CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL;
OR, THE LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER.


BY SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART.,
_Late President of the Royal Society_.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_. 1889




INTRODUCTION.


Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December,
1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty.
He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the
foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he
was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed
through the light of earth into the light of heaven.

His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan. His mother had
lost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of each
other, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in
Penzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandson
by adoption. There were five such grandchildren--Humphry, the elder of
two boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls.