Transcriber's Notes:

This book contains Macmillan & Co.'s September 1874 book catalogue, which follows the index for the main book.

Additional Transcriber's Notes are at the end.

MICHAEL FARADAY.

Michael Faraday
From a Photograph by John Watkins. 34 Parliament Street.

MICHAEL FARADAY.

BY
J. H. GLADSTONE, Ph.D., F.R.S.
THIRD EDITION, WITH PORTRAIT.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1874.
[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.]

LONDON:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFACE.

Shortly after the death of Michael Faraday, Professor Auguste de la Rive, and others of his friends, gave to the world their impressions of his life, his character, and his work; Professor Tyndall drew his portrait as a man of science; and after a while Dr. Bence Jones published his biography in two octavo volumes, with copious extracts from his journals and correspondence. In a review of this "Life and Letters" I happened to mention my thought of giving to the public some day my own reminiscences of the great philosopher; several friends urged me to do so, not in the pages of a magazine, but in the form of a little book designed for those of his fellow-countrymen who venerate his noble character without being able to follow his scientific researches. I accepted the task. Professor Tyndall and Dr. Bence Jones, with Messrs. Longman, the publishers, kindly permitted me to make free use of their materials; but I am indebted to the Corporation of the Trinity House, and to many friends, for a good deal of additional information; and in compiling my book I have preferred, where practicable, to illustrate the character of Faraday by documents or incidents hitherto unpublished, or contained in those sketches of the philosopher which are less generally known.

It is due to myself to say that I had pretty well sketched out the second part of this book before I read M. Dumas' "Eloge Historique." The close similarity of my analysis of Professor Faraday's character with that of the illustrious French chemist may perhaps be accepted as an additional warrant for the correctness of our independent estimates.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

The very favourable reception which my book has met with, both from the press and the public, seems to call for my grateful acknowledgment on the issue of a second edition.

In revising the former, I have added some further particulars about Faraday, especially in regard to "his method of working;" and an engraving from a photograph by Watkins, which best recalls to my recollection the features and the usual expression of the genial philosopher.

CONTENTS.

MICHAEL FARADAY.

SECTION I.
THE STORY OF HIS LIFE.

At the beginning of this century, in the neighbourhood of Manchester Square, London, there was an inquisitive boy running about, playing at marbles, and minding his baby-sister. He lived in Jacob's Well Mews, close by, and was learning the three R's at a common day-school. Few passers-by would have noticed him, and none certainly would have imagined that this boy, as he grew up, was to achieve the truest success in life, and to die honoured by the great, the wise, and the good. Yet so it was; and to tell the story of his life, to trace the sources of this success, and to depict some of the noble results of his work, are the objects of this biographical sketch.

It was not at Jacob's Well Mews, but in Newington Butts, that the boy had been born, on September 22, 1791, and his parents, James and Margaret Faraday, had given this, their third child, the unusual name of Michael. The father was a journeyman blacksmith, a skilful workman who, in spite of poverty and feeble health, strove to bring up his children in habits of industry and the love of God.

Of course young Michael must soon do something for his living. There happened to be a bookseller's shop in Blandford Street, a few doors from the entrance to the Mews, kept by a Mr. Riebau, an intelligent man, who is said to have had a leaning to astrology; and there he went as errand boy when thirteen years old. Many a weary walk he had, carrying round newspapers to his master's customers; but he did his work faithfully; and so, after a twelvemonth, the bookseller was willing to take him as an apprentice, and that without a premium.

Now, a boy in a bookseller's shop can look at the inside as well as the outside of the books he handles, and young Faraday took advantage of his position, and fed on such intellectual food as Watts's "Improvement of the Mind," Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry," and the article on "Electricity" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, besides such lighter dishes as Miss Burney's "Evelina;" nor can we doubt that when he was binding Lyons' "Experiments on Electricity," and Boyle's "Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall Principles," he looked beyond the covers.[1] And his thirst for knowledge did not stop with reading: he must see whether Mrs. Marcet's statements were correct, and so, to quote his own words, "I made such simple experiments in chemistry as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and also constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass phial, and afterwards with a real cylinder, as well as other electrical apparatus of a corresponding kind."

He kept too a note-book called "The Philosophical Miscellany," intended, he tells us, "to promote both amusement and instruction, and also to corroborate or invalidate those theories which are continually starting into the world of science;" and miscellaneous indeed were the scraps he gathered from the magazines of the time.

One day, early in 1810, walking somewhere in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street, he saw in a shop-window a bill announcing that lectures on natural philosophy were delivered by Mr. Tatum, at 53, Dorset Street, at eight in the evening, price of admission one shilling. He wanted to hear these lectures. His master's permission was obtained, but where was the money to come from? The needful shillings were given him by his elder brother, Robert, who earned them as a blacksmith; and so Michael Faraday made his first acquaintance with scientific lectures. And not with lectures only, for Tatum's house was frequented by other earnest students, and lifelong friendships were formed. Among these students was Benjamin Abbott, a young Quaker, who had received a good education, and had then a situation in a City house as confidential clerk. With him Faraday chatted on philosophy or anything else, and happily for us he chatted on paper, in letters of that fulness and length which the penny post and the telegraph have well-nigh driven out of existence; and happily for us, too, Abbott kept those letters, and Dr. Bence Jones has published them. They are wonderful letters for a poor bookseller's apprentice; they bear the stamp of an innate gentleman and philosopher.

Long afterwards, when Benjamin Abbott was an old man, he used to tell how Faraday made his first experiments in the kitchen of his house, and delivered his first lecture from the end of that kitchen table. The electrical machine made by him in those early days came into the possession of Sir James South, and now forms one of the treasures of the Royal Institution.

As the eager student drank in the lectures of Tatum, he took notes, and he afterwards wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, numbering and describing the different experiments that he saw performed, and making wonderfully neat drawings of the apparatus, in good perspective. These notes he bound in four volumes, adding to each a copious index, and prefixing to the first this dedication to his master:—

"To Mr. G. Riebau.

"Sir,

"When first I evinced a predilection for the sciences, but more particularly for that one denominated electricity, you kindly interested yourself in the progress I made in the knowledge of facts relating to the different theories in existence, readily permitting me to examine those books in your possession that were in any way related to the subjects then occupying my attention. To you, therefore, is to be attributed the rise and existence of that small portion of knowledge relating to the science which I possess, and accordingly to you are due my acknowledgments.

"Unused to the arts of flattery, I can only express my obligations in a plain but sincere way. Permit me, therefore, Sir, to return thanks in this manner for the many favours I have received at your hands and by your means and believe me,

"Your grateful and obedient Servant,

"M. Faraday."

Now there happened to be lodging at Mr. Riebau's a notable foreigner of the name of Masquerier. He was a distinguished artist, who had painted Napoleon's portrait, and had passed through the stirring events of the first French Revolution, not without serious personal danger, and was now finding a refuge and a home in London. He was struck with the intelligence of the apprentice, whose duty it was to do various offices for him; and he lent the young man his books, and taught him how to make the drawings in perspective which have already been alluded to.

But the lectures in Dorset Street were not the only ones that Michael Faraday attended; and as the Royal Institution is the central scene of all his subsequent history, we must pay a mental visit to that building. Turning from the busy stream of Piccadilly into the quiet of Albemarle Street, we see, in a line with the other houses, a large Grecian façade with fourteen lofty pilasters. Between these are folding doors, which are pushed open from time to time by grave-looking gentlemen, many of them white-headed; but often of an afternoon, and always on Friday evening during the season, the quiet street is thronged with carriages and pedestrians, ladies and gentlemen, who flock through these folding doors. Entering with them, we find ourselves in a vestibule, with a large stone staircase in front, and rooms opening on the right and left. The walls of these rooms are lined with myriads of books, and the tables are covered with scientific and other periodicals of the day, and there are cabinets of philosophical apparatus and a small museum. Going up the broad staircase and turning to the right, we pass through an ante-room to the lecture theatre. There stands the large table, horseshoe-shaped, with the necessary appliances for experiments, and behind it a furnace and arrangements for black-board and diagrams; while round the table as a centre range semicircular seats, rising tier above tier, and surmounted by a semicircular gallery, the whole capable of seating 700 persons. On the basement is a new chemical laboratory, fitted up with modern appliances, and beyond it the old laboratory, with its furnaces and sand-bath, its working tables and well-stored shelves, flanked by cellars that look like dark lumber-rooms. A narrow private staircase leads up to the suite of apartments in which resides the Director of the house. Such is the Royal Institution of Great Britain, incorporated by Royal Charter in the year 1800, "for the diffusing knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, and for teaching, by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments, the application of science to the common purposes of life;"—with the motto, "Illustrans commoda vitæ." Fifty or sixty years ago the building was essentially what it is now, except the façade and entrance, and that the laboratory, which was considered a model of perfection, was even darker than at present, and in the place of the modern chemical room there was a small theatre. The side room, too, was fitted up for actual work, though even at mid-day it had to be artificially lighted; and beyond this there was, and still is, a place called the Froggery, from a certain old tradition of frogs having been kept there. The first intention of the founders to exhibit useful inventions had not been found very practicable, but the place was already famous with the memories of Rumford and Young; and at that time the genius of Sir Humphry Davy was entrancing the intellectual world with brilliant discoveries, and drawing fashionable audiences to Albemarle Street to listen to his eloquent expositions.

Among the customers of the bookseller in Blandford Street was a Mr. Dance, who, being a member of the Royal Institution, took young Faraday to hear the last four public lectures of Davy. The eager student sat in the gallery, just over the clock, and took copious notes of the Professor's explanations of radiant matter, chlorine, simple inflammables, and metals, while he watched the experiments that were performed. Afterwards he wrote the lectures fairly out in a quarto volume, that is still preserved—first the theoretical portions, then the experiments with drawings, and finally an index. "The desire to be engaged in scientific occupation, even though of the lowest kind, induced me," he says, "whilst an apprentice, to write, in my ignorance of the world and simplicity of my mind, to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society. Naturally enough, 'No answer' was the reply left with the porter."

On the 7th of October his apprenticeship expired, and on the next day he became a journeyman bookbinder under a disagreeable master—who, like his friend the artist, was a French émigré. No wonder he sighed still more for congenial occupation.

Towards the end of that same October Sir Humphry Davy was working on a new liquid which was violently explosive, now known as chloride of nitrogen,—and he met with an accident that seriously injured his eye, and produced an attack of inflammation. Of course, for a while he could not write, and, possibly through the introduction of M. Masquerier,[2] the young bookseller was employed as his amanuensis. This, however, Faraday himself tells us lasted only "some days;" and in writing years afterwards to Dr. Paris, he says, "My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he would favour my views; at the same time I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures." Davy, it seems, called with the letter on one of his friends—at that time honorary inspector of the models and apparatus—and said, "Pepys, what am I to do? Here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution—what can I do?" "Do?" replied Pepys; "put him to wash bottles: if he is good for anything, he will do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy, "we must try him with something better than that."

So Davy wrote a kind reply, and had an interview with the young man upon the subject; in which, however, he advised him to stick to his business, telling him that "Science was a harsh mistress, and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service." He promised him the work of the Institution, and his own besides.

But shortly afterwards the laboratory assistant was discharged for misconduct, and so it happened that one night the inhabitants of quiet Weymouth Street were startled by the unusual apparition of a grand carriage with a footman, which drew up before the house where Faraday lived, when the servant left a note from Sir Humphry Davy. The next morning there was an interview, which resulted in the young aspirant for scientific work being engaged to help the famous philosopher. His engagement dates from March 1, 1813, and he was to get 25s. per week, and a room in the house. The duties had been previously laid down by the managers:—"To attend and assist the lecturers and professors in preparing for, and during lectures. Where any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room and laboratory to the lecture-room, and to clean and replace them after being used; reporting to the managers such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. That in one day in each week he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month."

The young assistant did not confine himself to the mere discharge of these somewhat menial duties. He put in order the mineralogical collection; and from the first we find him occupying a higher position than the minute quoted above would indicate.

In the course of a few days he was extracting sugar from beet-root; but all his laboratory proceedings were not so pleasant or so innocent as that, for he had to make one of the worst smelling of all chemical compounds, bisulphide of carbon; and as Davy continued to work on the explosive chloride of nitrogen, his assistant's career stood some chance of being suddenly cut short at its commencement. Indeed it seems that before the middle of April he had run the gauntlet of four separate explosions. Knowing that the liquid would go off on the slightest provocation, the experimenters wore masks of glass, but this did not save them from injury. In one case Faraday was holding a small tube containing a few grains of it between his finger and thumb, and brought a piece of warm cement near it, when he was suddenly stunned, and on returning to consciousness found himself standing with his hand in the same position, but torn by the shattered tube, and the glass of his mask even cut by the projected fragments. Nor was it easy to say when the compound could be relied on, for it seemed very capricious; for instance, one day it rose quietly in vapour in a tube exhausted by the air-pump, but the next day, when subjected to the same treatment, it exploded with a fearful noise, and Sir Humphry was cut about the chin, and was struck with violence on the forehead. This seems to have put an end to the experiments.

Nevertheless, in spite of disagreeables and dangers, the embryo philosopher worked on with a joyful heart, beguiling himself occasionally with a song, and in the evening playing tunes on his flute.

The change in Michael Faraday's employment naturally made him more earnest still in the pursuit of knowledge. He was admitted as a member of the "City Philosophical Society," a fraternity of thirty or forty men in the middle or lower ranks of life, who met every Wednesday evening for mutual instruction; and here is a contemporary picture of him at one of its debates:—

"But hark! A voice arises near the chair!

Its liquid sounds glide smoothly through the air;

The listening muse with rapture bends to view

The place of speaking, and the speaker too.

Neat was the youth in dress, in person plain;

His eye read thus, Philosopher in grain;

Of understanding clear, reflection deep;

Expert to apprehend, and strong to keep.

His watchful mind no subject can elude,

Nor specious arts of sophists e'er delude;

His powers, unshackled, range from pole to pole;

His mind from error free, from guilt his soul.

Warmth in his heart, good humour in his face,

A friend to mirth, but foe to vile grimace;

A temper candid, manners unassuming,

Always correct, yet always unpresuming.

Such was the youth, the chief of all the band;

His name well known, Sir Humphry's right hand.

With manly ease towards the chair he bends,

With Watts's Logic at his finger-ends."

