FOOTNOTES:
[1] These books, with others bound by Faraday, are preserved in a special cabinet at the Royal Institution, together with more valuable documents,—the laboratory notes of Davy and those of Faraday, his notes of Tatum's and Davy's lectures, copies of his published papers with annotations and indices, notes for lectures and Friday evening discourses, account books, and various memoranda, together with letters from Wollaston, Young, Herschel, Whewell, Mitscherlich, and many others of his fellow-workers in science. These were the gift of his widow, in accordance with his own desire.
[2] This idea was suggested by some remarks of Faraday to the Baroness Burdett Coutts.
[3] Sir Roderick Murchison used to tell how he was attending Brande's lectures, when one day, the Professor being absent, his assistant took his place, and lectured with so much ease that he won the complete approval of the audience. This, he said, was Faraday's first lecture at the Royal Institution.
[4] The laboratory note-book shows that at this very time he was making a long series of commercial analyses of saltpetre for Mr. Brande.
[5] The following anecdote has been sent me on the authority of Mr. Benjamin Abbott:—"Sergeant Anderson was engaged to attend to the furnaces in Mr. Faraday's researches on optical glass in 1828, and was chosen simply because of the habits of strict obedience his military training had given him. His duty was to keep the furnaces always at the same heat, and the water in the ashpit always at the same level. In the evening he was released, but one night Faraday forgot to tell Anderson he could go home, and early next morning he found his faithful servant still stoking the glowing furnace, as he had been doing all night long." A more probable and better authenticated version of this story is that after nightfall Anderson went upstairs to Faraday, who was already in bed, to inquire if he was to remain still on duty.
[6] One evening, when the Rev. A. J. D'Orsey was lecturing "On the Study of the English Language," he mentioned as a common vulgarism that of using "don't" in the third person singular, as "He don't pay his debts." Faraday exclaimed aloud, "That's very wrong."
[7] The St. Paul's Magazine, June 1870.
[8] British Quarterly Review, April 1868.
[9] See Appendix.
[10] No wonder the celebrated electrician P. Riess, of Berlin, once addressed a long letter to him as "Professor Michael Faraday, Member of all Academies of Science, London."
[11] Bacon's "Novum Organum," i. 1.
[12] Bence Jones has used the Greek ἀγάπη; and it was just this ideal of Christian love which Faraday set before himself.
[13] For this anecdote, and some others in inverted commas, I am indebted to Mr. Frank Barnard.
[14] In another letter that Lady Burdett Coutts has kindly sent me, Faraday says: "We had your box once before, I remember, for a pantomime, which is always interesting to me because of the immense concentration of means which it requires." In a third he makes admiring comments on Fechter.
[15] I myself once heard this advanced by an infidel lecturer on Paddington Green.
[16] "Electrical Researches," Series XV.
[17] "Analogies in the Progress of Nature and Grace," p. 121.
[18] "Mittheilungen aus dem Reisetagebuche eines deutschen Naturforschers," p. 275.
[19] Since the publication of the first edition I have been struck with how precisely his practice corresponded with his precept in the introduction to his book on "Chemical Manipulation:"—"When an experiment has been devised, its general nature and principles arranged in the mind, and the causes to be brought into action, with the effect to be expected, properly considered, then it has to be performed. The ultimate objects of an experiment, and also the particular contrivance or mode by which the results are to be produced, being mental, there remains the mere performance of it, which may properly enough be expressed by the term manipulation.
"Notwithstanding this subordinate character of manipulation, it is yet of high importance in an experimental science, and particularly in chemistry. The person who could devise only, without knowing how to perform, would not be able to extend his knowledge far, or make it useful; and where every doubt or question that arises in the mind is best answered by the result of an experiment, whatever enables the philosopher to perform the experiment in the simplest, quickest, and most direct manner, cannot but be esteemed by him as of the utmost value."
[20] Punch's cartoon next week represented Professor Faraday holding his nose, and presenting his card to Father Thames, who rises out of the unsavoury ooze.
[21] Since writing the above I have come across a letter written by Faraday in answer to one by Captain Welier as far back as 13th Sept. 1839, in which he pointed out the mal-adjustment of the dioptric apparatus at Orfordness. In July of the following year he made lengthy suggestions to the Trinity House, in which he proposed using a flat white circle or square, half an inch across, on a piece of black paper or card, as a "focal object." This was to be looked at from outside, in order to test the regularity of the glass apparatus. He also suggested observations on the divergence by looking at this white circle at a distance of twenty feet at most. Another plan he proposed was that of lighting the lamp and putting up a white screen outside. These methods of examining he carried out very shortly afterwards at Blackwall, on French and English refractors, but it seems never to have occurred to him to place his eye in the focus, or in any other manner to observe the course of the rays from inside the apparatus.
