Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

VISIT TO GENEVA.

Of that Geneva visit Faraday says, in 1858, to M. A. de la Rive:—

I have some such thoughts (of gratitude) even as regards your own father, who was, I may say, the first who personally at Geneva, and afterwards by correspondence, encouraged and by that sustained me.

This correspondence, which began with the father and was continued with the son, lasted altogether nearly fifty years.

From Geneva the travellers went northward, by Lausanne, Vevay, Bern, Zürich, and Schaffhausen, across Baden and Würtemburg to Munich. After visiting this and other German towns, they crossed Tyrol southwards to Vicenza, halting in the neighbourhood of the Pietra Mala to collect the inflammable gas which there rises from the soil. They spent a day in Padua, and three days in Venice; and on by Bologna to Florence, where Davy completed his analysis of the gas collected at Pietra Mala. Early in November they were again in Rome. He writes once and again to his mother, while his anxiety about the Royal Institution makes him send inquiries to Abbott as to what is going to happen there, and to charge him, “if any change should occur in Albemarle Street,” not to forget his books which are lying there. “I prize them now more than ever.”

To his former master, Riebau, he wrote from Rome as follows:—

Rome, Jan. 5th, 1815.

Honoured Sir,

It is with very peculiar but very pleasing and indeed flattering sentiments that I commence a letter intended for you, for I esteem it as a high honour that you should not only allow but even wish me to write to you. During the whole of the short eight years that I was with you, Sir, and during the year or two that passed afterwards before I left England, I continually enjoyed your goodness and the effects of it; and it is gratifying to me in the highest degree to find that even absence has not impaired it, and that you are willing to give me the highest proof of (allow me to say) friendship that distance will admit. I have received both the letters that you have wrote to me, Sir, and consider them as far from being the least proofs of your goodwill and remembrance of me. Allow me to thank you humbly but sincerely for these and all other kindness, and I hope that at some future day an opportunity will occur when I can express more strongly my gratitude.

I beg leave to return a thousand thanks to my kind Mistress, to Mr. and Mrs. Paine and George for their remembrances, and venture to give mine with respect in return. I am very glad to hear that all are well. I am very much afraid you say too much of me to Mr. Dance, Mr. Cosway, Mrs. Udney, etc., for I feel unworthy of what you have said of me formerly, and what you may say now. Since I have left England, the experience I have gained in more diversified and extended life, and the knowledge I have gained of what is to be learned and what others know, have sufficiently shown me my own ignorance, the degree in which I am surpassed by all the world, and my want of powers; but I hope that at least I shall return home with an addition to my self-knowledge. When speaking of those who are so much my superiors, as Mr. Dance, Mr. Cosway, and Mrs. Udney, etc., I feel a continual fear that I should appear to want respect, but the manner in which you mention their names in your letter emboldens me to beg that you will give my humblest respects to those honored persons, if, and only if (I am afraid of intruding) they should again speak of me to you. Mr. Dance’s kindness claims my gratitude, and I trust that my thanks, the only mark that I can give, will be accepted.