Another way in which he strove to educate himself is thus described in his own words:—"During this spring Magrath and I established the mutual improvement plan, and met at my rooms up in the attics of the Royal Institution, or at Wood Street at his warehouse. It consisted, perhaps, of half-a-dozen persons, chiefly from the City Philosophical Society, who met of an evening to read together, and to criticise, correct, and improve each other's pronunciation and construction of language. The discipline was very sturdy, the remarks very plain and open, and the results most valuable. This continued for several years."

Seven months after his appointment there began a new passage in Faraday's life, which gave a fresh impulse to his mental activity, and largely extended his knowledge of men and things. Sir Humphry Davy, wishing to travel on the Continent, and having received a special pass from the Emperor Napoleon, offered to take him as his amanuensis: he accepted the proposal, and for a year and a half they wandered about France, Italy, and Switzerland, and then they returned rapidly by the Tyrol, Germany, and Holland.

From letters written when abroad we can catch some of the impressions made on his mind by these novel scenes. "I have not forgot," he writes to Abbott, "and never shall forget, the ideas that were forced on my mind in the first days. To me, who had lived all my days of remembrance in London, a city surrounded by a flat green country, a hill was a mountain, and a stone a rock; for though I had abstract ideas of the things, and could say rock and mountain, and would talk of them, yet I had no perfect ideas. Conceive then the astonishment, the pleasure, and the information which entered my mind in the varied county of Devonshire, where the foundations of the earth were first exposed to my view, and where I first saw granite, limestone, &c., in those places and in those forms where the ever-working and all-wonderful hand of nature had placed them. Mr. Ben., it is impossible you can conceive my feelings, and it is as impossible for me to describe them. The sea then presented a new source of information and interest; and on approaching the shores of France, with what eagerness, and how often, were my eyes directed to the South! When arrived there, I thought myself in an uncivilized country; for never before nor since have I seen such wretched beings as at Morlaix." His impression of the people was not improved by the fact of their having arrested the travellers on landing, and having detained them for five days until they had sent to Paris for verification of their papers.

Again, to her towards whom his heart was wont to turn from distant lands with no small longing: "I have said nothing as yet to you, dear mother, about our past journey, which has been as pleasant and agreeable (a few things excepted, in reality nothing) as it was possible to be. Sir H. Davy's high name at Paris gave us free admission into all parts of the French dominions, and our passports were granted with the utmost readiness. We first went to Paris, and stopped there two months; afterwards we passed, in a southerly direction, through France to Montpellier, on the borders of the Mediterranean. From thence we went to Nice, stopping a day or two at Aix on our way; and from Nice we crossed the Alps to Turin, in Piedmont. From Turin we proceeded to Genoa, which place we left afterwards in an open boat, and proceeded by sea towards Lerici. This place we reached after a very disagreeable passage, and not without apprehensions of being overset by the way. As there was nothing there very enticing, we continued our route to Florence; and, after a stay of three weeks or a month, left that fine city, and in four days arrived here at Rome. Being now in the midst of things curious and interesting, something arises every day which calls for attention and observations. The relics of ancient Roman magnificence, the grandeur of the churches, and their richness also—the difference of habits and customs, each in turn engages the mind, and keeps it continually employed. Florence, too, was not destitute of its attractions for me, and in the Academy del Cimento and the museum attached to it is contained an inexhaustible fund of entertainment and improvement; indeed, during the whole journey, new and instructive things have been continually presented to me. Tell B. I have crossed the Alps and the Apennines; I have been at the Jardin des Plantes; at the museum arranged by Buffon; at the Louvre, among the chefs d'œuvre of sculpture and the masterpieces of painting; at the Luxembourg Palace, amongst Rubens' works; that I have seen a Glowworm!!! waterspouts, torpedo, the museum at the Academy del Cimento, as well as St. Peter's, and some of the antiquities here, and a vast variety of things far too numerous to enumerate."

But he kept a lengthy journal, and as we turn over the pages—for the best part of it is printed by Bence Jones—we meet vivid sketches of the provokingly slow custom-house officers, the postilion in jack-boots, and the thin pigs of Morlaix—pictures of Paris, too, when every Frenchman was to him an unintelligible enemy; when the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, and the Dying Gladiator were at the Louvre, and when the First Napoleon visited the Senate in full state. "He was sitting in one corner of his carriage, covered and almost hidden from sight by an enormous robe of ermine, and his face overshadowed by a tremendous plume of feathers that descended from a velvet hat." We watch Sir Humphry as Ampère and others bring to him the first specimens of iodine, and he makes experiments with his travelling apparatus on the dark lustrous crystals and their violet vapour; we seem, too, to be present with the great English chemist and his scholar as they burn diamonds at Florence by means of the Grand Duke's gigantic lens, and prove that the invisible result is carbonic acid; or as they study the springs of inflammable gas at Pietra Mala, and the molten minerals of Vesuvius. The whole, too, is interspersed with bits of fun, and this culminates at the Roman Carnival, where he evidently thoroughly enjoyed the follies of the Corso, the pelting with sugar-plums, and the masked balls, to the last of which he went in a nightgown and nightcap, with a lady who knew all his acquaintances; and between the two they puzzled their friends mightily.

This year and a half may be considered as the time of Faraday's education; it was the period of his life that best corresponds with the collegiate course of other men who have attained high distinction in the world of thought. But his University was Europe; his professors the master whom he served, and those illustrious men to whom the renown of Davy introduced the travellers. It made him personally known, also, to foreign savants, at a time when there was little intercourse between Great Britain and the Continent; and thus he was associated with the French Academy of Sciences while still young, his works found a welcome all over Europe, and some of the best representatives of foreign science became his most intimate friends.

In May 1815, his engagement at the Royal Institution was renewed, with a somewhat higher position and increased salary, which was again raised in the following year to 100l. per annum. The handwriting in the Laboratory Note-book changes in September 1815, from the large running letters of Brande to the small neat characters of Faraday, his first entry having reference to an analysis of "Dutch turf ash," and then soon occur investigations into the nature of substances bearing what must have been to him the mysterious names of Paligenetic tincture, and Baphe eugenes chruson. It is to be hoped that the constituents of this golden dye agreed together better than the Greek words of its name.

We can imagine the young philosopher taking a deeper interest in the researches on flame which his master was then carrying out, and in the gradual perfection of the safety-lamp that was to bid defiance to the explosive gases of the mine; this at least is certain, that Davy, in the preface to his celebrated paper on the subject, expresses himself "indebted to Mr. Michael Faraday for much able assistance," and that the youthful investigator carefully preserved the manuscript given him to copy.

Part of his duty, in fact, was to copy such papers; and as Sir Humphry had a habit of destroying them, he begged leave to keep the originals, and in that way collected two large volumes of precious manuscripts.

But there came a change. Hitherto he had been absorbing; now he was to emit. The knowledge which had been a source of delight to himself must now overflow as a blessing to others: and this in two ways. His first lecture was given at the City Philosophical Society on January 17, 1816, and in the same year his first paper was published in the Quarterly Journal of Science. The lecture was on the general properties of matter; the paper was an analysis of some native caustic lime from Tuscany. Neither was important in itself, but each resembled those little streams which travellers are taken to look at because they are the sources of mighty rivers, for Faraday became the prince of experimental lecturers, and his long series of published researches have won for him the highest niche in the temple of science.

When he began to investigate for himself, it could not have been easy to separate his own work from that which he was expected to do for his master. Hence no small danger of misunderstandings and jealousies; and some of these ugly attendants on rising fame did actually throw their black shadows over the intercourse between the older and the younger man of genius. In these earlier years, however, all appears to have been bright; and the following letter, written from Rome in October 1818, will give a good idea of the assistant's miscellaneous duties, and of the pleasant feelings of Davy towards him. It may be added that in another letter he is requested to send some dozens of "flies with pale bodies" to Florence, for Sir Humphry loved fly-fishing as well as philosophy.

"To Mr. Faraday.

"I received the note you were so good as to address to me at Venice; and by a letter from Mr. Hatchett I find that you have found the parallax of Mr. West's Sirius, and that, as I expected, he is mistaken.

"If when you write to me you will give the 3 per cents. and long annuities, it will be enough.

"I will thank you to put the enclosed letters into the post, except those for Messrs. Morland and Messrs. Drummond, which perhaps you will be good enough to deliver.

"Mr. Hatchett's letter contained praises of you which were very gratifying to me; and pray believe me there is no one more interested in your success and welfare than your sincere well-wisher and friend,

"H. Davy.

"Rome."

It must not be supposed, however, that he had any astronomical duties, for the parallax he had found was not that of the Dog-star, but of a reputed new metal, Sirium, which was resolved in Faraday's hands into iron, nickel, and sulphur. But the impostor was not to be put down so easily, for he turned up again under the alias of Vestium; but again he was unable to escape the vigilant eye of the young detective, for one known substance after another was removed from it; and then, says Faraday, "my Vestium entirely disappeared."

His occupations during this period were multifarious enough. We must picture him to ourselves as a young-looking man of about thirty years of age, well made, and neat in his dress, his cheerfulness of disposition often breaking out in a short crispy laugh, but thoughtful enough when something important is to be done. He has to prepare the apparatus for Brande's lectures, and when the hour has arrived he stands on the right of the Professor, and helps him to produce the strange transformations of the chemical art. And conjurers, indeed, the two appear in the eyes of the youth on the left, who waits upon them, then the "laboratory assistant," now the well-known author, Mr. William Bollaert, from whom I have learnt many details of this period. When not engaged with the lectures, Faraday is manufacturing rare chemicals, or performing commercial analyses, or giving scientific evidence on trials. One of these was a famous one, arising from the Imperial Insurance Company resisting the claim of Severn and King, sugar-bakers; and in it appeared all the chemists of the day, like knights in the lists, on opposite sides, ready to break a lance with each other.

All his spare time Faraday was occupied with original work. Chlorine had a fascination for him, though the yellow choking gas would get out into the room, and he investigated its combinations with carbon, squeezed it into a liquid, and applied it successfully as a disinfectant when fatal fever broke out in the Millbank Penitentiary. Iodine too, another of Davy's elements, was made to join itself to carbon and hydrogen; and naphthaline was tormented with strong mineral acids. Long, too, he tried to harden steel and prevent its rusting, by alloying it with small quantities of platinum and the rarer metals; the boy blew the bellows till the crucibles melted, but a few ordinary razors seem to have been the best results. Far more successful was he in repeating and extending some experiments of Ampère on the mutual action of magnets and electric currents; and when, after months of work and many ingenious contrivances, the wire began to move round the magnet, and the magnet round the wire, he himself danced about the revolving metals, his face beaming with joy—a joy not unmixed with thankful pride—as he exclaimed, "There they go! there they go! we have succeeded at last." After this discovery he thought himself entitled to a treat, and proposed to his attendant a visit to the theatre. "Which shall it be?" "Oh, let it be Astley's, to see the horses." So to Astley's they went; but at the pit entrance there was a crush; a big fellow pressed roughly upon the lad, and Faraday, who could stand no injustice, ordered him to behave himself, and showed fight in defence of his young companion.

The rising philosopher indulged, too, in other recreations. He had a wonderful velocipede, a progenitor of the modern bicycle, which often took him of an early morning to Hampstead Hill. There was also his flute; and a small party for the practice of vocal music once a week at a friend's house. He sang bass correctly, both as to time and tune.

And though the City Philosophical Society was no more, the ardent group of students of nature who used to meet there were not wholly dispersed. They seem to have carried on their system of mutual improvement, and to have read the current scientific journals at Mr. Nicol's house till he married, and then alternately at those of Mr. R. H. Solly, Mr. Ainger, and Mr. Hennel, of Apothecaries' Hall, who came to a tragical end through an explosion of fulminating silver. Several of them, including Mr. Cornelius Varley, joined the Society of Arts, which at that time had committees of various sciences, and was very democratic in its management; and, finding that by pulling together they had great influence, they constituted themselves a "caucus," adopting the American word, and meeting in private. Magrath was looked upon as a "chair-maker," and Faraday in subsequent years held the office of Chairman of the Committee of Chemistry, and occasionally he presided at the large meetings of the Society.

During this time (1823) the Athenæum Club was started, not in the present Grecian palace in Pall Mall, but in a private house in Waterloo Place. Its members were the aristocracy of science, literature, and art, and they made Faraday their honorary secretary; but after a year he transferred the office to his friend Magrath, who held it for a long period.

Among the various sects into which Christendom is divided, few are less known than the Sandemanians. About a century and a half ago, when there was little light in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, a pious minister of the name of John Glas began to preach that the Church should be governed only by the teaching of Christ and His apostles, that its connection with the State was an error, and that we ought to believe and to practise no more and no less than what we find from the New Testament that the primitive Church believed and practised. These principles, which sound very familiar in these days, procured for their asserter much obloquy and a deposition by the Church Courts, in consequence of which several separate congregations were formed in different parts of Great Britain, especially by Robert Sandeman, the son-in-law of Mr. Glas, and from him they received their common appellation. In early days they taught a simpler view of faith than was generally held at that time; it was with them a simple assent of the understanding, but produced by the Spirit of God, and its virtue depended not on anything mystical in the operation itself, but on the grandeur and beauty of the things believed. Now, however, there is little to distinguish them in doctrine from other adherents of the Puritan theology, though they certainly concede a greater deference to their elders, and attach more importance to the Lord's Supper than is usual among the Puritan Churches. Their form of worship, too, resembles that of the Presbyterians; but they hold that each congregation should have a plurality of elders, pastors, or bishops, who are unpaid men; that on every "first day of the week" they are bound to assemble, not only for prayers and preaching, but also for "breaking of bread," and putting together their weekly offerings; that the love-feast and kiss of charity should continue to be practised; that "blood and things strangled" are still forbidden as food; and that a disciple of Christ should not charge interest on loans except in the case of purely business transactions, or lay up wealth for the unknown future, but rather consider all he possesses as at the service of his poorer brethren, and be ready to perform to them such offices of kindness as in the early Church were expressed by washing one another's feet.

