His heart turned longingly back to the poor ones he had left behind. He wrote to his mother, "The first and last thing in my mind is England, home, and friends. When sick, when cold, when tired, the thoughts of those at home are a warm and refreshing balm to my heart.... These are the first and greatest sweetness in the life of man.... I am almost contented except with my ignorance, which becomes more visible to me every day." And again, "I have several times been more than half decided to return hastily home: I am only restrained by the wish of improvement." To his sister he wrote, "Give my love with a kiss to mother, the first thing you do on reading this letter, and tell her how much I think of her." To Abbott he wrote something intended for his eyes only, but headed, "I do not wish that my mother should remain ignorant of it. I have no secrets from her." His heart bounded with joy at the prospect of meeting them again, and "enjoying the pleasure of their conversation, from which he had been excluded." No absorption in science could make him outgrow his parents and his humble home.
On his return to England his salary was increased to $500 yearly, and he was promoted to Laboratory Assistant. He was now twenty-four. He had noted carefully Davy's researches in iodine and chlorine, had seen him develop his safety-lamp, which has proved an untold blessing to miners, had made many experiments from his own thinking; and now he too was to give his first course of six lectures before his friends in the City Philosophical Society, on Chemical Affinity, and kindred topics. He wrote them out with great care; for whatever he did was well done. This year he published his first paper in the "Quarterly Journal of Science" on caustic lime. Encouraged by the approving words of Sir Humphry, the following year he wrote six papers for the "Quarterly," giving his experiments with gases and minerals, and gave another course of lectures before the Philosophical Society. To improve himself in delivering these, he attended lectures on oratory, taking copious notes.
Seven years had now gone by in his apprenticeship to Science. He had published thirty-seven papers in the "Quarterly," had a book ready for the press, on the alloys of steel, and had read a paper before the Royal Society itself, on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. But the young and now brilliant student had other weighty matters in hand. Five years before this, he had written in his diary:
"What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,
Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?
'Tis love.
What's that the wise man always strives to shun,
Though still it ever o'er the world has run?
'Tis love."
But now, whether he tried to shun it or no, he became thoroughly in love with Sarah Barnard, an intelligent and sweet-tempered girl, the daughter of a silversmith. Distracted by fears lest he might not win her, he wrote her. "In whatever way I can best minister to your happiness, either by assiduity 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."
The girl showed this to her father, who replied that love made philosophers say very foolish things. She hesitated about accepting him, and went away to the seaside to consider it; but the ardent lover followed, determined to learn the worst if need be. They walked on the cliffs overhanging the ocean, and Faraday wrote in his journal as the day drew near its close, "My thoughts saddened and fell, from the fear I should never enjoy such happiness again. I could not master my feelings, or prevent them from sinking, and I actually at last shamed myself by moist eyes." He blamed himself because he did not know "the best means to secure the heart he wished to gain." He knew how to fathom the depths of chemical combinations, but he could not fathom the depths of Sarah Barnard's heart.
At last the hour of her decision came; and both were made supremely happy by it. A week later he wrote her, "Every moment offers me fresh proof of the power you have over me. I could not at one time have thought it possible that I, that any man, could have been under the dominion of feelings so undivided and so intense: now I think that no other man can have felt or feel as I do." A year later they were married very quietly, he desiring their wedding day to be "just like any other day." Twenty-eight years later he wrote among the important dates and discoveries of his life, "June 12, 1821, he married,—an event which, more than any other, contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful state of mind. The union has nowise changed, except in the depth and strength of its character."
For forty-seven years "his dear Sarah" made life a joy to him. He rarely left home; but if so, as at the great gathering of British Scientists at Birmingham, he wrote back, "After all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of home; and here, even here, the moment I leave the table, I wish I were with you IN QUIET. Oh, what happiness is ours! My runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that happiness the more."
And now came twenty years in science that made Faraday the wonder and ornament of his age. Elected an F.R.S., he began at once twelve lectures in Chemical Manipulation before the London Institution, six on Chemical Philosophy before the Royal Society, published six papers on electromagnetism, and began a course of juvenile lectures which continued for nineteen years. This was one of the beautiful things of Faraday's life,—a great man living in a whirl of work, yet taking time to make science plain to the young. When asked at what age he would teach science, he replied that he had never found a child too young to understand him. For twenty years he lectured at the Royal Academy at Woolwich, became scientific adviser to the government with regard to lighthouses and buoys, not for gain, but for the public good, drew all London to his eloquent lectures with his brilliant experiments, Prince Albert attending with his sons; and published one hundred and fifty-eight scientific essays and thirty series of "Experimental Researches in Electricity," which latter, says Dr. Gladstone, "form one of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work; one of the rarest treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has ever been enriched."
He not only gathered into his vast brain what other men had learned of science, but he tested every step to prove the facts, and became, says Professor Tyndall, "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." He loved science as he loved his family and his God, and played with Nature as with a petted child. When he lectured, "there was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. His audience took fire with him, and every face was flushed."