MICHAEL FARADAY.•

" I MUST remain plain Michael Faraday to the last," said the great discoverer, when admiring friends would fain have thrust honours upon him. And truly there is little need to crown " whom Zeus has crowned in soul before." There had been a moment in his life when Michael Faraday knew he had gained wisdom and knowledge enough to make him rich by the simple devotion of his analytical powers to the interests of commerce. In one year, early in his career, he made considerably more than a thousand pounds, and the path to wealth seemed plain before him. But it was at this very time "he made one of his most remarkable discoveries—the evolution of electricity from magnetism—and there seemed to lie open before him the solution of the problem how to make one force exhibit at will the phenomenon 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 the following up of those great discoveries : it would not do both. Which should he relinquish ? The choice was deliberately made : Nature re- vealed to him more and more of her secrets, but his pro- fessional gains sank in 1832 to £155 9s., and during no subsequent year did they amount even to that." We thank Dr. Gladstone for recording this. From that time Faraday's spirit knew the calm which can subsist even at the heart of ceaseless agitation. To absorb fresh light and then emit it was not so much the purpose as the necessity of his life. And we think Dr. Gladstone has done good service in publishing this abridged record of his career, in which we see rather how he worked than what he accomplished ; for we submit, that weighed in other than hay scales, the process was as important as the result.

We have before ua a careful analysis of the character of a self-

a Michael Faraday. By . H. Gladstone, Ph.D., P.B.S. London: Macmillan and Co. 1872.

educated man, who began life without external advantages, unless, indeed, remembering the genealogical roll of men who have left their mark on the world, and making note of a few facts to be found there, we esteem it an advantage that he was a black- smith's son. It certainly was in his favour that at thirteen years. of age, having to earn his bread, he should have found himself apprentice to a bookseller. Even his apprenticeship, we may remark, by the way, he won for himself, by twelve months of faithful ser-

vice. But the spark of genius even at that early age was burning within him, and Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry,. and an article on " Electricity" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

supplied the fuel which was to fan the little spark into a flame ; and we next find him listening with all eagerness to Sir Humphrey Davy, as he lectures in Albemarle Street on radiant matter, chlorine, &c., &c.; and then, in his eager thirst for scientific occu- pation, writing direct to head-quarters, and asking work of Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society ; but though. foiled in his first attempts, the kindness of Sir Humphrey Davy and a conjunction of other circumstances soon enabled him to- place his foot on the first rung of the ladder he was destined to• climb. Dr. Gladstone has traced many of the causes of his ulti- mate success. We think one suggests itself very early in his. career. When acting as amanuensis to Sir H. Davy during his- travels, he writes from home his impressions of Rome, and adds :—

" Tell B. I have crossed the Alps and the Apennines ; I have been at the Jardin des Plantes ; at the museum arranged by Button ; at the Louvre, among the chefs d'auvre 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 ae St. Peter's, and some of the antiquities. here, and a vast variety of things far too numerous to enumerate."

If we tried to sum up some one teat by which true genius should' be known (an impossible feat, we confess), we should say there is creative power in the mind to which nothing is little. It is always the mind which has nothing to confer which finds little to- perceive. At the time he writes, Faraday is " with his great master burning diamonds, and finding the result invisible carbonic• acid ; is studying springs of inflammable gas, and making experi- ments with iodine ;" but still there is that glowworm.

His year and a half of European travel Dr. Gladstone considers.

as the most important period in Faraday's self-education. "Tit corresponded," he says, "with the collegiate course of other men who have attained high distinction in the world of thought." Hira-

i& has perfect simplicity in it ; that inner sanctum where he worked in Albemarle Street seems far removed from the moil and toil of the restless crowd outside. Here is a moment some- what early in his history :—

"Far more successful was he in repeating and extending some experiments of Ampere on the mutual action of magnets and electric) currents ; and when, after months of work and many ingenious con- trivances, the wire began to move round the magnet, and the magnet round the wire, he himself danced about the revolving metals, his facts- 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."

And later on we have a delightful glimpse of him as he works.

with his faithful Anderson, the old soldier, chosen because he always. did exactly what he was told, and nothing more, and of whom we• have this delightful trait, that having to keep the furnaces always at the right heat till released by his master in the evening, Faraday

one night forgot to tell him he might go home, and next morning found him at his post, having kept the furnaces glowing all night.