But what gives the remarkable character to the adherents of this sect is their perfect isolation from all Christian fellowship outside their own community, and from all external religious influence. They have never made missionary efforts to win men from the world, and have long ceased to draw to themselves members from other Churches; so they have rarely the advantage of fresh blood, or fresh views of the meaning of Scripture. They commonly intermarry, and are expected to "bear one another's burthens;" so the Church has acquired somewhat of the additional character of a large intertwined family and of a mutual benefit society. This rigid separation from the world, extending now through three or four generations, has produced a remarkable elevation of moral tone and refinement of manner; and it is said that no one unacquainted with the inner circle can conceive of the brotherly affection that reigns there, or the extent to which hospitality and material help is given without any ostentation, and received without any loss of self-respect. The body is rendered still more seclusive by demanding, not merely unity of spirit among its members, but unanimity of opinion in every Church transaction. In order to secure this, any dissentient who persists in his opinion after repeated argument is rejected; the same is also the consequence of neglect of Church duties, as well as of any grave moral offence: and in such a community excommunication is a serious social ban, and though a penitent may be received back once, he can never return a second time.

It was in the midst of this little community that Faraday received his earliest religious impressions, and among them he found his ecclesiastical home till the day of his entrance into the Church above.

Among the elders of the Sandemanian Church in London was Mr. Barnard, a silversmith, of Paternoster Row. The young philosopher became a visitor at his house, and though he had previously written,—

"What is't that comes in false deceitful guise,

Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?

'Tis Love."

—he altered his opinion in the presence of the citizen's third daughter, Sarah, and wrote to her what was certainly not the letter of a fool:—

"You know me as well or better than I do myself. You know my former prejudices and my present thoughts—you know my weaknesses, my vanity, my whole mind; 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 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; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what I possess,—but hear me."

The lady hesitated, and went to Margate. There he followed her, and they proceeded together to Dover and Shakspeare's Cliff, and he returned to London full of happiness and hope. He loved her with all the ardour of his nature, and in due course, on June 12, 1821, they were married. The bridegroom desired that there should be no bustle or noise at the wedding, and that the day should not be specially distinguished; but he calls it himself "an event which more than any other contributed to his happiness and healthful state of mind." As years rolled on the affection between husband and wife became only deeper and deeper; his bearing towards her proved it, and his letters frequently testify to it. Doubtless at any time between their marriage and his final illness he might have written to her as he did from Birmingham, at the time of the British Association:—"After all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasures 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."

He took his bride home to Albemarle Street, and there they spent their wedded life; but until Mr. Barnard's death it was their custom to go every Saturday to the house of the worthy silversmith, and spend Sunday with him, returning home usually in the evening of that day. His own father died while he was at Riebau's, but his mother, a grand-looking woman, lived long afterwards, supported by her son, whom she occasionally visited at the Institution, and of whose growing reputation she was not a little proud.

With a mind calmed and strengthened by this beautiful domestic life, he continued with greater and greater enthusiasm to ask questions of Nature, and to interpret her replies to his fellow-men. Just before his marriage he had been appointed at the Royal Institution superintendent of the house and laboratory, and in February 1825, after a change in the management of the Institution, he was placed as director in a position of greater responsibility and influence. One of his first acts in this capacity was to invite the members to a scientific evening in the laboratory; this took place three or four times in 1825, and in the following years these gatherings were held every week from Feb. 3 to June 9; and though the labour devolved very much upon Faraday, other philosophers sometimes brought forward discoveries or useful inventions. Thus commenced those Friday evening meetings which have done so much to popularize the high achievements of science. Faraday's note-books are still preserved, containing the minutes of the committee-meetings every Thursday afternoon, the Duke of Somerset chairman, and he secretary; also the record of the Friday evenings themselves, who lectured, and on what subject, and what was exhibited in the library, till June 1840, when other arrangements were probably made.

The year 1827 was otherwise fruitful in lectures: in the spring, a course of twelve on chemical manipulation at the London Institution; after Easter, his first course at Albemarle Street, six lectures on chemical philosophy (he had helped Professor Brande in 1824);[3] and at Christmas, his desire to convey knowledge, and his love to children, found expression in a course of six lectures to the boys and girls home for their holidays. These were a great success; indeed, he himself says they "were just what they ought to have been, both in matter and manner,—but it would not answer to give an extended course in the same spirit." He continued these juvenile lectures during nineteen years. The notes for courses of lectures were written in school copy-books, and sometimes he appends a general remark about the course, not always so favourable as the one given above. Thus he writes, "The eight lectures on the operations of the laboratory, April 1828, were not to my mind." Of the course of twelve in the spring of 1827, he says he "found matter enough in the notes for at least seventeen."

Up to 1833 Faraday was bringing the forces of nature in subjection to man on a salary of only 100l. per annum, with house, coals, and candles, as the funds of the Institution would not at that time afford more; but among the sedate habitúes of the place was a tall, jovial gentleman, who lounged to the lectures in his old-fashioned blue coat and brass buttons, grey smalls, and white stockings, who was a munificent friend in need. This was John Fuller, a member of Parliament. He founded a Professorship of Chemistry with an endowment that brings in nearly 100l. a year, and gave the first appointment to Faraday for life. When the Institution became richer, his income was increased; and when, on account of the infirmities of age, he could no longer investigate, lecture, or keep accounts, the managers insisted on his still retaining in name his official connection with the place, with his salary and his residence there. Nor indeed could they well have acted otherwise; for though the Royal Institution afforded in the first instance a congenial soil for the budding powers of Faraday, his growth soon became its strength; and eventually the blooming of his genius, and the fruit it bore, were the ornament and glory of the Institution.

It will be asked, Was this 100l. or 200l. per annum the sole income of Faraday? No; in early days he did commercial analyses, and other professional work, which paid far better than pure science. In 1830 his gains from this source amounted to 1,000l., and in 1831 to considerably more; they might easily have been increased, but at that time he made one of his most remarkable discoveries—the evolution of electricity from magnetism,[4]—and there seemed to lie open before him the solution of the problem how to make one force exhibit at will the phenomena of magnetism or of common or voltaic electricity. And then he had to face another problem—his own mental force might be turned either to the acquisition of a fortune, or to the following up of those great discoveries; it would not do both: which should he relinquish? The choice was deliberately made: Nature revealed to him more and more of her secrets, but his professional gains sank in 1832 to 155l. 9s., and during no subsequent year did they amount even to that.

Still his work was not entirely confined to his favourite studies. In a letter to Lord Auckland, long afterwards, he says:—"I have given up, for the last ten years or more, all professional occupation, and voluntarily resigned a large income that I might pursue in some degree my own objects of research. But in doing this I have always, as a good subject, held myself ready to assist the Government if still in my power, not for pay; for, except in one instance (and then only for the sake of the person joined with me), I refused to take it. I have the honour and pleasure of applications, and that very recently, from the Admiralty, the Ordnance, the Home Office, the Woods and Forests, and other departments, all of which I have replied to, and will reply to as long as strength is left me." He had declined the Professorship of Chemistry at the London University—now University College,—but in 1829 he accepted a lectureship at the Royal Academy, Woolwich, and held it for about twenty years. In 1836 he became scientific adviser to the Trinity House, and his letter to the Deputy Master also shows his feelings in reference to such employment:—"You have left the title and the sum in pencil. These I look at mainly as regards the character of the appointment; you will believe me to be sincere in this, when you remember my indifference to your proposition as a matter of interest, though not as a matter of kindness. In consequence of the goodwill and confidence of all around me, I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes. The sum, therefore, of 200l. is quite enough in itself, but not if it is to be the indicator of the character of the appointment; but I think you do not view it so, and that you and I understand each other in that respect; and your letter confirms me in that opinion. The position which I presume you would wish me to hold is analogous to that of a standing counsel." For nearly thirty years Faraday continued to report on all scientific suggestions and inventions connected with lighthouses or buoys, not for personal gain or renown, but for the public good. His position was never above that of a "standing counsel." In his own words: "I do not know the exact relation of the Board of Trade and the Trinity House to each other; I am simply an adviser upon philosophical questions, and am put into action only when called upon."

In regard to the lectureship at Woolwich, Mr. Abel, his successor, writes thus:—"Faraday appears to have enjoyed his weekly trips to Woolwich, which he continued for so many years, as a source of relaxation. He was in the habit of going to Woolwich in the afternoon or evening preceding his lecture at the Military Academy, then preparing at once for his experiments, and afterwards generally taking a country ramble. The lecture was delivered early the following morning. No man was so respected, admired, and beloved as a teacher at the Military Academy in former days as Faraday. Many are the little incidents which have been communicated to me by his pupils illustrative of his charms as a lecturer, and of his kindly feelings for the youths to whom he endeavoured to impart a taste for, if not a knowledge of, science. But for some not ill-meant, though scarcely judicious, proposal to dictate modifications in his course of instruction, Faraday would probably have continued for some years longer to lecture at Woolwich. In May 1852, soon after I had been appointed his successor, Faraday wrote to me requesting the return of some tubes of condensed gases which he left at the Academy. This letter ends thus:—'I hope you feel yourself happy and comfortable in your arrangements at the Academy, and have cause to be pleased with the change. I was ever very kindly received there, and that portion of regret which one must ever feel in concluding a long engagement would be in some degree lessened with me by hearing that you had reason to be satisfied with your duties and their acceptance.—Ever very truly yours, M. Faraday.'"

For year after year the life of Faraday afforded no adventure and little variety, only an ever-growing skill in his favourite pursuit, higher and higher success, and ever-widening fame. But simple as were his mind and his habits, no one picture can present him as the complete man; we must try to make sketches from various points of view, and leave it to the reader's imagination to combine them.

Let us watch him on an ordinary day. After eight hours' sleep, he rises in time to breakfast at eight o'clock, goes round the Institution to see that all is in order, and descends into the laboratory, puts on a large white apron, the stains and holes in which tell of previous service, and is busy among his pieces of apparatus. The faithful Anderson, an old soldier, who always did exactly what he was told, and nothing more,[5] is waiting upon him; and as thought flashes after thought through his eager—perhaps impatient—brain, he twists his wires into new shapes, and re-arranges his magnets and batteries. Then some conclusion is arrived at which lights up his face with a gleam of satisfaction, but the next minute a doubt comes across that expressive brow—may the results not be due to something else yet imperfectly conceived?—and a new experiment must be devised to answer that. In the meantime perhaps one of his little nieces has been left in his charge. She sits as quiet as a mouse with her needlework; but now and then he gives her a nod, or a kind word, and throwing a little piece of potassium on to a basin of water for her amusement, he shows her the metal bursting into purple flame, floating about in fiery eddies, and the crack of the fused globule of potash at the end. Presently there is handed to him the card of some foreign savant, who makes his pilgrimage to the famous Institution and its presiding genius; he puts down his last result on a slate, comes upstairs, and, disregarding the interruption, chats with his visitor with all cordiality and openness. Then to work again till dinner-time, at half-past two. In the afternoon he retires to his study with its plain furniture and the india-rubber tree in the window, and writes a letter full of affection to some friend, after which he goes off to the council meeting of one of the learned bodies. Then back again to the laboratory, but as evening approaches he goes upstairs to his wife and niece, and then there is a game at bagatelle or acting charades; and afterwards he will read aloud from Shakspeare or Macaulay till it is time for supper and the simple family worship which now is not liable to the interruptions that generally prevent it in the morning. And so the day closes.

Or if it be a fine summer evening, he takes a stroll with his wife and the little girl to the Zoological Gardens, and looks at all the new arrivals, but especially the monkeys, laughing at their tricks till the tears run down his cheeks.

But should it be a Friday evening, Faraday's place is in the library and theatre of the Institution, to see that all is right and ready, to say an encouraging word to the lecturer, and to welcome his friends as they arrive; then taking his seat on the front bench near the right hand of the speaker, he listens with an animated countenance to his story,[6] sometimes bending forwards, and scarcely capable of keeping his fingers off the apparatus—not at all able if anything seems to be going wrong; when the discourse is over, a warm shake of the hand, with "Thank you for a pleasant hour," and "Good night" to those around him, and upstairs with his wife and some particularly congenial friends to supper. On the dining-table is abundance of good fare and good wine, and around it flows a pleasant stream of lively and intellectual conversation.

But suppose it is his own night to lecture. The subject has been carefully considered, an outline of his discourse has been written on a sheet of foolscap, with all the experiments marked and numbered, and during the morning everything has been arranged on the table in such order that his memory is assisted by it; the audience now pours in, and soon occupies all the seats, so that late comers must be content with sitting on the stairs or standing in the gangways, or at the back of the gallery. Faraday enters, and placing himself in the centre of the horse-shoe table, perfect master of himself, his apparatus, and his audience, commences a discourse which few that are present will ever forget. Here is a picture by Lady Pollock:—"It was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and insisted upon sympathy. It waked the young from their visions, and the old from their dreams. There was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. Their radiance seemed to send a strange light into the very heart of his congregation; and when he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the fervour of his words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. His thought was rapid, and made itself a way in new phrases—if it found none ready made—as the mountaineer cuts steps in the most hazardous ascent with his own axe. His enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of ecstasy when he expatiated on the beauties of Nature, and when he lifted the veil from her deep mysteries. His body then took motion from his mind; his hair streamed out from his head; his hands were full of nervous action; his light, lithe body seemed to quiver with its eager life. His audience took fire with him, and every face was flushed. Whatever might be the after-thought or the after-pursuit, each hearer for the time shared his zeal and his delight."[7]

Is it possible that he can be happier when lecturing to the juveniles? The front rows are filled with the young people; behind them are ranged older friends and many of his brother philosophers, and there is old Sir James South, who is quite deaf, poor man, but has come, as he says, because he likes to see the happy faces of the children. How perfect is the attention! Faraday, with a beaming countenance, begins with something about a candle or a kettle that most boys and girls know, then rises to what they had never thought of before, but which now is as clear as possible to their understandings. And with what delight does he watch the performances of Nature in his experiments! One could fancy that he had never seen the experiments before, and that he was about to clap his hands with boyish glee at the unexpected result! Then with serious face the lecturer makes some incidental remark that goes far beyond natural philosophy, and is a lesson for life.

Some will remember one of these occasions which forms the subject of a painting by Mr. Blaikley. Within the circle of the table stands the lecturer, and waiting behind is the trusty Anderson, while the chair is occupied by the Prince Consort, and beside him are the young Prince of Wales and his brother, the present Duke of Edinburgh; while the Rev. John Barlow and Dr. Bence Jones sit on the left of the Princes; Sir James South stands against the door, and Murchison, De La Rue, Mrs. Faraday, and others may be recognized among the eager audience.

