it. At the age of five years, he could gain a good account of the contents of a book while turning over the leaves; and he retained this remarkable faculty through life. He excelled in telling stories to his playmates; loved fishing, and collecting, and painting birds and fishes; he had his own little garden; and recorded his impressions of romantic scenery in verse of no ordinary merit. To his self-education, however, he owed almost everything. He studied with intensity mathematics, metaphysics, and physiology; before he was nineteen he began to study chemistry, and in four months proposed a new hypothesis on heat and light, to which he won over the ex...
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