HENRY AND FARADAY. 79 



was decided to defer the honor till it would come with greater eclat^ 

 when Henry had continued further his researches in electricity. Hen- 

 ry's removal to Washington interrupted these investigations. Wheat- 

 stone promised to give me this letter, to convey to Henry as an evi- 

 dence of the high appreciation which Faraday and he had for his 

 genius ; but Wheatstone's untimely death prevented this. Both Far- 

 aday and Henry gave much thought to the philosophy of education, 

 and in the main their ideas agreed. I may, in this connection, be ex- 

 cused for reading abstracts from a letter from Henry soon after he 

 had received the news that I had given my son his name. In this let- 

 ter he gives this information, which may be news to the most of you : 



I did not object to Henry as a first name ; although I have been sorry that 

 my grandfather, in coming from Scotland to this country, substituted it for Hen- 

 drie, a much less common, and, therefore, distinctive name. 



He then proceeds : 



I hope that both his body and his mind will be so developed by proper train- 

 ing and instruction that he may become an efficient, wise, and good man. I say 

 efficient and wise, because these two characteristics are not always united in the 

 same person. Indeed, most of the inefficiency of the world is due to their sepa- 

 ration : wisdom may know what ought to be done, but it requires tlie aid of 

 efficiency to accomplish the desired object. I hope that in the education of your 

 son due attention may not only be given to the proper development of both 

 these faculties, but also that they will be cultivated in the order of nature : that 

 is, doing before thinking ; art before science. By inverting this order much in- 

 jury is frequently done to a child, especially in the case of the only son of a wid- 

 owed mother, in which a precocious boy becomes an insignificant man. On 

 examination in such a case, it will be generally found that the boy has never 

 been drilled into expertness in the art of language, of arithmetic, or of spelling, 

 of attention, perseverance, and order, or, in other words, of the habits of an ac- 

 tive and efficient life. 



Henry was a man of extensive reading, and often surprised his 

 friends by the extent and accuracy of his information, and by the 

 original manner in which he brought his knowledge before them. Not 

 only was he well versed in those subjects in which one might naturally 

 suppose him proficient, but in departments of knowledge entirely dis- 

 tinct from that in which he gained his reputation as an original thinker. 

 Although without a musical ear, he had a nice feeling for the move- 

 ment of a poem, and was fond of drawing from his retentive memory 

 poetic quotations apt to the occasion. He was a diligent student of 

 mental philosophy, and also took a lively interest in the progress of 

 biological science, especially in following the recent generalizations of 

 Darwin, while the astonishing development of modern research in 

 tracking the history of prehistoric man had for him a peculiar fascina- 

 tion. Yet, w^ith all his learning, reputation, and influence, Henry was 

 as modest as he was pure. 



One day, on opening Henry's copy of Young's " Lectures on Natu- 



