escaped every taint of this species of illiberality; and that, while, like almost all those who have greatly distinguished themselves in the world of intellect, he selected and persevered in his one favourite path, he nevertheless revered wisdom and genius in all their manifestations.*

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. FARADAY; M. LAURENT.

FOR his years Sir Humphry Davy might still have been among us,† an old man, but younger than several illustrious contemporaries-than Mr. Savage Landor, whose "prompt eloquence, . . . . in prose or numerous verse,” still flows as readily as ever, both from lip and pen, at the age of eighty-two-than Ludwig Tieck, who survives at that of eighty-four, the venerable father of living poets, novelists, and æsthetic critics—than Lord Lyndhurst, who, at that of eighty-five, still keeps his place in the front rank of parliamentary debaters, with his wonderful clear-headedness and power of mental grasp unimpaired-than Alexander Von Humboldt, one of the remarkable products of the memorable year sixty-nine, which gave birth also to Napoleon and Wellington and Mehemet Ali and Castlereagh, still the master of his universal knowledge, and with head and heart both strong, at eighty-eight-than Rogers, who passed away only the other day at ninety-four, and continued to enjoy life almost to the last, having already surmounted his fortieth year at the date of the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, and perfectly remembering the death of Samuel Johnson, which took place when he was a young man of two and twenty, and having actually made his appearance in print in the same year, and probably some months earlier in the year, which witnessed the first publication of the poetry of Burns (who was his senior by only three years, having been born in the same year with the younger Pitt). If Davy had been alive now, he would have been some months younger than Lord Brougham, who still fills as large a space as any other living man in the public eye-enjoys, in fact, more than any other now remaining a European celebrity, and that both in politics and in letters-and whom we all hope to retain for yet many a day. It is only a few months since we had a new book from Davy's younger brother, his able biographer and the editor of his collected works. But the living light of the great chemist's genius may be said to be still with us in one who took from him his first inspiration, and whom a more advanced state of science, first volume of Sir Humphry's collected works, 9 vols. 8vo. 1839-40.

*The "Life of Sir Humphry Davy" bas been twice written in full detail; by Dr. J. A. Paris, in 2 vols. 8vo. 1830, and by his brother Dr. John Davy, whose narrative makes the

This was written in 1858.

and perhaps also a still higher originality and inventive power, and a finer and subtler intellect, have possibly carried to some more comprehensive philosophic views than Davy of himself would have reached. FARADAY has himself related how it was that he first became connected with his distinguished predecessor, in the following letter to the late Dr. Paris, which is given in that gentleman's “Life of Davy:”—“ "My dear Sir, you asked me to give you an account of my first introduction to Sir H. Davy, which I am very happy to do, as I think the circumstance will bear testimony to his goodness of heart. When I was a bookseller's apprentice, I was very fond of experiment, and very averse to trade. It happened that a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some of Sir H. Davy's last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume. 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 at his lectures. The answer, which makes all the point of my communication, I send you in the original, requesting you to take great care of it, and to let me have it back, for you may imagine how much I value it. You will observe that this took place at the end of the year 1812, and early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me of the situation of Assistant in the Laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just vacant. At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the prospects I had before me, telling me that science was a harsh mistress; and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my notion of the superior moral feeling of philosophic men, and said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on the matter. Finally, through his good efforts, I went to the Royal Institution, early in March 1813, as Assistant in the Laboratory; and in October of the same year went with him abroad, as his assistant in experiments and in writing. I returned with him in April 1815, resumed my station in the Royal Institution, and have, as you know, ever since remained there." Sir Humphry's note was as follows:"December 24, 1812. Sir, I am far from displeased with the proof you have given me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power of memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of town, and shall not be settled in town till the end of January: I will then see you at any time you wish. It would gratify me to be of any service to you. I wish it may be in my power. I am, Sir, your obedient, humble servant, H. DAVY." All this is as illustrative of Davy as of Faraday, and equally

honourable to both. It links the history of the one to that of the other. Faraday is stated to have been born in 1794; he was therefore eighteen when he thus made acquaintance with Davy, and obtained through him his first appointment at the Royal Institution. His birthplace, we be→ lieve, was Kirkby Stephen, in Westmoreland; and, of humble parentage, he is understood to have had but little school education. But with such minds a little goes a long way; the seed, that might have fallen upon a rock, and withered away, because it lacked moisture, or among thorns that would have sprung up and choked it, falling on good ground bears fruit an hundredfold. Faraday's life, we may be sure, has been throughout one of self-education; he would neglect no opportunities of improvement, would be dead to no good influence he ever came in the way of. Even the binding of books was a connection with literature which would not go for nothing. Here, too, is a sort of composition, or putting together, although the term has not happened to be technically so applied, as it has been to the other mechanical operation of setting up the types. Decorative bookbinding almost rises to the character of a subordinate department of the artistic; a beautifully bound book is a delight to look at. They talk of style being the dress of thought; the true dress of thought is what is given it by the bookbinder. And his art, even when it is purely mechanical, is always ingenious; so much so that it has often been assiduously practised even as an amusement. While Faraday worked at it, we are told, his inventive talent had displayed itself in the construction of an electrical machine and other scientific contrivances; and it was the sight of these, to which his master, one Riebau, of Blandford Street, London, one day called the attention of a customer, Mr. Dance, of Manchester Street (such names ought to be remembered), that induced the latter, who was one of the old members of the Royal Institution, to take the boy with him to hear the last four lectures that Sir Humphry delivered as professor. Faraday's subsequent career, as all know, has been brilliant in the highest degree. He has, as he observes in his letter to Dr. Paris, been faithful, ever since it first opened its doors to him in 1813, to the Royal Institution, where he has since the retirement of Mr. Brande, in 1834, filled the chair of Davy, and where, by the extraordinary faculty of easy and luminous exposition with which he is gifted, and by the neatness and never-failing dexterity of his experimental manipulation, he has made the philosophy of matter, in many of its highest as well as of its simplest manifestations, interesting alike to all classes, to the learned and unlearned, to the old and young, to men and women. Meanwhile his splendid discoveries in electrical chemistry and the contiguous regions of physical science, and the singular combination, in all his views and speculations and methods of procedure, of the most patient vigilance in examination, and the most self-denying caution in forming his conclusions, with the