long. But here is Dr. Gladstone's bit of description :—

" The habit of Faraday was to think out carefully beforehand the. subject on which he was working, and to plan his mode of attack. Then, if he saw that some new piece of apparatus was needed, he would describe it fully to the instrument-maker with a drawing, and it rarely happened, that there was any need of alteration in executing the order. 11, however,. the means of experiment existed already, he would give Anderson a written list of the things he would require, at least a day before—for Anderson was not to be hurried. When all was ready, he would deacon& into the laboratory, give a quick glance round to see that all was right, take his apron from the drawer, and rub his hands together as he looked/ at the preparations made for his work. There must be no tool on the. table but such as he required. As he began, his face would be exceed- ingly grave, and during the progress of an experiment all must be. perfectly quiet ; but if it was proceeding according to his wish, he would commence to hum a tune, and sometimes to rock himself sideways,

balancing alternately on either foot The simplicity of the means with which he made his experiments was often astonishing and was indeed one of the manifestations of his genius. A good instance is thus narrated by Sir Frederick Arrow. ' When the electrio light was first exhibited permanently at Dungeness on 6th June, 1862, a committee of the Elder Brethren, of which I was one, accompanied Faraday to observe it. We dined, I think, at Dover, and embarked in the yacht from there, and were out for some hours watching it to Faraday's great

delight—(a very fine night),—and especially we did so from the Varne lightship, about equidistant between it and the French light of Grimes, using all our best glasses and photometers to ascertain the relative value of the lights; and this brings me to my story. Before we left Dover, Faraday, with his usual bright smile, in great glee showed me a little common paper box, and said, 'I must take care of this ; it's my special photometer'—and then, opening it, produced a lady's ordinary black shawl-pin,---jet, or imitation perhaps,—and then holding it a little way off the candle, showed me the image very distinct ; and then, putting it a little further off, placed another candle near it, and the relative distance was shown by the size of the image. He lent me this afterwards when we were at the Varne lightship, and it acted admirably ; and ever since I have used one as a very convenient mode of observing, and I never do so but I think of that night and dear good Faraday, and his genial happy way of showing how even common things may be made useful.' "

Dr. Gladstone has written this ' life' for those who are unable to follow Faraday in his scientific researches. We have, therefore, a careful avoidance of all those details which Dr. Bence Jones, in his valuable life of the professor, has given so freely. The scien- tific reader turns with pleasure to the ample pages which tell of the series of experiments by which results with which the world is now familiar were attained, can watch each step in that discovery of electro-magnetic rotation, which, as we know—as we like to know—was succeeded by that dance round the magnet and that " treat to Astley's." We are interested to learn by what steps he arrived at the evolution of electricity and magnetism, but we care also to know that to keep his mind free for that discovery, he could sacrifice not only all chance of wealth, but, as at the time it must have appeared to him, all chance of any tangible gains.

The study of Faraday's character, which forms one of the principal chapters of this little volume, contains a good many hints valuable to young students, and it is for such, we conclude, the book is intended. " To be in Faraday's company," writes Dr.

• -• Gladstone, "was in fact a moral tonic ;" and yet in spite of the almost boyish elasticity of his nature, some of his views were tinged with the gloom which, as the editor observes, " is common 'to small religious communities." And the small sect which the name of Faraday has ennobled was no exception to the rule. We might imagine that a mind constituted like his might

'use, but could never he greatly circumscribed by any system ; that he who could write that, "in knowledge, that man only is te be contemned and-despised who is not in a state of transition ;" or agam,-that " there is nothing more adverse to philosophical deduction than .fizitliti of opinion,"- had out-grown, though perhaps

unconsciously, the spiritual provincialism which can never see beyond the outskirts Of a prescribed boundary. It was not so, however. "I shall be reproached," he writes, " 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." It was perhaps well for the cause of science, that the great discoverer could be thus content ; bad it been other- wise, he would assuredly have turned the highest powers of his

mind from the contemplation of a finite to that of an infinite problem.

Faraday was most anxious that science should take a more pro- minent part in the education given in our public schools and uni- versities. Considering, in common perhaps with most scientific men, that an exclusive attention to literary studies created a tendency to regard other things as nonsense, he observes, " It is the highly educated man we find coming to us again and again, asking the most simple question in chemistry or mechanics ; and when we speak of such things as the conservation of force, the permanency of matter, and the unchangeability of the laws of nature, they are far from comprehending them, though they have relation to us in -every action of our lives."

Dr. Gladstone has given to us in detail a description of a series of experiments which he witnessed, made by the Professor in -connection with the commission of inquiry into the whole system of lighthouses, &c., a subject into which Faraday threw his best energies. We can form some alight idea how those energies must have been tasked by each fresh experiment, when we remember how slight his mathematical knowledge was, so that, as he himself

puts it, " I was never able to make a fact my own without seeing it : the descriptions of the best works altogether failed to convey to my mind such a knowledge of things as to allow me to form a judgment upon them." Yet Sir William Thomson has remarked, "Faraday, without mathematics, divined the result of the mathe- matical investigation ; and, what has proved of infinite value to the mathematicians themselves, he has given them an articulate language in which to express their results." Now that that toil- worn brain is still, and the naked spirit has passed from among us, we may well transpose for the moment Mr. Browning's words, and say,—

" In the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert. Death reads the title clear—

What each soul for itself conquered from out things here."