Let us now suppose that it is a Sunday on which we are watching this prince among the aristocracy of intellect, and we will assume it to be during one of the periods of his eldership, namely between 1840 and 1844, or after 1860. The first period came to a close through his separation both from his office and from the Church itself. The reason of this is unknown except to the parties immediately concerned, but it will be readily understood how easily differences may arise in such a community as that of the Sandemanians between an original and conscientious mind and his brethren in the faith. He, however, continued to worship among his friends, and was after a while restored to the rights of membership, and eventually to the office of elder. In the morning he and his family group find their way down to the plain little meeting-house in Paul's Alley, Red-cross Street, since pulled down to make room for the Metropolitan Railway. The day's proceedings commence with a prayer meeting, during which the worshippers gradually drop in and go to their accustomed seats, Faraday taking his place on the platform devoted to the elders: then the more public service begins; one of a metrical but not rhyming version of the Psalms is sung to a quaint old tune; the Lord's Prayer and another psalm follow; he rises and reads in a slow, reverent manner the words of one of the Evangelists, with a most profound and intelligent appreciation of their meaning; or he offers an extempore prayer, expressing perfect trust and submission to God's will, with deep humility and confession of sin. It may be his turn to preach. On two sides of a card he has previously sketched out his sermon with the illustrative texts, but the congregation does not see the card, only a little Bible in his hand, the pages of which he turns quickly over, as, fresh from an earnest heart, there flows a discourse full of devout thought, clothed largely in the language of Scripture. After a loud simultaneous "Amen" has closed the service, the Church members withdraw to their common meal, the feast of charity; and in the afternoon there is another service, ending by invariable custom with the Lord's Supper. The family group do not reach home till half-past 5; then there is a quiet evening, part of which is spent by Faraday at his desk, and they retire to rest at an early hour.

Again on Wednesday evening he is among the little flock. The service is somewhat freer, for not the officers of the Church only, but the ordinary members are encouraged to express whatever thoughts occur to them, so as to edify one another. At these times, Faraday, especially when he was not an elder, very often had some word of exhortation, and the warmth of his temperament would make itself felt, for he was known in the small community as an experimental rather than a doctrinal preacher.

The notes of his more formal discourses which I have had the opportunity of seeing, indicate, as might be expected from the tenets of his Church, a large acquaintance with the words of Scripture, but no knowledge of modern exegesis. They appear to have impressed different hearers in different ways. One who heard him frequently and was strongly attached to him, says that his sermons were too parenthetical and rapid in their delivery, with little variety or attractiveness; but another scientific friend, who heard him occasionally, writes: "They struck me as resembling a mosaic work of texts. At first you could hardly understand their juxtaposition and relationship, but as the well-chosen pieces were filled in, by degrees their congruity and fitness became developed, and at last an amazing sense of the power and beauty of the whole filled one's thoughts at the close of the discourse."

His first sermon as an elder was on Christ's character and example as shown in Matthew xi. 28-30: "Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart." Among the latest of his sermons was one that he preached at Dundee about four years before his death. He began by telling his audience that his memory was failing, and he feared he could not quote Scripture with perfect accuracy; and then, as said one of the elders who had been present, "his face shone like the face of an angel," as he poured forth the words of loving exhortation.

When a mind is stretched in the same direction week-day and Sunday, the tension is apt to become too great. With Faraday the first symptom was loss of memory. Then his devoted wife had to hurry him off to the country for rest of brain. Once he had to give up work almost entirely for a twelvemonth. During this time he travelled in Switzerland, and extracts from his diary are given by Bence Jones. His niece, Mrs. Deacon, gives us her recollections of a month spent at Walmer:—"How I rejoiced to be allowed to go there with him! We went on the outside of the coach, in his favourite seat behind the driver. When we reached Shooter's Hill, he was full of fun about Falstaff and the men in buckram, and not a sight nor a sound of interest escaped his quick eye and ear. At Walmer we had a cottage in a field, and my uncle was delighted because a window looked directly into a blackbird's nest built in a cherry-tree. He would go many times in a day to watch the parent birds feeding their young. I remember, too, how much he was interested in the young lambs, after they were sheared at our door, vainly trying to find their own mothers. The ewes, not knowing their shorn lambs, did not make the customary signal. In those days I was eager to see the sun rise, and my uncle desired me always to call him when I was awake. So, as soon as the glow brightened over Pegwell Bay, I stole downstairs and tapped at his door, and he would rise, and a great treat it was to watch the glorious sight with him. How delightful, too, to be his companion at sunset! Once I remember well how we watched the fading light from a hill clothed with wild flowers, and how, as twilight stole on, the sounds of bells from Upper Deal broke upon our ears, and how he watched till all was grey. At such times he would be well pleased if we could repeat a few lines descriptive of his feelings." And then she tells us about their examining the flowers in the fields by the aid of "Galpin's Botany," and how with a candle he showed her a spectre on the white mist outside the window; of reading lessons that ended in laughter, and of sea-anemones and hermit crabs, with the merriment caused by their odd movements as they dragged about the unwieldy shells they tenanted. "But of all things I used to like to hear him read 'Childe Harold;' and never shall I forget the way in which he read the description of the storm on Lake Leman. He took great pleasure in Byron, and Coleridge's 'Hymn to Mont Blanc' delighted him. When anything touched his feelings as he read—and it happened not unfrequently—he would show it not only in his voice, but by tears in his eyes also."

A few days at Brighton refreshed him for his work. He was in the habit of running down there before his juvenile lectures at Christmas, and at Easter he frequently sought the same sea-breezes.

But it was not always that Faraday could run away from London when the mental tension became excessive. A shorter relaxation was procured by his taking up a novel such as "Ivanhoe," or "Jane Eyre," or "Monte Christo." He liked the stirring ones best, "a story with a thread to it." Or he would go with his wife to see Kean act, or hear Jenny Lind sing, or perhaps to witness the performance of some "Wizard of the North."

Now and then he would pay a visit to some scene of early days. One of his near relatives tells me: "It is said that Mr. Faraday once went to the shop where his father had formerly been employed as a blacksmith, and asked to be allowed to look over the place. When he got to a part of the premises at which there was an opening into the lower workshop, he stopped and said: 'I very nearly lost my life there once. I was playing in the upper room at pitching halfpence into a pint pot close by this hole, and having succeeded at a certain distance, I stepped back to try my fortune further off, forgetting the aperture, and down I fell; and if it had not been that my father was working over an anvil fixed just below, I should have fallen on it, broken my back, and probably killed myself. As it was, my father's back just saved mine.'"

Business, as well as pleasure, sometimes took him away from home. He often joined the British Association, returning usually on Saturday, that he might be among his own people on the Lord's Day. During the meeting he would generally accept the hospitality of some friend; and it was one of these occasions that gave rise to the following jeu d'esprit:—

"'That P will change to F in the British tongue is true

(Quoth Professor Phillips), though the instances are few;'

An entry in my journal then I ventured thus to parody,

'I this day dined with Fillips, where I hobbed and nobbed with Pharaday.'

"T. T.

"Oxford, June 27, 1860."

At the Liverpool meeting, in 1837, he was president of the Chemical Section, and on two other occasions he was selected to deliver the evening lecture, but though repeatedly pressed to undertake the presidency of the whole body, he could not be prevailed upon to accept the office.

My first personal intercourse with him, of any extent, was at the Ipswich meeting in 1851. I watched him with all the interest of an admiring disciple, and there is deeply engraven on my memory the vivacity of his conversation, the eagerness with which he entered into some mathematico-chemical speculations of Dumas, and the playfulness with which, when we were dining together, he cut boomerangs out of card, and shot them across the table at his friends.

Professional engagements also took him not unfrequently into the country. Some of these will be described in the later sections, that treat of his mode of working and its valuable results.

To comprehend a man's life it is necessary to know not merely what he does, but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.

Faraday took no part in any of the political or social movements of his time. To politics indeed he seems to have been really indifferent. It was during the intensely interesting period of 1814-15 that he was on the Continent with Davy, but he alludes to the taking of Paris by the allied troops simply because of its bearing on the movements of the travellers, and on March 7, 1815, he made his remarkable entry in his journal: "I heard for news that Bonaparte was again at liberty. Being no politician, I did not trouble myself much about it, though I suppose it will have a strong influence on the affairs of Europe." In later days he seems to have awaked to sufficient interest to read the debates, and to show a Conservative tendency; he became a special constable in 1848, and was disposed generally to support "the powers that be,"—though that involved some perplexity at a change of Government.

It is more singular that a man of his benevolent spirit should never have taken a prominent part in any philanthropic movement. In some cases his religious views may have presented an obstacle, but this reason can hardly apply to many of those social movements in which the influence of his name, and his occasional presence and advice, would have been highly valuable. During the latter half of his life, he, as a rule, avoided serving on committees even for scientific objects, and was reluctant to hold office in the learned societies with which he was connected. I believe, however, that this arose not so much from want of interest, as from a conviction that he was ill-suited by natural temperament for joining in discussions on subjects that roused the passions of men, or for calmly weighing the different courses of action, and deciding which was the most judicious. It is remarkable how little even of his scientific work was done in conjunction with others. Neither did he spend time in rural occupations, or in literary or artistic pursuits. Beasts and birds and flowers he looked at, but it was for recreation, not for study. Music he was fond of, and occasionally he visited the Opera, but he did not allow sweet sounds to charm him away from his work. He stuck closely to his fireside, his laboratory, his lecture table, and his church. He lived where he worked, so that he had only to go downstairs to put to the test of experiment any fresh thought that flitted across his brain. He almost invariably declined dinner-parties, except at Lady Davy's, and at Mr. and Mrs. Masquerier's at Brighton, towards whom he felt under an obligation on account of former kindnesses. If he went to a soirée, he usually stayed but a short time; and even when away from home he generally refused private hospitality. Thus he was able to give almost undivided attention to the chief pursuit of his life.

His residence in so accessible a part of London did, however, expose him to the constant invasion of callers, and his own good nature often rendered fruitless the efforts that were considerately made to restrict these within reasonable limits. Of course he suffered from the curious and the inconsiderate of the human species; and then there were those pertinacious bores, the dabblers in science. "One morning a young man called on him, and with an air of great importance confided to him the result of some original researches (so he deemed them) in electrical philosophy. 'And pray,' asked the Professor, taking down a volume of Rees' Cyclopædia, 'did you consult this or any elementary work to learn whether your discovery had been anticipated?' The young man replied in the negative. 'Then why do you come to waste my time about well-known facts, that were published forty years ago?' 'Sir,' said the visitor, 'I thought I had better bring the matter to head-quarters immediately.' 'All very well for you, but not so well for head-quarters,' replied the Professor, sharply, and set him down to read the article."

"A grave, elderly gentleman once waited upon him to submit to his notice 'a new law of physics.' The visitor requested that a jug of water and a tumbler might be brought, and then producing a cork, 'You will be pleased to observe,' said he, 'how persistently this cork clings to the side of the glass when the vessel is half filled.' 'Just so,' replied the Professor. 'But now,' resumed this great discoverer, 'mark what happens when I fill the tumbler to the brim. There! you see the cork flies to the centre—positively repelled by the sides!' 'Precisely so,' replied the amused electrician, with the air of a man who felt perfectly at home with the phenomenon, and indeed regarded it quite as an old friend. The visitor was evidently disconcerted. 'Pray how long have you known this?' he ventured to ask Faraday. 'Oh, ever since I was a boy,' was the rejoinder. Crestfallen—his discovery demolished in a moment—the poor gentleman was retiring with many apologies, when the Professor, sincerely concerned at his disappointment, comforted him by suggesting that possibly he might some day alight upon something really new."[8]

But there were other visitors who were right welcome to a portion of his time. One day it might be a young man, whom a few kind words and a little attention on the part of the great philosopher would send forward on the journey of life with new energy and hopes. Another day it might be some intellectual chieftain, who could meet the prince of experimenters on equal terms. But these are hardly to be regarded as interruptions;—rather as a part of his chosen work.

Here is one instance in the words of Mr. Robert Mallet. "... I was, in the years that followed, never in London without paying him a visit, and on one of those times I ventured to ask him (if not too much engaged) to let me see where he and Davy had worked together. With the most simple graciousness he brought me through the whole of the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street. Brande's furnaces, Davy's battery, the place in the laboratory where he told me he had first observed the liquefaction of chlorine, are all vividly before me—but nothing so clear or vivid as our conversation over a specimen of green (crown) glass, partially devitrified in floating opaque white spheres of radiating crystals: he touched luminously on the obscure relation of the vitreous and crystalloid states, and on the probable nature of the nuclei of the white spheres. My next visit to Faraday that I recollect was not long after my paper 'On the Dynamics of Earthquakes' had appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He almost at once referred to it in terms of praise that seemed to me so far beyond my due, that even now I recall the very humble way I felt, as the thought of Faraday's own transcendent merits rushed across my mind. I ventured to ask him, had the paper engaged his attention sufficiently that I might ask him—did he consider my explanation of the before supposed vorticose shock sufficient? To my amazement he at once recited nearly word for word the paragraph in which I took some pains to put my views into a demonstrative shape, and ended with, 'It is as plain and certain as a proposition of Euclid!' And yet the subject was one pretty wide away from his own objects of study."

Often, too, if some interesting fact was exhibited to him, he would send to his brother savants some such note as this:—

"Royal Institution, 4th May, 1852.

"My Dear Wheatstone,

"Dr. Dubois-Raymond will be making his experiments here next Thursday, the 6th, from and after 11 o'clock. I wish to let you know, that you may if you like join the select few.

"Ever truly yours,

"M. Faraday."

It was indeed his wont to share with others the delight of a new discovery. Thus Sir Henry Holland tells me that he used frequently to run to his house in Brook Street with some piece of scientific news. One of these visits was after reading Bunsen and Kirchhoff's paper on Spectrum Analysis; and he did not stop short with merely telling the tale of the special rays of light shot forth by each metallic vapour, as the following letter will show. It is addressed to the present Baroness Burdett Coutts.

"Royal Institution, Friday, 17th May.

"Dear Miss Coutts,

"To-morrow, at 4 o'clock, immediately after Max Müller's lecture, I shall show Sir Henry Holland an apparatus which has arrived from Munich to manifest the phenomena of light which have recently been made known to us by Bunsen and Kirchhoff. Mr. Barlow will be here, and he suggests that you would like to know of the occasion. If you are inclined to see how philosophers work and live, and so are inclined to climb our narrow stairs (for I must show the experiments in my room), we shall be most happy to see you. The experiments will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.

"Ever your faithful Servant,

"M. Faraday."

