GENERAL SAN MARTIN 281 of Commerce at Mons, of the coal-miners of Flanders, and, above all, of the coal-owners of the Wear and the Tyne, who presented him (it was his own choice) with a dinner-service of silver worth ,2,500. On the same occasion, Alexander, the Emperor of all the Russias, sent him a vase, with a letter of com- mendation. In 18 1 7, he was elected to the dignity of an associate of the Insti- tute of France ; next year, at the age of forty, he was created a baronet. Davy's discoveries form a remarkable epoch in the history of the Royal So- ciety during the early part of this century; and from 1821 to 1829 almost every volume of the Transactions contains a communication by him. He was presi- dent of the Royal Society from 1820 to 1827. Fond of travel, geology, and sport, Davy visited, for the purpose of mineral- ogy and angling, almost every county of England and Wales. He was provided with a portable laboratory, that he might experiment when he chose, as well as fish and shoot. In 1827, upon resigning the presidency of the Royal Society, he retired to the continent ; in 1829, at Geneva, his palsy-stricken body returned to the dust. They buried him at Geneva, where a simple monument stands at the head of the hospitable grave. There is a tablet to his memory in Westminster Abbey ; there is a monument at Penzance ; and his widow founded a memorial chemical prize in the University of Geneva. His public services of plate, his imperial vases, his foreign prizes, his royal medals, shall be handed down with triumph to his collateral posterity as trophies won from the depths of nescience ; but his work, designed by his own genius, executed by his own hand, tracery and all, and every single stone signalized by his own private mark, indelible, charac- teristic, and inimitable his work is the only record of his name. How deeply are its foundations rooted in space, and how lasting its materials for time 1 GENERAL SAN MARTIN* By Hezekiah Butterworth (1778-1850) " Seras lo que debes ser, Y sino, no seras nada." San Martin. 5>? AN Martin, the ideal liberator of South America from the long and tyrannical rule of Spanish viceroys, was one of the most remark- able men of his own or of any age. From a moral point of view he stands in the first rank of the world's heroes. " He was not a man," said a student of South American history, "he was a mission." Cincinnatus, after serving the state, returned to the plough, and Washington to
- he retirement of Mt. Vernon ; but San Martin for the peace of his country went
- Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