highest originality and boldness, have placed him by universal recognition in the first rank of the modern cultivators of physical science. But all this renown has changed nothing of the noble and beautiful nature of the man; it is impossible even for a stranger, seeing him only in public, not to be attracted and charmed by the unsophisticated simplicity and sunny brightness of his whole demeanour; and he is as much the object of affectionate regard with all who know him in private life, as he is the pride of his country and the admiration of the whole scientific world.

With his genius Faraday combines a remarkable share of practical talent; his practical talent may even be said to make part of his genius. To this he has no doubt been much indebted for his success in life. Not unfrequently, however, we have among the students of the severer sciences, as well as among the cultivators of poetry and the imaginative arts, genius of a very high order, and also the most disinterested devotion to their intellectual pursuit, and great skill in all the operations and methods of procedure it demands, accompanied with apparently so little of ordinary worldly ability, that we are apt to think one of the elements of their genius must be their deficiency in common sense. But this can hardly be ever the true view of the matter. It is not usually that the capacity for attaining what is called success in life is wanting in the man of genius, but rather that he has a much stronger desire for another kind of success. The most powerful and most harmoniously adjusted minds, it is true, with the same preference for the higher object, find no difficulty in giving the requisite attention also to the other. Nevertheless, even where the intellectual devotee fails in doing this, his appreciation of what is greatest and noblest, bringing inconvenience only upon himself, is a beautiful thing, and only commands our sympathy and admiration all the more for what it costs him. It is still, in its onesidedness, as superior to the opposite more common one-sidedness, as superior not only in attractiveness but in true wisdom, as poetry is to prose.

A few years ago, one of the most remarkable among the cultivators of chemical science in France, ended a life of continual contest with circumstances by a premature death. As the propounder of what are known as the Nucleus Theory and the Theory of Substitution, AUGUSTE LAURENT ranks among the few discoverers to whom we owe the knowledge of certain new general principles of the constitution of the universe, or what may be called laws of nature. He was born in the department of the Haute Marne, in 1807; and, the son of a wine merchant, was originally intended to be brought up to his father's business. They could not get him, however, we are told, to learn book-keeping. He appears, in fact, to have had a decided preference for other occupations that afforded more scope and exercise for his ingenuity and inventive

genius than that respectable art. For some time his head was filled, as so many others, young and old, have been, with the dream of the perpetual motion. Then he took to constructing small mills, in some way of his own. At last, when he was nineteen, his father was prevailed upon to allow him to follow his inclination, and he was sent to Paris, and entered at the Ecole des Mines.

Here he remained till 1829, when he left the institution with the diploma of Ingénieur des Mines, and set out on a course of scientific exploration through Austria, Poland, Saxony, and the Rhine Provinces, making inspection everywhere both of mines and factories, and treasuring up what he observed in copious notes.

But the end was that he resolved to give himself up exclusively to chemistry, which had powerfully attracted him from his first acquaintance with it. By this determination he changed his profession, or his professional destination, again, but it was for the last time; he had now at length found his proper field, the science for which he was born and made.

Even thus, however, he had attained for himself no secure social position or resting-place; nor was that, apparently, what he much cared for. All that he wanted was simply so much of leisure as to enable him to carry on his chemical investigations. Give him that, with merely enough to keep him alive, and he was satisfied. No success in moneymaking, on the other hand, would have been to him other than a gilded bondage which did not leave him the independent command of the larger portion of his time. It is true that there was something of weakness and morbid feeling in this, and much miscalculation and mismanagement in his way of proceeding; with a little more prudence and self-control he might have been much more successful even in achieving the independence which was what he most cared and longed for; the only such independence possible in this world is what is based on the possession of money or other accumulated capital, and Laurent's shortest and most direct course to his desired haven of leisure, would have been through steady perseverance for a few years in the making and saving of money. The only hard work to which he could ever give himself for any length of time was such as had his whole heart. But, on the other hand, if he had no turn or talent for making money, he appears to have been as little given to the wasting of it; whatever he earned lasted him longer than it would have done most people.

The first appointment which he obtained was that of chemist at the celebrated porcelain manufactory of Sèvres. But in no long time he resigned it, and, betaking himself to a garret in Paris, there set up his own laboratory, proposing to make a livelihood by receiving pupils. And he had no difficulty in procuring as many as he wanted; the value