Sometimes, too, the exhibition of a scientific fact would take him away from home. Thus, when her Majesty and the Prince Consort once paid a private visit to the Polytechnic, Mr. Pepper arranged a surprise for the Royal party, by getting Faraday in a quiet room to explain the Ruhmkorff's coil—the latest development of his own inductive currents. This he did with his usual vivacity and enthusiasm, and the interview is said to have gratified the philosopher as well as the Queen.

He could not, however, escape the inroads made upon his time by correspondence. People would write and ask him questions. Once a solitary prisoner wrote to tell him, "It is indeed in studying the great discoveries which science is indebted to you for, that I render my captivity less sad, and make time flow with rapidity,"—and then he proceeds to ask, "What is the most simple combination to give to a voltaic battery, in order to produce a spark capable of setting fire to powder under water, or under ground? Up to the present I have only seen employed to that purpose piles of thirty to forty pairs constructed on Dr. Wollaston's principles. They are very large and inconvenient for field service. Could not the same effect be produced by two spiral pairs only? and if so, what can be their smallest dimension?" And who was the prisoner who thus speculated on the applications of science to war? It was no other than Prince Louis Napoleon, then immured in the fortress of Ham, and now the ex-Emperor of the French. At another time he wrote asking for his advice in the manufacture of an alloy which should be about as soft as lead, but not so fusible,—a question which also had evident bearing upon the art of war; and offering at the same time to pay the cost of any experiments that might be necessary.

Often, too, the correspondents of Faraday thought that they were doing him a kindness. He says somewhere: "The number of suggestions, hints for discovery, and propositions of various kinds, offered to me very freely and with perfect goodwill and simplicity on the part of the proposers, for my exclusive investigation and final honour, is remarkably great, and it is no less remarkable that but for one exception—that of Mr. Jenkin—they have all been worthless.... I have, I think, universally found that the man whose mind was by nature or self-education fitted to make good and worthy suggestions, was also the man both able and willing to work them out."

Both the askers of questions and the givers of advice expected answers—and the answers came. Most of Faraday's letters, indeed, are of a purely business character: sometimes they are very laconic, as the note in which he announced to Dr. Paris one of his principal discoveries:—

"Dear Sir,

"The oil you noticed yesterday turns out to be liquid chlorine.

"Yours faithfully,

"M. Faraday."

But in other letters, as may be expected, there is found the enthusiasm of his ardent nature, or the glow of his genial spirit. An instance or two may suffice.

"Royal Institution, 24th March, 1843.

"Dear Sir,

"I have received and at once looked at your paper. Many thanks for so good a contribution to the beloved science. What glorious steps electricity has taken in the days within our remembrance, and what hopes are held out for the future! The great difficulty is to remove the mists which dim the dawn of a subject, and I cannot but consider your paper as doing very much that way for a most important part of natural knowledge.

"I am, my dear Sir,

"Most truly yours,

"M. Faraday.

"J. P. Joule, Esq."

"Royal Institution, 15th Oct., 1853.

"My dear Miss Moore,

"The summer is going away, and I never (but for one day) had any hopes of profiting by your kind offer of the roof of your house in Clarges Street. What a feeble summer it has been as regards sunlight! I have made a good many preliminary experiments at home, but they do not encourage me in the direction towards which I was looking. All is misty and dull, both the physical and the mental prospect. But I have ever found that the experimental philosopher has great need of patience, that he may not be downcast by interposing obstacles, and perseverance, that he may either overcome them, or open out a new path to the bourn he desires to reach. So perhaps next summer I may think of your housetop again. Many thanks for your kind letter and all your kindnesses uswards. My wife had your note yesterday, and I enjoyed the violets, which for a time I appropriated.

"With kindest remembrances and thoughts to all with you and her at Hastings,

"I am, my dear Friend,

"Very faithfully yours,

"M. Faraday."

The following is written to Mr. Frank Barnard, then an Art student in Paris:—

"Royal Institution, 9th Nov., 1852.

"My dear Nephew,

"Though I am not a letter-writer and shall not profess to send you any news, yet I intend to waste your time with one sheet of paper: first to thank you for your letter to me, and then to thank you for what I hear of your letters to others. You were very kind to take the trouble of executing my commissions, when I know your heart was bent upon the entrance to your studies. Your account of M. Arago was most interesting to me, though I should have been glad if in the matter of health you could have made it better. He has a wonderful mind and spirit. And so you are hard at work, and somewhat embarrassed by your position: but no man can do just as he likes, and in many things he has to give way, and may do so honourably, provided he preserve his self-respect. Never, my dear Frank, lose that, whatever may be the alternative. Let no one tempt you to it; for nothing can be expedient that is not right; and though some of your companions may tease you at first, they will respect you for your consistency in the end; and if they pretend not to do so, it is of no consequence. However, I trust the hardest part of your probation is over, for the earliest is usually the hardest; and that you know how to take all things quietly. Happily for you, there is nothing in your pursuit which need embarrass you in Paris. I think you never cared for home politics, so that those of another country are not likely to occupy your attention, and a stranger can be but a very poor judge of a new people and their requisites.

"I think all your family are pretty well, but I know you will hear all the news from your appointed correspondent Jane, and, as I said, I am unable to chronicle anything. Still, I am always very glad to hear how you are going on, and have a sight of all that I may see of the correspondence.

"Ever, my dear Frank,

"Your affectionate Uncle,

"M. Faraday."

His scientific researches were very numerous. The Royal Society Catalogue gives under the name of Faraday a list of 158 papers, published in various scientific magazines or learned Transactions. Many of these communications are doubtless short, but a short philosophical paper often represents a large amount of brain work; a score of them are the substance of his Friday evening discourses; while others are lengthy treatises, the records of long and careful investigations; and the list includes the thirty series of his "Experimental Researches in Electricity." These extended over a period of twenty-seven years, and were afterwards reprinted from the "Philosophical Transactions," and form three goodly volumes, with 3,430 numbered paragraphs—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. Faraday never published but one book in the common acceptation of the term—it was on "Chemical Manipulation,"—but there appeared another large volume of reprinted papers: and three of his courses of lectures were also published as separate small books, though not by himself. It is very tempting to linger among these 158 papers; but this is not intended as a scientific biography, and those readers who wish to make themselves better acquainted with his work will find an admirable summary of it in Professor Tyndall's "Faraday as a Discoverer." In Sections IV. and V., however, I have endeavoured to give an idea of his manner of working, and of the practical benefits that have flowed to mankind from some of his discoveries.

As these papers appeared his fame grew wider and wider. When a comparatively young man he was naturally desirous of appending the mystic letters "F.R.S." to his name, and he was balloted into the Royal Society in January 1824, not without strong opposition from his master, Sir Humphry Davy, then president. He paid the fees, and never sought another distinction of the kind. But they were showered down upon him. The Philosophical Society of Cambridge had already acknowledged his merits, and the learned Academies of Paris and Florence had enrolled him amongst their corresponding members. Heidelberg and St. Petersburg, Philadelphia and Boston, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Palermo, quickly followed: and as the fame of his researches spread, very many other learned societies in Europe and America, as well as at home, brought to him the tribute of their honorary membership.[9] He thrice received the degree of Doctor, Oxford making him a D.C.L., Prague a Ph.D., and Cambridge an LL.D., besides which he was instituted a Chevalier of the Prussian Order of Merit, a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus. Among the medals which he received were each of those at the disposal of the Royal Society—indeed the Copley medal was given him twice—and the Grande Médaille d'Honneur at the time of the French Exhibition. Altogether it appears he was decorated with ninety-five titles and marks of merit,[10] including the blue ribbon of science, for in 1844 he was chosen one of the eight foreign associates of the French Academy.

Though he had never passed through a university career, he was made a member of the Senate of the University of London, which he regarded as one of his chief honours; and he showed his appreciation of the importance of the office by a diligent attendance to its duties.

As the recognized prince of investigators, it is no wonder that on the resignation of Lord Wrottesley, an attempt was made to induce him to become President of the Royal Society. A deputation waited upon him and urged the unanimous wish of the Council and of scientific men. Faraday begged for time to consider. Tyndall gives us an insight into the reasons that led him to decline. He tells us: "On the following morning I went up to his room, and said, on entering, that I had come to him with some anxiety of mind. He demanded its cause, and I responded, 'Lest you should have decided against the wishes of the deputation that waited on you yesterday.' 'You would not urge me to undertake this responsibility,' he said. 'I not only urge you,' was my reply, 'but I consider it your bounden duty to accept it.' He spoke of the labour that it would involve; urged that it was not in his nature to take things easy; and that if he became president, he would surely have to stir many new questions, and agitate for some changes. I said that in such cases he would find himself supported by the youth and strength of the Royal Society. This, however, did not seem to satisfy him. Mrs. Faraday came into the room, and he appealed to her. Her decision was adverse, and I deprecated her decision. 'Tyndall,' he said at length, 'I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if I accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires you to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year.'"

In 1835 Sir Robert Peel desired to confer pensions as honourable distinctions on Faraday and some other eminent men. Lord Melbourne, who succeeded him as Prime Minister, in making the offer at a private interview, gave utterance to some hasty expressions that appeared to the man of science to reflect on the honour of his profession, and led to his declining the money. The King, William IV., was struck with the unusual nature of the proceeding, and kept repeating the story of Faraday's refusal; and about a month afterwards the Premier, dining with Dr. (now Sir Henry) Holland, begged him to convey a letter to the Professor and to press on him the acceptance of the pension. The letter was couched in such honourable and conciliatory terms, that Faraday's personal objection could no longer apply, and he expressed his willingness to receive this mark of national approval. A version of the matter that found its way into the public prints caused fresh annoyance, and nearly produced a final refusal, but through the kind offices of friends who had interested themselves throughout in the matter, a friendly feeling was again arrived at, and the pension of £300 a year was granted and accepted.

In 1858 the Queen offered him a house at Hampton Court. It was a pretty little place, situated in the well-known Green in front of the Palace; and in that quiet retreat Faraday spent a large portion of his remaining years.

In October 1861 he wrote a letter to the managers of the Royal Institution, resigning part of his duties, in which he reviewed his connection with them. "I entered the Royal Institution in March 1813, nearly forty-nine years ago, and, with the exception of a comparatively short period during which I was abroad on the Continent with Sir H. Davy, have been with you ever since. During that time I have been most happy in your kindness, and in the fostering care which the Royal Institution has bestowed upon me. Thank God, first, for all His gifts. I have next to thank you and your predecessors for the unswerving encouragement and support which you have given me during that period. My life has been a happy one, and all I desired. During its progress I have tried to make a fitting return for it to the Royal Institution, and through it to science. But the progress of years (now amounting in number to three-score and ten) having brought forth first the period of development, and then that of maturity, have ultimately produced for me that of gentle decay. This has taken place in such a manner as to make the evening of life a blessing; for whilst increasing physical weakness occurs, a full share of health free from pain is granted with it; and whilst memory and certain other faculties of the mind diminish, my good spirits and cheerfulness do not diminish with them."

When he could no longer discharge effectually his duties at the Trinity House, the Corporation quietly made their arrangements for transferring them, and, with the concurrence of the Board of Trade, determined that his salary of 200l. per annum should continue as long as he lived. Sir Frederick Arrow called upon him at Albemarle Street, and explained how the matter stood, but he found it hard to persuade the Professor that there was no injustice in his continuing to receive the money; then, taking hold of Sir Frederick by one hand and Dr. Tyndall by the other, Faraday, with swimming eyes, passed over his office to his successor.

Gradually but surely the end approached. The loss of memory was followed by other symptoms of declining power. The fastenings of his earthly tabernacle were removed one by one, and he looked forward to "the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." This was no new anticipation. Calling on the friend who had long directed with him the affairs of the Institution, but who was then half paralysed, he had said, "Barlow, you and I are waiting; that is what we have to do now; and we must try to do it patiently." He had written to his niece, Mrs. Deacon: "I cannot think that death has to the Christian anything in it that should make it rare, or other than a constant, thought; out of the view of death comes the view of the life beyond the grave, as out of the view of sin (the true and the real view which the Holy Spirit alone can give to a man) comes the glorious hope.... My worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. Happy is it for all of us that the true good lies not in them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little children trusting in the Father of Mercies, and accepting His unspeakable gift." And when the dark shadow was creeping over him, he wrote to the Comte de Paris: "I bow before Him who is Lord of all, and hope to be kept waiting patiently for His time and mode of releasing me according to His Divine Word, and the great and precious promises whereby His people are made partakers of the Divine nature." His niece, Miss Jane Barnard, who tended him with most devoted care, thus wrote from Hampton Court on the 27th June:—"The kind feelings shown on every side towards my dear uncle, and the ready offers of help, are most soothing. I am thankful to say that we are going on very quietly; he keeps his bed and sleeps much, and we think that the paralysis gains on him, but between whiles he speaks most pleasant words, showing his comfort and trust in the finished work of our Lord. The other day he repeated some verses of the 46th Psalm, and yesterday a great part of the 23rd. We can only trust that it may be given us to say truly, 'Thy will be done;' indeed, the belief that all things work together for good to them that believe, is an anchor of hope, sure and steadfast, to the soul. We are surrounded by most kind and affectionate friends, and it is indeed touching to see what warm feelings my dear uncle has raised on all sides."

When his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day when his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that then spanned the sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-coloured arch, and observed, "He hath set his testimony in the heavens." On August 25, 1867, quietly, almost imperceptibly, came the release. There was a philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven.

The funeral, at his own request, was of the simplest character. His remains were conveyed to Highgate Cemetery by his relations, and deposited in the grave, according to the practice of his Church, in perfect silence. Few of his scientific friends were in London that bright summer-time, but Professor Graham and one or two others came out from the shrubbery, and joining the group of family mourners, took their last look at the coffin.

But when this sun had set below our earthly horizon, there seemed to spring up in the minds of men a great desire to catch some of the rays of the fading brightness and reflect them to posterity. A "Faraday Memorial" was soon talked of, and the work is now in the sculptor's hands; the Chemical Society has founded a "Faraday Lectureship;" one of the new streets in Paris has been called "Rue Faraday;" biographical sketches have appeared in many of the British and Continental journals; successive books have told the story of his life and work; and in a thousand hearts there is embalmed the memory of this Christian gentleman and philosopher.

SECTION II.
STUDY OF HIS CHARACTER.

