XII. LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY. BY DR. HENRY BENCE JONES. Review. *The Academy for May and June, 1870.] Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies, MILTON XII. LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY. UNDERTAKEN and executed in a reverent and loving spirit, the work of Dr. Bence Jones makes Faraday the virtual writer of his own life. Everybody now knows the story of the philosopher's birth; that his father was a smith; that he was born at Newington Butts in 1791; that he slid along the London pavements, a bright-eyed errand-boy, with a load of brown curls upon his head and a packet of newspapers under his arm; that the lad's master was a bookseller and bookbinder a kindly man, who became attached to the little fellow and in due time made him his apprentice without fee; that during his apprenticeship he found his appetite for knowledge provoked and strengthened by the books he stitched and covered. Thus grew in wisdom and stature to his year of legal manhood, when he appears in the volumes before us as a writer of letters, which reveal his occupation, acquirements, and tone of mind. His correspondent was Mr. Abbott, a member of the Society of Friends, who, with a forecast of his friend's greatness, preserved his letters and produced them at the proper time. he In later years Faraday always carried in his pocket a blank card on which he jotted down in pencil his thoughts and memoranda. He made his notes in the laboratory, in the theatre, and in the streets. This distrust of his memory reveals itself in his first letter to Abbott. To a proposition that no new inquiry should be started between them before the old one had been exhaustively discussed, Faraday objects. "Your notion," he says, "I can hardly allow, for the following reason: ideas and thoughts spring up in my mind which are irrevocably lost for want of noting at the time.” Gentle as he seemed, he wished to have his own way, and he had it throughout his life. Differences of opinion sometimes arose between the two friends, and then they resolutely faced each other. "I accept your offer to fight it out with joy, and shall in the battle of experience cause not pain, but, I hope, pleasure." Faraday notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly checks it. There is at times something mechanical in his selfrestraint. In another nature it would have hardened into mere correctness" of conduct; but his overflowing affections prevented this in his case. The habit became a second nature to him at last, and lent serenity to his later years. 66 In October, 1812, he was engaged by a Mr. De la Roche as a journeyman bookbinder; but the situation did not suit him. His master appears to have been an austere and passionate man, and Faraday was to the last degree sensitive. All his life he continued so. He suffered at times from dejection; and a certain grimness, too, pervaded his moods. "At present," he writes to Abbott, “I am as serious as you can be, and would not scruple to speak a truth to any human being, whatever repugnance it might give rise to. Being in this state of mind, I should have refrained from writing to you, did I not conceive from the general tenor of your letters that your mind is, at proper times, occupied upon serious subjects to the exclusion of those that are frivolous." Plainly he had fallen into that stern Puritan mood which not only crucifies the flesh, affec tions, and lusts of him who harbors it, but is often a cause of disturbed digestion to his friends. About three months after his engagement with De la Roche, Faraday quitted him and bookbinding together. He had heard Davy, copied his lectures, and written to him entreating to be released from trade, which he hated, and enabled to pursue science. Davy recognized the merit of his correspondent, kept his eye upon him, and when occasion offered, drove to his door and sent in a letter offering him the post of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. He was engaged upon March 1, 1812, and on the 8th we find him extracting the sugar from beet-root. He joined the City Philosophical Society which had been founded by Mr. Tatum in 1808. "The discipline was very sturdy, the remarks very plain, and the results most valuable.' Faraday derived great profit from this little association. In the laboratory he had a discipline sturdier still. Both Davy and himself were at this time cut and bruised by explosions of chloride of nitrogen. One explosion was so rapid "as to blow my hand open, tear away a part of one nail, and make my fingers so sore that I cannot use them easily." In another experiment "the tube and receiver were blown to pieces; I got a cut on the head, and Sir Humphry a bruise on his hand." And again, speaking of the same substance, he says: 66 When put in the pump and exhausted, it stood for a moment, and then exploded with a fearful noise. Both Sir H. and I had masks on, but I escaped this time the best. Sir H. had his face cut in two places about the chin, and a violent blow on the forehead struck through a considerable thickness of silk and leather." It was this same substance that blew out the eye of Dulong. Over and over again, even at this early date, we can discern the quality which, compounded with his rare intellectual power, made him a great experimental philosopher. This was his desire to see facts, and not to rest contented with the descriptions of them. He frequently pits the eye against the ear, and affirms the enormous superiority of the |