Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

At Florence he goes with Davy to the Accademia del Cimento. He sees the library, the gardens, the museum. Here is Galileo’s own telescope—a simple tube of paper and wood, with lenses at each end—with which he discovered Jupiter’s satellites. Here is the great burning glass of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. And here is a numerous collection of magnets, including one enormous loadstone supporting a weight of 150 pounds. They make “the grand experiment of burning the diamond” in oxygen by the sun’s heat concentrated through the Grand Duke’s burning glass. They find the diamond to be pure carbon. Then early in April they depart for Rome.

From Rome Faraday wrote to his mother a long chatty letter summarising his travels, and sending messages of kindly remembrance to his old master Riebau and others. He tells how, in spite of political troubles, Sir Humphry Davy’s high name has procured them free admission everywhere, and how they have just heard that Paris has been taken by the Allied troops.

At Rome they witness unconvinced some attempts of Morichini to impart magnetism to steel needles by the solar rays. They pass the Colosseum by moonlight, making an early morning start across the Campagna, on the road to Naples, with an armed guard for fear of brigands. Twice, in the middle of May, they ascend Vesuvius, the second time during a partial eruption rendered all the more vivid by the lateness of the hour—half-past seven—at which the edge of the crater was reached. In June they visit Terni, and note the nearly circular rainbow visible in the spray of the cataract; and so across the Apennines to Milan.

At Milan occurs the following entry:—

Friday 17th [June, 1814], Milan. Saw M. Volta, who came to Sir H. Davy, an hale elderly man, bearing the red ribbon, and very free in conversation.

He does not record how the ceremonious old Count, who had specially attired himself in his Court uniform to welcome the illustrious chemist, was horrified at the informal manners and uncourtly dress of the tourist philosopher.

So, travelling by Como and Domo d’Ossola, they come to Geneva, and here remain a long time; and Faraday writes again to his mother and to Abbott. He can even find time to discuss with the latter the relative merits of the French and Italian languages, and the trend of civilisation in Paris and in Rome. Twice he sends messages to Riebau. One of his letters to Abbott, in September, contains passages of more than transient interest:—

Some doubts have been expressed to me lately with respect to the continuance of the Royal Institution; Mr. Newman can probably give a guess at the issue of them. I have three boxes of books, &c., there, and I should be sorry if they were lost by the turning up of unforeseen circumstances; but I hope all will end well (you will not read this out aloud). Remember me to all friends, if you please. And “now for you and I to ourselves.”...

In passing through life, my dear friend, everyone must expect to receive lessons, both in the school of prosperity and in that of adversity; and, taken in a general sense, these schools do not only include riches and poverty, but everything that may cause the happiness and pleasure of man, and every feeling that may give him pain. I have been in at the door of both these schools; nor am I so far on the right hand at present that I do not get hurt by the thorns on my left. With respect to myself, I have always perceived (when, after a time, I saw things more clearly) that those things which at first appeared as misfortunes or evils ultimately were actually benefits, and productive of much good in the future progress of things. Sometimes I compared them to storms and tempests, which cause a temporary disarrangement to produce permanent good; sometimes they appeared to me like roads—stony, uneven, hilly, and uncomfortable, it is true—but the only roads to a good beyond them; and sometimes I said they were clouds which intervened between me and the sun of prosperity, but which I found were refreshing, reserving to me that tone and vigour of mind which prosperity alone would enervate and ultimately destroy....

HINTS OF DISCOMFORT.