In the previous section we have traced the leading events of a life which was quietly and uniformly successful. We have watched the passage of the errand-boy into the philosopher, and we have seen how at first he begged for the meanest place in a scientific workshop, and at last declined the highest honour which British Science was capable of granting. His success did not lie in the amassing of money—he deliberately turned aside from the path of proffered wealth; nor did it lie in the attainment of social position and titles—he did not care for the weight of these. But if success consists in a life full of agreeable occupation, with the knowledge that its labours are adding to the happiness and wealth of the world, leading on to an old age full of honour, and the prospect of a blissful immortality,—then the highest success crowned the life of Faraday.

How did he obtain it? Not by inheritance, and not by the force of circumstances. The wealth or the reputation of fathers is often an invaluable starting-point for sons: a liberal education and the contact of superior minds in early youth is often a mighty help to the young aspirant: the favour of powerful friends will often place on a vantage-ground the struggler in the battle of life. But Faraday had none of these. Accidental circumstances sometimes push a man forward, or give him a special advantage over his fellows; but Faraday had to make his circumstances, and to seize the small favours that fortune sometimes threw in his way. The secret of his success lay in the qualities of his mind.

It is only fair, however, to remark that he started with no disadvantages. There was no stain in the family history: he had no dead weight to carry, of a disgraced name, or of bad health, or deficient faculties, or hereditary tendencies to vice. It must be acknowledged, too, that he was endowed with a naturally clear understanding and an unusual power of looking below the surface of things.

The first element of success that we meet with in his biography is the faithfulness with which he did his work. This led the bookseller to take his poor errand-boy as an apprentice; and this enabled his father to write, when he was 18: "Michael is bookbinder and stationer, and is very active at learning his business. He has been most part of four years of his time out of seven. He has a very good master and mistress, and likes his place well. He had a hard time for some while at first going; but, as the old saying goes, he has rather got the head above water, as there is two other boys under him." This faithful industry marked also his relations with Davy and Brande, and the whole of his subsequent life; and at last, when he found that he could no longer discharge his duties, it made him repeatedly press his resignation on the managers of the Royal Institution, and beg to be relieved of his eldership in the Church.

His love of study, and hunger after knowledge, led him to the particular career which he pursued, and that power of imagination, which reveals itself in his early letters, grew and grew, till it gave him such a familiarity with the unseen forces of nature as has never been vouchsafed to any other mortal.

As a source of success there stands out also his enthusiasm. A new fact seemed to charge him with an energy that gleamed from his eyes and quivered through his limbs, and, as by induction, charged for the time those in his presence with the same vigour of interest. Plücker, of Bonn, was showing him one day in the laboratory at Albemarle Street his experiments on the action of a magnet on the electric discharge in vacuum tubes. Faraday danced round them; and as he saw the moving arches of light, he cried, "Oh! to live in it!" Mr. James Heywood once met him in the thick of a tremendous storm at Eastbourne, rubbing his hands with delight because he had been fortunate enough to see the lightning strike the church tower, and displace a pinnacle.

This enthusiasm led him to throw all his heart into his work. Nor was the energy spasmodic, or wasted on unworthy objects; for, in the words of Bence Jones, his was "a lifelong lasting strife to seek and say that which he thought was true, and to do that which he thought was kind."

Indeed, his perseverance in a noble strife was another of the grand elements in his success. His tenacity of purpose showed itself equally in little and in great things. Arranging some apparatus one day with a philosophical instrument maker, he let fall on the floor a small piece of glass: he made several ineffectual attempts to pick it up. "Never mind," said his companion, "it is not worth the trouble." "Well, but, Murray, I don't like to be beaten by something that I have once tried to do."

The same principle is apparent in that long series of electrical researches, where for a quarter of a century he marched steadily along that path of discovery into which he had been lured by the genius of Davy. And so, whatever course was set before him, he ran with patience towards the goal, not diverted by the thousand objects of interest which he passed by, nor stopping to pick up the golden apples that were flung before his feet.

This tremendous faculty of work was relieved by a wonderful playfulness. This rarely appears in his writings, but was very frequent in his social intercourse. It was a simple-hearted joyousness, the effervescence of a spirit at peace with God and man. It not seldom, however, assumed the form of good-natured banter or a practical joke. Indications of this playfulness have already been given, and I have tried to put upon paper some instances that occur to my own recollection, but the fun depended so much upon his manner, that it loses its aroma when separated from himself.

However, I will try one story. I was spending a night at an hotel at Ramsgate when on lighthouse business. Early in the morning there came a knock at the bed-room door, but, as I happened to be performing my ablutions, I cried, "Who's there?" "Guess." I went over the names of my brother commissioners, but heard only "No, no," till, not thinking of any other friend likely to hunt me up in that place, I left off guessing; and on opening the door I saw Faraday enjoying with a laugh my inability to recognize his voice through a deal board.

A student of the late Professor Daniell tells me that he remembers Faraday often coming into the lecture-room at King's College just when the Professor had finished and was explaining matters more fully to any of his pupils who chose to come down to the table. One day the subject discoursed on and illustrated had been sulphuretted hydrogen, and a little of the gas had escaped into the room, as it perversely will do. When Faraday entered he put on a look of astonishment, as though he had never smelt such a thing before, and in a comical manner said, "Ah! a savoury lecture, Daniell!" On another occasion there was a little ammonia left in a jar over mercury. He pressed Daniell to tell him what it was, and when the Professor had put his head down to see more clearly, he whiffed some of the pungent gas into his face.

Occasionally this humour was turned to good account, as when, one Friday evening before the lecture, he told the audience that he had been requested by the managers to mention two cases of infringement of rule. The first related to the red cord which marks off the members' seats. "The second case I take to be a hypothetical one, namely, that of a gentleman wearing his hat in the drawing-room." This produced a laugh, which the Professor joined in, bowed, and retired.

This faithful discharge of duty, this almost intuitive insight into natural phenomena, and this persevering enthusiasm in the pursuit of truth, might alone have secured a great position in the scientific world, but they alone could never have won for him that large inheritance of respect and love. His contemporaries might have gazed upon him with an interest and admiration akin to that with which he watched a thunderstorm; but who feels his affections drawn out towards a mere intellectual Jupiter? We must look deeper into his character to understand this. There is a law well recognized in the science of light and heat, that a body can absorb only the same sort of rays which it is capable of emitting. Just so is it in the moral world. The respect and love of his generation were given to Faraday because his own nature was full of love and respect for others.

Each of these qualities—his respect for and love to others, or, more generally, his reverence and kindliness—deserves careful examination.

Throughout his life, Michael Faraday appeared as though standing in a reverential attitude towards Nature, Man, and God.

Towards Nature, for he regarded the universe as a vast congeries of facts which would not bend to human theories. Speaking of his own early life, he says: "I was a very lively imaginative person, and could believe in the 'Arabian Nights' as easily as in the 'Encyclopædia;' but facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion." He was indeed a true disciple of that philosophy which says, "Man, who is the servant and interpreter of Nature, can act and understand no farther than he has, either in operation or in contemplation, observed of the method and order of Nature."[11] And verily Nature admitted her servant into her secret chambers, and showed him marvels to interpret to his fellow-men more wonderful and beautiful than the phantasmagoria of Eastern romance.

His reverence towards Man showed itself in the respect he uniformly paid to others and to himself. Thoroughly genuine and simple-hearted himself, he was wont to credit his fellow-men with high motives and good reasons. This was rather uncomfortable when one was conscious of no such merit, and I at least have felt ashamed in his presence of the poor commonplace grounds of my words and actions. To be in his company was in fact a moral tonic. As he had learned the difficult art of honouring all men, he was not likely to run after those whom the world counted great. "We must get Garibaldi to come some Friday evening," said a member of the Institution during the visit of the Italian hero to London. "Well, if Garibaldi thinks he can learn anything from us, we shall be happy to see him," was Faraday's reply. This nobility of regard not only preserved him from envying the success of other explorers in the same field, but led him heartily to rejoice with them in their discoveries.

Dumas gives us a picture of Foucault showing Faraday some of his admirable experiments, and of the two men looking at one another with eyes moistened, but full of bright expression, as they stood hand in hand, silently thankful—the one for the pleasure he had experienced, the other for the honour that had been done him. He also tells how, on another occasion, he breakfasted at Albemarle Street, and during the meal Mr. Faraday made some eulogistic remarks upon Davy, which were coldly received by his guest. After breakfast, he was taken downstairs to the ante-room of the lecture theatre, when Faraday, walking up to the portrait of his old master, exclaimed, "Wasn't he a great man!" then turning round to the window next the entrance door, he added, "It was there that he spoke to me for the first time." The Frenchman bowed. They descended the stairs again to the laboratory. Faraday pulled out an old note-book, and turning over its pages showed where Davy had entered the means by which the first globule of potassium was produced, and had drawn a line round the description, with the words, "Capital experiment." The French chemist owned himself vanquished, and tells the tale in honour of him who remembered the greatness and forgot the littlenesses of his teacher.

And the respect he showed to others he required to be shown to himself. It is difficult to imagine anyone taking liberties with him, and it was only in early life that there were small-minded creatures who would treat him not according to what he was, but according to the position from which he had risen. His servants and workpeople were always attentive to the smallest expression of his wish. Still, he did not "go through his life with his elbows out." He once wrote to Matteucci: "I see that that moves you which would move me most, viz. the imputation of a want of good faith; and I cordially sympathize with anyone who is so charged unjustly. Such cases have seemed to me almost the only ones for which it is worth while entering into controversy. I have felt myself not unfrequently misunderstood, often misrepresented, sometimes passed by, as in the cases of specific inductive capacity, magneto-electric currents, definite electrolytic action, &c. &c.: but it is only in the cases where moral turpitude has been implied, that I have felt called upon to enter on the subject in reply." Yet, where he felt that his honour was impugned, none could be more sensitive or more resolute.

This desire to clear himself, combined with his delicate regard for the feelings of others, struck me forcibly in the following incident. At Mr. Barlow's, one Friday evening after the discourse, two or three other chemists and myself were commenting unfavourably on a public act of Faraday, when suddenly he appeared beside us. I did not hesitate to tell him my opinion. He gave me a short answer, and joined others of the company. A few days afterwards he found me in the laboratory preparing for a lecture, and, without referring directly to what I had said, he gave me a full history of the transaction in such a way as to show that he could not have acted otherwise, and at the same time to render any apology on my part unnecessary.

Intimately connected with his respect for Man as well as reverence for truth, was the flash of his indignation against any injustice, and his hot anger against any whom he discovered to be pretenders. When, for instance, he had convinced himself that the reputed facts of table-turning and spiritualism were false, his severe denunciation of the whole thing followed as a matter of course.

Thus, too, a story is told of his once taking the side of the injured in a street quarrel by the pump in Savile Row. One evening also at my house, a young man who has since acquired a scientific renown was showing specimens of some new compounds he had made. A well-known chemist contemptuously objected that, after all, they were mere products of the laboratory: but Faraday came to the help of the young experimenter, and contended that they were chemical substances worthy of attention, just as much as though they occurred in nature.

His reverence for God was shown not merely by that homage which every religious man must pay to his Creator and Redeemer, but by the enfolding of the words of Scripture and similar expressions in such a robe of sacredness, that he rarely allowed them to pass his lips or flow from his pen, unless he was convinced of the full sympathy of the person with whom he was holding intercourse.

This characteristic reverence was united to an equally characteristic kindliness. This word does not exactly express the quality intended; but unselfishness is negative, goodness is too general, love is commonly used with special applications; kindness, friendship, geniality, and benevolence are only single aspects of the quality. Let the reader add these terms all together, and the resultant will be about what is meant.[12]

Faraday's love to children was one way in which this kindliness was shown. Having no children of his own, he surrounded himself usually with his nieces: we have already had a glimpse of him heartily entering into their play, and we are told how a word or two from Uncle would clear away all the trouble from a difficult lesson, that a long sum in arithmetic became a delight when he undertook to explain it, and that when the little girl was naughty and rebellious, he could gently win her round, telling her how he used to feel himself when he was young, and advising her to submit to the reproof she was fighting against. Nor were his own relatives the only sharers of his kindness. One friend cherishes among his earliest recollections, that of Faraday making for him a fly-cage and a paper purse, which had a real bright half-crown in it. When the present Mr. Baden Powell was a little fellow of thirteen, he used to give short lectures on chemistry in his father's house, and the philosopher of Albemarle Street liked to join the family audience, and would listen and applaud the experiments heartily. When one day my wife and I called on him with our children, he set them playing at hide-and-seek in the lecture theatre, and afterwards amused them upstairs with tuning-forks and resounding glasses. At a soirée at Mr. Justice Grove's, he wanted to see the younger children of the family; so the eldest daughter brought down the little ones in their nightgowns to the foot of the stairs, and Faraday expressed his gratification with "Ah! that's the best thing you have done to-night." And when his faculties had nearly faded, it is remembered how the stroking of his hand by Mr. Vincent's little daughter quickened him again to bright and loving interest.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations of this kindliness in various relations of life.

Here is one of his own telling, where certainly the effect produced was not owing to any knowledge of how princely an intellect underlay the loving spirit. It is from a journal of his tour in Wales:—

"Tuesday, July 20th.—After dinner I set off on a ramble to Melincourt, a waterfall on the north side of the valley, and about six miles from our inn. Here I got a little damsel for my guide who could not speak a word of English. We, however, talked together all the way to the fall, though neither knew what the other said. I was delighted with her burst of pleasure as, on turning a corner, she first showed me the waterfall. Whilst I was admiring the scene, my little Welsh damsel was busy running about, even under the stream, gathering strawberries. On returning from the fall I gave her a shilling that I might enjoy her pleasure: she curtsied, and I perceived her delight. She again ran before me back to the village, but wished to step aside every now and then to pull strawberries. Every bramble she carefully moved out of the way, and ventured her bare feet to try stony paths, that she might find the safest for mine. I observed her as she ran before me, when she met a village companion, open her hand to show her prize, but without any stoppage, word, or other motion. When we returned to the village I bade her good-night, and she bade me farewell, both by her actions and, I have no doubt, her language too."

In a letter which Mr. Abel, the Director of the Chemical Department of the War Establishment, has sent me, occur the following remarks:—

"Early in 1849 I was appointed, partly through the kind recommendation of Faraday, to instruct the senior cadets and a class of artillery officers in the Arsenal, in practical chemistry. On the occasion of my first attendance at Woolwich, when, having just reached manhood, I was about to deliver my first lecture as a recognized teacher, I was naturally nervous, and was therefore dismayed when on entering the class-room I perceived Faraday, who, having come to Woolwich, as usual, to prepare for his next morning's lecture at the Military Academy, had been prompted by his kindly feelings to lend me the support of his presence upon my first appearance among his old pupils. In a moment Faraday put me completely at my ease; he greeted me heartily, saying, 'Well, Abel, I have come to see whether I can assist you;' and suiting action to word, he bustled about, persisting in helping me in the arrangement of my lecture-tables,—and at the close of my demonstration he followed me from pupil to pupil, aiding each in his first attempt at manipulation, and evidently enjoying most heartily the self-imposed duty of assistant to his young protégé."

