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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rubbing his hands with delight because he 

 had been fortunate enough to see the light- 

 ning strike the church-tower. 



This perseverance in a noble strife was 

 another of the grand elements in his suc- 

 cess. His tenacity of purpose showed itself 

 equally in little and in great things. Ar- 

 ranging 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 any 

 thing that I have once tried to do." 



This faithful discharge of duty, this al- 

 most intuitive insight into natural phenome- 

 na, 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 thunder-storm ; 

 but who feels his affections drawn out tow- 

 ard a mere intellectual Jupiter ? We must 

 look deeper into his character to under- 

 stand 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 it is in 

 the moral world. The respect and love of 

 his generation were given to Faraday be- 

 cause 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 reveren- 

 tial attitude toward Nature, Man, and God 

 toward Nature, for he regarded the uni- 

 verse as a vast congeries of facts which 

 would not bend to human theories. Speak- 

 ing 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 'Encyclopaedia;' but facts were im- 

 portant to me, and saved me. I could trust 

 a fact, and always cross-examined an asser- 

 tion." 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 further than he has, 

 either in operation or contemplation, ob- 

 served of the method and order of Nature." 

 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 phantas- 

 magoria of Eastern romance. 



His reverence toward Man showed itself 

 in the respect he uniformly paid to others 

 Bad to himself. Thoroughly genuine and 



simple-hearted himself, he was wont tc 

 credit his fellow-men with high motives and 

 good reasons. This was rather uncomfort- 

 able 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 hon- 

 oring 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 Lon- 

 don. " Well, if Garibaldi thinks he can 

 learn any thing 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. 



Healthy Houses: A Hand-Book of toe 

 History, Defects, and Remedies of 

 Drainage, Ventilation, and Warm- 

 ing. With upward of Three Hundred 

 Illustrations. By William Eassie, C. E. 



This is an excellent little manual on 

 sanitary science, intended, as the author ob- 

 serves, to be a record of facts of acquired 

 experiences and published inventions in re- 

 lation to house-construction. It is both 

 scientific and practical, the science being 

 universal, and the practice English. But, 

 from an hygienic point of view, the subject 

 of house-construction is much the same in 

 given latitudes. Human life and its condi- 

 tions being everywhere similar wherever 

 the largest number are " to be fed, housed, 

 educated, amused, enriched, and all in the 

 smallest possible space," which is Mr. Eas- 

 sie's ideal of a dwelling, the same questions 

 must constantly arise, the same dangers are 

 to be avoided, and the same advantages se- 

 cured. The author has compressed an 

 enormous amount of valuable information 

 on the subject of sanitary construction 

 within very narrow limits, and his book is 

 written in an unusually compressed and 

 pithy style. He gives descriptions of the 

 best contrivances in use for attaining salu- 

 brity in all parts of the dwelling, and fur- 

 nishes the reader with exact estimates of 

 their cost. His book, indeed, is a con- 

 densed report upon the present state of art 

 and science in England as applied to the 

 utilities of household arrangement and con- 

 struction. The following passage, describ- 



