"Sir,
"Thanks for your letter. At the close of it you ask me privately and confidingly for the encouragement my opinion might give you if this power gas-light is fit for lighthouses. I am unable to assent to your request, as my position at the Trinity House requires that I should be able to take up any subject, applications, or documents they may bring before me in a perfectly unbiassed condition of mind.
"I am, Sir,
"Yours very truly,
"M. Faraday."
The kindliness which shed its genial radiance on every worthy object around, glowed most warmly on the domestic hearth. Little expressions in his writings often reveal it, as when we read in his Swiss journal about Interlaken: "Clout-nail making goes on here rather considerably, and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's shop, and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith."
When he was sitting to Noble for his bust, it happened one day that the sculptor, in giving the finishing touches to the marble, made a clattering with his chisels: noticing that his sitter appeared distrait, he said that he feared the jingling of the tools had annoyed him, and that he was weary. "No, my dear Mr. Noble," said Faraday, putting his hand on his shoulder, "but the noise reminded me of my father's anvil, and took me back to my boyhood."
This deep affection peeps out constantly in his letters to different members of his family, "bound up together," as he wrote to his sister-in-law, "in the one hope, and in faith and love which is in Jesus Christ." But it was towards his wife that his love glowed most intensely. Yet how can we properly speak of this sacred relationship, especially as the mourning widow is still amongst us? It may suffice to catch the glimpse that is reflected in the following extract from a letter he wrote to Mrs. Andrew Crosse on the death of her husband:—
"July 12, 1855.
"... Believe that I sympathize with you most deeply, for I enjoy in my life-partner those things which you speak of as making you feel your loss so heavily.
"It is the kindly domestic affections, the worthiness, the mutual aid in sorrow, the mutual joy in happiness that has existed, which makes the rupture of such a tie as yours so heavy to bear; and yet you would not wish it otherwise, for the remembrance of those things brings solace with the grief. I speak, thinking what my own trouble would be if I lost my partner; and I try to comfort you in the only way in which I think I could be comforted.
"M. Faraday."
There was, as Tyndall has observed, a mixture of chivalry with this affection. In his book of diplomas he made the following remarkable entry:—
"25th January, 1847.
"Amongst these records and events, I here insert the date of one which, as a source of honour and happiness, far exceeds all the rest. We were married on June 12, 1821.
"M. Faraday."
On the character of Faraday, these two qualities of reverence and kindliness have appeared to me singularly influential. Among the ways in which they manifested themselves was that beautiful combination of firmness and gentleness which has been frequently remarked: intimately associated with them also were his simplicity and truthfulness. These points must have made themselves evident already, but they deserve further illustration.
In his early days, "one Sabbath morning his swift and sober steps were carrying him along the Holborn pavement towards his meeting-house, when some small missile struck him smartly on the hat. He would have thought it an accident and passed on, when a second and a third rap caused him to turn and look just in time to perceive a face hastily withdrawn from a window in the upper story of a closed linendraper's establishment. Roused by the affront, he marched up to the door and rapped. The servant opening it said there was no one at home, but Faraday declared he knew better, and desired to be shown upstairs. Opposition still being made, he pushed on, made his way up through the house, opened the door of an upper room, discovering a party of young drapers' assistants, who at once professed they knew nothing of the motive of this sudden visit. But the hunter had now run his game to earth: he taxed them sharply with their annoyance of wayfarers on the Sabbath, and said that unless an apology were made at once, they should hear from their employer of something much to their disadvantage. An apology was made forthwith."[13]