Another scientific friend, Mr. W. F. Barrett, writes:—"My first interview with Mr. Faraday ten years ago left an impression upon me I can never forget. Young student as I then was, thinking chiefly of present work and little of future prospects, and till then unknown to Mr. Faraday, judge of my feelings when, taking my hand in both of his, he said, 'I congratulate you upon choosing to be a philosopher: it is an arduous life, but a noble and a glorious one. Work hard, and work carefully, and you will have success.' The sweet yet serious way he said this made the earnestness of work become a very vivid reality, and led me to doubt whether I had not dared to undertake too lofty a pursuit. After this Mr. Faraday never forgot to remember me in a number of thoughtful and delicate ways. He would ask me upstairs to his room to describe or show him the results of any little investigation I might have made: taking the greatest interest in it all, his pleasure would seem to equal and thus heighten mine, and then he would add words of kind suggestion and encouragement. In the same kindly spirit he has invited me to his house at Hampton Court, or would ask me to join him at supper after the Friday evening's lecture. His kindness is further shown by his giving me a volume of his researches on Chemistry and Physics, writing therein, 'From his friend Michael Faraday.' Those who live alone in London, unknown and uncared-for by any around them, can best appreciate these marks of attention which Mr. Faraday invariably showed, and not only to myself, but equally to my fellow-assistant in the chemical laboratory."

The following instance among many that might be quoted will illustrate his readiness to take trouble on behalf of others. When Dr. Noad was writing his "Manual of Electricity," a doubt crossed his mind as to whether Sir Snow Harris's unit jar gave a true measure of the quantity of electricity thrown into a Leyden jar: he asked Faraday, and his doubt was confirmed. Shortly afterwards he received a letter beginning thus:—

"My dear Sir,

"Whilst looking over my papers on induction, I was reminded of our talk about Harris's unit jar, and recollected that I had given you a result just the reverse of my old conclusions, and, as I believe, of the truth. I think the jar is a true measure, so long as the circumstances of position, &c., are not altered; for its discharge and the quantity of electricity thus passed on depends on the constant relation of the balls connected with the inner and outer surface coating to each other, and is independent of their joint relation to the machine, battery, &c.... Perhaps I have not made my view clear, but next time we meet, remind me of the matter.

"Ever truly yours,

"M. Faraday."

And just a week afterwards Dr. Noad received a second letter, surmounted by a neat drawing, and describing at great length experiments that the Professor had since made in order to place the matter beyond doubt.

And it was not merely for friends and brother savants that he would take trouble. Old volumes of the Mechanics' Magazine bear testimony to the way in which he was asked questions by people in all parts of the kingdom, and that he was accustomed to give painstaking answers to such letters.

"Do to others as you would wish them to do to you," was a precept often on his lips. But I have heard that he was sometimes charged with transgressing it himself, inasmuch as he took an amount of trouble for other people which he would have been greatly distressed if they had taken for him.

His charities were very numerous,—not to beggars; for them he had the Mendicity Society's tickets,—but to those whose need he knew. The porter of the Royal Institution has shown me, among his treasured memorials, a large number of forms for post-office orders, for sums varying from 5s. to 5l., which Faraday was in the habit of sending in that way to different recipients of his thoughtful bounty. Two or three instances have come to my knowledge of his having given more considerable sums of money—say 20l.—to persons who he thought would be benefited by them. In some instances the gift was called a loan, but he lent "not expecting again," and entered into the spirit of the injunction, "When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

This principle was in fact stated in one of his letters to a friend: "As a case of distress I shall be very happy to help you as far as my means allow me in such cases; but then I never let my name go to such acts, and very rarely even the initials of my name." His contributions to the general funds of his Church were kept equally secret.

From all these circumstances, therefore, it is impossible to gauge the amount of his charitable gifts; but when it is remembered that for many years his income from different sources must have been 1,000l. or 1,200l., that he and Mrs. Faraday lived in a simple manner—comfortably, it is true, but not luxuriously—and that his whole income was disposed of in some way, there can be little doubt that his gifts amounted to several hundred pounds per annum.

But it was not in monetary gifts alone that his kindness to the distressed was shown. Time was spent as freely as money; and an engrossing scientific research would not be allowed to stand in the way of his succouring the sorrowful. Many persons have told me of his self-denying deeds on behalf of those who were ill, and of his encouraging words. He had indeed a heart ever ready to sympathize. Thus meeting once in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court an old friend who had retired there invalided and was being drawn about in a Bath chair, he is said to have burst into tears.

When eight years ago my wife and my only son were taken away together, and I lay ill of the same fatal disease, he called at my house, and in spite of remonstrances found his way into the infected chamber. He would have taken me by the hand if I had allowed him; and then he sat a while by my bedside, consoling me with his sympathy and cheering me with the Christian hope.

It is no wonder that this kindliness took the hearts of men captive; and this quality was, like mercy, "twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes." The feeling awakened in the minds of others by this kindliness was indeed a source of the purest pleasure to himself; trifling proofs of interest or love could easily move his thankfulness; and he richly enjoyed the appreciation of his scientific labours. This would often break forth in words. Thus in the middle of a letter to A. De la Rive, principally on scientific matters, he writes:—

"Do you remember one hot day, I cannot tell how many years ago, when I was hot and thirsty in Geneva, and you took me to your house in the town and gave me a glass of water and raspberry vinegar? That glass of drink is refreshing to me still."

Again: "Tyndall, the sweetest reward of my work is the sympathy and good-will which it has caused to flow in upon me from all quarters of the world."

But to estimate rightly this amiability of character, it must be distinctly remembered that it was not that superabundance of good-nature which renders some men incapable of holding their own, or rebuking what they know to be wrong. In proof of this his letters to the spiritualists might be quoted; but the following have not hitherto seen the light. They are addressed to two different parties whose inventions came officially before him.

"You write 'private' on the outside of your official communication, and 'confidential' within. I will take care to respect these instructions as far as falls within my duty; but I can have nothing private or confidential as regards the Trinity House, which is my chief. Whatever opinion I send to them I must accompany with the papers you send me. If therefore you wish anything held back from them, send me another official answer, and I will return you the one I have, marked 'confidential.' Our correspondence is indeed likely to become a little irregular, because your papers have not come to me through the Trinity House. You will feel that I cannot communicate any opinion I may form to you: I am bound to the Trinity House, to whom I must communicate in confidence. I have no objection to your knowing my conclusions; but the Trinity House is the fit judge of the use it may make of them, or the degree of confidence they may think they deserve, or the parties to whom they may choose to communicate them."

By a foot-note it appears that the private and confidential communication was returned to the writer, by desire, four days afterwards.

"Sir,

"I have received your note and read your pamphlet. There is nothing in either which makes it at all desirable to me to see your apparatus, for I have not time to spare to look at a matter two or three times over. In referring to ——, I suppose you refer also to his application to the Trinity House. In that case I shall hear from him through the Trinity House. He has, however, certain inquiries (which I have no doubt have gone to him long ago through the Trinity House) to answer before I shall think it necessary to take any further steps in the matter. With these, however, I suppose you have nothing to do.

"Are you aware that many years ago our Institution was lighted up for months, if not for years together, by oil-gas (or, as you call it, olefiant gas), compressed into cylinders to the extent of thirty atmospheres, and brought to us from a distance? I have no idea that the patent referred to at the bottom of page 9 could stand for an hour in a court of law. I think, too, you are wrong in misapplying the word olefiant. It already belongs to a particular gas, and cannot, without confusion, be used as you use it.

"I am Sir,

"Your obedient Servant,

"M. Faraday."

"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]

Long, long after this event, Dr. and Mrs. Faraday, with Dr. Tyndall, were returning one evening from Mr. Gassiot's, on Clapham Common: a dense fog came on, and they did not know where they were. The two gentlemen got out of their vehicle, and walked to a house and knocked. A man appeared, first at a window and afterwards at the door, very angry indeed at the disturbance, and demanded to know their business. Faraday, in his calm, irresistible manner, explained the situation and their object in knocking. The man instantly changed his tone, looked foolish, and muttered something about being in a fright lest his house of business was on fire.

As to simplicity of character: when, in the course of writing this book, I have spoken to his acquaintances about Faraday, the most frequent comment has been in such words as, "Oh! he was a beautiful character, and so simple-minded." I have tried to ascertain the cause of this simple-mindedness, and I believe it was the consciousness that he was meaning to do right himself, and the belief that others whom he addressed meant to do right too, and so he could just let them see everything that was passing through his mind. And while he knew no reason for concealment, there was no trace of self-conceit about him, nor any pretence at being what he was not. To illustrate this quality is not so easy; the indications of it, like his humour, were generally too delicate to be transferred to paper; but perhaps the following letter will do as well as anything else, for there are few philosophers who could have written so naturally about the pleasures of a pantomime and then about his highest hopes:—

"Royal Institution, London, W.

"1st January, 1857.

"My dear Miss Coutts,

"You are very kind to think of our pleasure and send us entrance to your box for to-morrow night. We thank you very sincerely, and I mean to enjoy it, for I still have a sympathy with children and all their thoughts and pleasure. Permit me to wish you very sincerely a happy year; and also to Mrs. Brown. With some of us our greatest happiness will be content mingled with patience; but there is much happiness in that and the expected end.

"Ever your obliged Servant,

"M. Faraday."[14]

As to truthfulness: he was not only truthful in the common acceptation of the word, but he did not allow, either in himself or others, hasty conclusions, random assertions, or slippery logic. "At such times he had a way of repeating the suspicious statement very slowly and distinctly, with an air of wondering scrutiny as if it had astonished him. His irony was then irresistible, and always produced a modification of the objectionable phrase."

One Friday evening there was exhibited an improved Davy lamp, with an eulogistic description. Faraday added the words, "The opinion of the inventor."

"An acquaintance rather given to inflict tedious narratives on his friends was descanting to Faraday on the iniquity of some coachman who had set him down the previous night in the middle of a dark and miry road,—'in fact,' said the irksome drawler, 'in a perfect morass; and there I was, as you may imagine, half the night, plunging and struggling to get out of this dreadful morass.' 'More ass you!' rapped out the philosopher at the top of his scale of laughter." This was a rare instance, for it was only when much provoked that he would perpetrate a pun, or depart from the kind courtesy of his habitual talk.

That he was quite ready to give up a statement or view when it was proved by others to be incorrect, is shown by the Preface to the volumes in which are reprinted his "Experimental Researches." "In giving advice," says his niece Miss Reid, "he always went back to first principles, to the true right and wrong of questions, never allowing deviations from the simple straightforward path of duty to be justified by custom or precedent; and he judged himself strictly by the same rule which he laid down for others."

These beauties of character were not marred by serious defects or opposing faults. "He could not be too closely approached. There were no shabby places or ugly comers in his mind." Yet he was very far from being one of those passionless men who resemble a cold statue rather than throbbing flesh and blood. He was no "model of all the virtues," dreadfully uninteresting, and discouraging to those who feel such calm perfection out of their reach. His inner life was a battle, with its wounds as well as its victory. Proud by nature, and quick-tempered, he must have found the curb often necessary; but notwithstanding the rapidity of his actions and thoughts, he knew how to keep a tight rein on that fiery spirit.

I have listened attentively to every remark in disparagement of Faraday's character, but the only serious ones have appeared to me to arise from a misunderstanding of the man, a misunderstanding the more easy because his standard of right and wrong, and of his own duty, often differed from the notions current around him. Still, it may be true that his extreme sensitiveness led him sometimes to do scant justice to those who, he imagined, were treading too closely in his own footsteps; as, for instance, when Nobili brought out some beautiful experiments on magnetism, just after the short notice of his own discoveries in 1831 which Faraday had sent to M. Hachette, and which was communicated to the Académie des Sciences. It is true also that, with his great caution and his repugnance to moral evil, he was more disposed to turn away in disgust from an erring companion than to endeavour to reclaim him. It has also been imputed to him as a fault that he founded no school, and took no young man by the hand as Davy had taken him. That this was rather his misfortune than his fault, would appear from words he once wrote to Miss Moore: "I have often endeavoured to discover a genius, but have not been very successful, though many cases seemed promising at first." The world would doubtless have been the gainer if he had stamped his own image on the minds of a group of disciples: but a man cannot do everything; and had Faraday been more of a teacher, he would perhaps have been less of an investigator.

Of course Faraday was subject, like other men, to errors of judgment, and it was impossible, even if desirable, always to avoid giving offence. Thus he was constantly pestered for his autograph; and instead of throwing the applications into his waste-paper basket, he had a formal circular lithographed excusing himself from complying. This offended more than one recipient; and he was roughly made aware of it by once having the circular returned from St. Louis with a scurrilous comment, and the postage from America not prepaid. He never again used the printed form, Miss Barnard undertaking to answer all such requests.

It has been previously remarked that Faraday took little part in social movements, and went little into society, but it must not be supposed that he was by any means unsocial. It seems probable that his freedom in this matter was somewhat hampered by the principles in which he had been brought up: it is certain that he was restrained by the desire to give all the time and energy he could to scientific research. Yet pleasant stories are told of his occasional appearances at social gatherings. Thus he liked to attend the Royal Academy dinners, and in earlier days he enjoyed the artistic and musical conversaziones at Hullmandel's, where Stanfield Turner and Landseer met Garcia and Malibran; and sometimes he joined this pleasant company at supper and charades, at others in their excursions up the river in an eight-oared cutter. Captain Close has described to me how, when the French Lighthouse authorities put up the screw-pile light on the sands near Calais, they invited the Trinity House officers and Faraday to inspect it. A dinner was arranged for them after the inspection, and M. Reynaud proposed the health of the étranger célèbre. A young engineer took exception to Faraday being called a stranger—since he had been at St. Cyr he had known the great Englishman well by his works. The Professor replied to the compliment in the language of his hosts, with a few of his happy and kindly remarks. A gentleman high in the diplomatic service, who was present, remarked that Faraday had said many things which were not French, but not a word which ought not to be so.

