Davy made many great discoveries, but the greatest was his discovery of Faraday.
A journey on the Continent with Davy was an event in the life of Faraday, who up to that time had never to his own recollection travelled twelve miles from London. On this journey he met Volta, whom he describes as "an hale elderly man, very free in conversation." He visited the Academy del Cimento, in Florence, and wrote: "Here was much to excite interest; in one place was Galileo's first telescope, that with which he discovered Jupiter's satellites. It was a simple tube of wood and paper, about three and a half feet long, with a lens at each end. There was also the first lens which Galileo made. It was set in a very pretty frame of brass, with an inscription in Latin on it."
Faraday crossed the Alps and the Apennines, climbed Vesuvius, visited Rome, and saw a glow-worm. The last he thought as wonderful as the first.
Shortly after his return to London he fell in love. Now, Faraday had determined that he would not be conquered by the master passion. In fact, he had written various aspersions on love, of which the following is a sample:
"What is the pest and plague of human life?
And what the curse that often brings a wife?
'Tis Love.
What is't directs the madman's hot intent,
For which a dunce is fully competent?
What's that the wise man always strives to shun,
Though still it ever o'er the world has run.
'Tis Love."
But he reckoned not with his own heart. It is not long until we find him writing to Miss Sarah Barnard, a bright girl of twenty-one: "You have converted me from one erroneous way, let me hope you will attempt to correct what others are wrong.... Again and again I attempt to say what I feel, but I cannot. Let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend your affections for his own sake only. In whatever way I can minister to your happiness, either by close attention or by absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by withdrawing your friendship or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by making me less."
They were married and lived in rooms at the Royal Institution. No poet ever loved more tenderly than Faraday. Truly, science does not dry up the heart's blood. At the age of seventy-one he wrote to his wife while absent from home for a few days: "Remember me; I think as much of you as is good for either you or me. We cannot well do without each other. But we love with a strong hope of love continuing ever."
Faraday's Electrical Discoveries