[22] Dr. Scoffern, Belgravia, October 1867.
[23] Mr. Barrett, Nature, Sept. 19, 1872.
[24] A good instance of his caution in drawing conclusions is contained in one of his letters to me:—
"Royal Institution of Great Britain,
"2 July, 1859.
"My dear Gladstone,
"Although I have frequently observed lights from the sea, the only thing I have learnt in relation to their relative brilliancy is that the average of a very great number of observations would be required for the attainment of a moderate approximation to truth. One has to be some miles off at sea, or else the observation is not made in the chief ray, and then one does not know the state of the atmosphere about a given lighthouse. Strong lights like that of Cape Grisnez have been invisible when they should have been strong; feeble lights by comparison have risen up in force when one might have expected them to be relatively weak; and after inquiry has not shown a state of the air at the lighthouse explaining such differences. It is probable that the cause of difference often exists at sea.
"Besides these difficulties there is that other great one of not seeing the two lights to be compared in the field of view at the same time and same distance. If the eye has to turn 90° from one to the other, I have no confidence in the comparison; and if both be in the field of sight at once, still unexpected and unexplained causes of difference occur. The two lights at the South Foreland are beautifully situated for comparison, and yet sometimes the upper did not equal the lower when it ought to have surpassed it. This I referred at the time to an upper stratum of haze; but on shore they knew nothing of the kind, nor had any such or other reason to expect particular effects.
"Ever truly yours,
"M. Faraday."
As an instance of his unwillingness to commit himself to an opinion unless he was sure about it, may be cited a letter he wrote to Sir G. B. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who asked for his advice in regard to the material of which the national standard of length should be made:—"I do not see any reason why a pure metal should be particularly free from internal change of its particles, and on the whole should rather incline to the hard alloy than to soft copper, and yet I hardly know why. I suppose the labour would be too great to lay down the standard on different metals and substances; and yet the comparison of them might be very important hereafter, for twenty years seem to do or tell a great deal in relation to standard measures." Bronze was finally chosen.
[25] De la Rive points this out in his brief notice of Faraday immediately on receiving the news of his death:—"Je n'ai parlé que du savant, je tiens aussi à dire un mot de l'homme. Alliant à une modestie vraie, parcequ'elle provenait de l'élévation de son âme, une droiture à toute épreuve et une candeur admirable, Faraday n'aimait la science que pour elle-même. Aussi jouissait-il des succès des autres au moins autant que des siens propres; et quant à lui, s'il a accepté, avec une sincère satisfaction, les honneurs scientifiques qui lui out été prodigués à si juste titre, il a constamment refusé toutes les autres distinctions et les récompenses qu'on eût voulu lui décerner. Il s'est contenté toute sa vie de la position relativement modeste qu'il occupait à l'Institution Royale de Londres; avoir son laboratoire et strictement de quoi vivre, c'est tout ce qu'il lui fallait.—Presinge, le 29 août, 1867.—A. de la Rive."
[26] Preface to "Faraday und seine Entdeckungen."
[27] I am indebted to Sir Charles Wheatstone for the following impromptu by Herbert Mayo:—
"Around the magnet Faraday
Was sure that Volta's lightnings play:
But how to draw them from the wire?
He drew a lesson from the heart:
'Tis when we meet, 'tis when we part,
Breaks forth the electric fire."
[28] The room with glass sides, from which the light is exhibited at the top of a lighthouse, is called by this name.
[29] One night there was a beautiful aurora. Mr. Holmes remarked that his poor electric light could not compare with that for beauty; but Faraday rejoined, "Don't abuse your light. The aurora is very beautiful, and so is a wild horse, but you have tamed it and made it valuable."
[30] The illuminating apparatus at Dungeness is one of what is termed the sixth order, 300 millimetres (about 12 inches) in diameter. Mr. Chance constructed one for Souter Point of the third order, one metre (nearly 40 inches) in diameter, with special arrangements for giving artificial divergence to the beam in a vertical direction, in order to obviate the danger arising from the luminous point not being always precisely in the same spot. It has also additional contrivances for utilizing the back light. Similar arrangements were made for the South Foreland lights, which are also of the third order; and every portion of the machinery and apparatus is in duplicate in case of accident, and the double force can be employed in times of fog.