More unrestricted was Faraday's sympathy with Nature. He felt the poetry of the changing seasons, but there were two aspects of Nature that especially seemed to claim communion with his spirit: he delighted in a thunderstorm, and he experienced a pleasurable sadness as the orange sunset faded into the evening twilight. There are other minds to which both these sensations are familiar, but they seem to have been felt with great intensity by him. No doubt his electrical knowledge added much to his interest in the grand discharges from the thunder-clouds, but it will hardly account for his standing long at a window watching the vivid flashes, a stranger to fear, with his mind full of lofty thoughts, or perhaps of high communings. Sometimes, too, if the storm was at a little distance, he would summon a cab, and, in spite of the pelting rain, drive to the scene of awful beauty.

On a clear starry night Captain Close quoted to him the words of Lorenzo in the "Merchant of Venice:"—

... "Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it."

Faraday, who happened not to be familiar with the passage, made his friend repeat it over and over again as he drank in the whole meaning of the poetry, for there is a true sense in which no other mortal had ever opened his ears so fully to the harmony of the universe.

From the plains of mental mediocrity there occasionally rise the mountains of genius, and from the dead level of selfish respectability there stand out now and then the peaks of moral greatness. Neither kind of excellence is so common as we could wish it, and it is a rare coincidence when, as in Socrates, the two meet in the same individual. In Faraday we have a modern instance. There are persons now living who watched this man of strong will and intense feelings raising himself from the lower ranks of society, yet without losing his balance; rather growing in simplicity, disinterestedness, and humility, as princes became his correspondents and all the learned bodies of the world vied with each other to do him homage; still finding his greatest happiness at home, though reigning in the affections of all his fellows,—loving every honest man, however divergent in opinion, and loved most by those who knew him best.

This is the phenomenon. By what theory is it to be accounted for?

The secret did not lie in the nature of his pursuits. This cannot be better shown than in the following incident furnished me by Mrs. Crosse:—"One morning, a few months after we were married, my husband took me to the Royal Institution to call on Mr. and Mrs. Faraday. I had not seen the laboratory there, and the philosopher very kindly took us over the Institution, explaining for my information many objects of interest. His great vivacity and cheeriness of manner surprised me in a man who devoted his life to such abstruse studies, but I have since learnt to know that the highest philosophical nature is often, indeed generally, united with an almost childlike simplicity.

"After viewing the ample appliances for experimental research, and feeling impressed by the scientific atmosphere of the place, I turned and said, 'Mr. Faraday, you must be very happy in your position and with your pursuits, which elevate you entirely out of the meaner aspects and lower aims of common life.'

"He shook his head, and with that wonderful mobility of countenance which was characteristic, his expression of joyousness changed to one of profound sadness, he replied: 'When I quitted business, and took to science as a career, I thought I had left behind me all the petty meannesses and small jealousies which hinder man in his moral progress; but I found myself raised into another sphere, only to find poor human nature just the same everywhere—subject to the same weaknesses and the same self-seeking, however exalted the intellect.'

"These were his words as well as I can recollect; and, looking at that good and great man, I thought I had never seen a countenance which so impressed me with the characteristic of perfect unworldliness. We know how his life proved that this rare qualification was indeed his."

"Childlike simplicity:" "unworldliness." Where was the tree rooted that bore such beautiful blossoms? Faraday had learnt in the school of Christ to become "a little child," and he loved not the world because the love of the Father was in him.

We have a charming glimpse of this in an extract which Professor Tyndall has given from an old paper in which he wrote his impressions after one of his earliest dinners with the philosopher:—"At two o'clock he came down for me. He, his niece, and myself formed the party. 'I never give dinners,' he said; 'I don't know how to give dinners; and I never dine out. But I should not like my friends to attribute this to a wrong cause. I act thus for the sake of securing time for work, and not through religious motives as some imagine.' He said grace. I am almost ashamed to call his prayer a 'saying' of grace. In the language of Scripture, it might be described as the petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of His Son, and who with absolute trust asked a blessing from his father. We dined on roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and potatoes, drank sherry, talked of research and its requirements, and of his habit of keeping himself free from the distractions of society. He was bright and joyful—boylike, in fact, though he is now sixty-two. His work excites admiration, but contact with him warms and elevates the heart. Here, surely, is a strong man. I love strength, but let me not forget the example of its union with modesty, tenderness, and sweetness, in the character of Faraday."

But his religion deserves a closer attention. When an errand-boy, we find him hurrying the delivery of his newspapers on a Sunday morning so as to get home in time to make himself neat to go with his parents to chapel: his letters when abroad indicate the same disposition; yet he did not make any formal profession of his faith till a month after his marriage, when nearly thirty years of age. Of his spiritual history up to that period little is known, but there seem to be good grounds for believing that he did not accept the religion of his fathers without a conscientious inquiry into its truth. It would be difficult to conceive of his acting otherwise. But after he joined the Sandemanian Church, his questionings were probably confined to matters of practical duty; and to those who knew him best nothing could appear stronger than his conviction of the reality of the things he believed. In order to understand the life and character of Faraday, it is necessary to bear in mind not merely that he was a Christian, but that he was a Sandemanian. From his earliest years that religious system stamped its impress deeply on his mind, it surrounded the blacksmith's son with an atmosphere of unusual purity and refinement, it developed the unselfishness of his nature, and in his after career it fenced his life from the worldliness around, as well as from much that is esteemed as good by other Christian bodies. To this small self-contained sect he clung with warm attachment; he was precluded from Christian communion or work outside their circle, but his sympathies at least burst all narrow bounds. Thus the Abbé Moigno tells us that at Faraday's request he one day introduced him to Cardinal Wiseman. The interview was very cordial, and his Eminence did not hesitate frankly and good-naturedly to ask Faraday if, in his deepest conviction, he believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic, and apostolical, was shut up in the little sect in which he bore rule. "Oh no!" was the reply; "but I do believe from the bottom of my soul that Christ is with us." There were other points, too, in his character which reflected the colouring of the religious school to which he belonged. Thus, while humility is inseparable from a Christian life, there is a special phase of that virtue bred of those doctrines which teach that all our righteousness must be the unmerited gift of another: these doctrines are strongly insisted upon in the Sandemanian Church, and this humility was acquired in an intense degree by its minister. Again, while all Christians deplore the terrible amount of folly and sin in the world, most recognize also a large amount of good, and believe in progressive improvement; but small communities are apt to take gloomy views, and so did Faraday, notwithstanding his personal happiness, and his firm conviction that "there is One above who worketh in all things, and who governs even in the midst of that misrule to which the tendencies and powers of men are so easily perverted."

In writing to Professor Schönbein and a few other kindred spirits he would turn naturally enough from scientific to religious thoughts, and back again to natural philosophy, but he generally kept these two departments of his mental activity strangely distinct; yet of course it was well known that the Professor at Albemarle Street was one of that long line of scientific men, beginning with the savants of the East, who have brought to the Redeemer the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of their adoration.

But the peculiar features of Faraday's spiritual life are matters of minor importance: the genuineness of his religious character is acknowledged by all. We have admired his faithfulness, his amiability of disposition, and his love of justice and truth; how far these qualities were natural gifts, like his clearness of intellect, we cannot precisely tell; but that he exercised constant self-control without becoming hard, ascended the pathway of fame without ever losing his balance, and shed around himself a peculiar halo of love and joyousness, must be attributed in no small degree to a heart at peace with God, and to the consciousness of a higher life.

SECTION III.
FRUITS OF HIS EXPERIENCE.

Those who loved Faraday would treasure every word that he wrote, and to them the life and letters which Bence Jones has given to the world will be inestimable; but from the multitude who knew him only at a distance, we can expect no enthusiasm of admiration. Yet all will readily believe that through the writings of such a genius there must be scattered nuggets of intellectual gold, even when he is not treating directly of scientific subjects. Some of these relate to questions of permanent interest, and such nuggets it is my aim to separate and lay before the reader.

When quite a young man he drew the following ideal portrait:—"The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion, but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biassed by appearances, have no favourite hypothesis, be of no school, and in doctrine have no master. He should not be a respecter of persons, but of things. Truth should be his primary object. If to these qualities be added industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of Nature." This ideal he must steadily have kept before him, and not unfrequently in after days he gave utterance to similar thoughts. Here are two instances, the first from a lecture thirty years afterwards, the second from a private letter:—"We may be sure of facts, but our interpretation of facts we should doubt. He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt; who is able to proportion his judgment and confidence to the value of the evidence set before him, taking a fact for a fact, and a supposition for a supposition; as much as possible keeping his mind free from all source of prejudice, or, where he cannot do this (as in the case of a theory), remembering that such a source is there." The letter is to Mr. Frederick Field, and relates to a paper on the existence of silver in the water of the ocean.

"Royal Institution, 21st October, 1856.

"My dear Sir,

"Your paper looks so well, that though I am of course unable to become security for the facts, I have still thought it my duty to send it to the Royal Society. Whether it will appear there or not I cannot say,—no one can say even for his own papers; but for my part, I think that as facts are the foundation of science, however they may be interpreted, so they are most valuable, and often more so than the interpretations founded upon them. I hope your further researches will confirm those you have obtained: but I would not be too hasty with them,—rather wait a while, and make them quite secure.

"I am, Sir, your obliged Servant,

"M. Faraday."

How pleasant it would have been to peep into his mind and watch the process by which he was transformed into the very image of his ideal philosopher! He has partially told us the secret in two remarkable lectures, one of which was delivered before the City Philosophical Society when he was only twenty-seven years of age, while the other formed part of a series on Education at Albemarle Street. Copious extracts from the first are given by Dr. Bence Jones; the second was published at the time. In the early lecture, which is "On the Forms of Matter," he points out the advantages and dangers of systematizing, and winds up his remarks with—

"Nothing is more difficult and requires more care than philosophical deduction, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixidity of opinion. The man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong, and he has the additional misfortune of inevitably remaining so. All our theories are fixed upon uncertain data, and all of them want alteration and support. Ever since the world began opinion has changed with the progress of things; and it is something more than absurd to suppose that we have a sure claim to perfection, or that we are in possession of the highest stretch of intellect which has or can result from human thought. Why our successors should not displace us in our opinions, as well as in our persons, it is difficult to say; it ever has been so, and from analogy would be supposed to continue so; and yet, with all this practical evidence of the fallibility of our opinions, all, and none more than philosophers, are ready to assert the real truth of their opinions."

In his discourse entitled "Observations on Mental Education," like a skilful physician he first determines what is the great intellectual disease from which the community suffers—"deficiency of judgment,"—and then he lays down rules by which each man may attempt his own cure. For this self-education, "it is necessary that a man examine himself, and that not carelessly.... A first result of this habit of mind will be an internal conviction of ignorance in many things respecting which his neighbours are taught, and that his opinions and conclusions on such matters ought to be advanced with reservation. A mind so disciplined will be open to correction upon good grounds in all things, even in those it is best acquainted with; and should familiarize itself with the idea of such being the case.... It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles, but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous." And then he gives cases from his own mental history:—"I remember the time when I believed a spark was produced between voltaic metals as they approached to contact (and the reasons why it might be possible yet remain); but others doubted the fact and denied the proofs, and on re-examination I found reason to admit their corrections were well founded. Years ago I believed that electrolites could conduct electricity by a conduction proper; that has also been denied by many through long time: though I believed myself right, yet circumstances have induced me to pay that respect to criticism as to re-investigate the subject, and I have the pleasure of thinking that nature confirms my original conclusions. So, though evidence may appear to preponderate extremely in favour of a certain decision, it is wise and proper to hear a counter-statement. You can have no idea how often, and how much, under such an impression, I have desired that the marvellous descriptions which have reached me might prove, in some points, correct; and how frequently I have submitted myself to hot fires, to friction with magnets, to the passes of hands, &c., lest I should be shutting out discovery;—encouraging the strong desire that something might be true, and that I might aid in the development of a new force of nature." He turns then to another evil, and its cure: "The tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires; ... the force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error." He winds up his remarks upon this subject with the italicized sentence: "I will simply express my strong belief that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life." He turns then to the necessity of a "habit of forming clear and precise ideas," and of expressing them in "clear and definite language:"—"When the different data required are in our possession, and we have succeeded in forming a clear idea of each, the mind should be instructed to balance them one against another, and not suffered carelessly to hasten to a conclusion." "As a result of this wholesome mental condition, we should be able to form a proportionate judgment;" that is, one proportionate to the evidence, ranging through all degrees of probability—while he adds: "Frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation."

"The education which I advocate," says Faraday, "will require patience and labour of thought in every exercise tending to improve the judgment. It matters not on what subject a person's mind is occupied; he should engage in it with the conviction that it will require mental labour." "Because the education is internal, it is not the less needful; nor is it more the duty of a man that he should cause his child to be taught, than that he should teach himself. Indolence may tempt him to neglect the self-examination and experience which form his school, and weariness may induce the evasion of the necessary practices; but surely a thought of the prize should suffice to stimulate him to the requisite exertion; and to those who reflect upon the many hours and days devoted by a lover of sweet sounds to gain a moderate facility upon a mere mechanical instrument, it ought to bring a correcting blush of shame if they feel convicted of neglecting the beautiful living instrument wherein play all the powers of the mind."

At the commencement of this discourse the lecturer felt called upon to limit the range of his remarks:—"High as man is placed above the creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his thoughts about the fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. I believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given. Let no one suppose for a moment that the self-education I am about to commend in respect of the things of this life extends to any considerations of the hope set before us, as if man by reasoning could find out God. It would be improper here to enter upon this subject further than to claim an absolute distinction between religious and ordinary belief. I shall be reproached with the weakness of refusing to apply those mental operations which I think good in respect of high things to the very highest. I am content to bear the reproach. Yet, even in earthly matters, I believe that 'the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead;' and I have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future which he cannot know by that spirit." There is of course a certain truth in this passage; spiritual discernment is a real thing possessed by some, and not by others; yet is there this absolute distinction between religious and ordinary belief? Surely there is the same opportunity and the same necessity for careful judgment, and for resistance to prejudice or preference, when we are weighing the credentials of anything that may come before us purporting to be a revelation from above; surely too, if we have satisfied ourselves that we possess such a revelation, we must seek for the same clearness of ideas, and must exercise the same patience and labour of thought, if we would understand it aright. That mental discipline which fits us to interpret the works of God cannot but be akin to the intellectual training required for interpreting His word.