36 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



leave, even for one hour, his quiet walk with Nature, which never 

 cheated however she might elude him, and sit with table-movers and 

 other pretended interpreters of her secrets. After describing the ap- 

 paratus, which, with great experimental tact, he had devised for ex- 

 posing the trickery or self-deception of his associates, he writes : " I am 

 a little ashamed of it, for I think, in the present age, and in this part 

 of the world, it ought not to have been required. Nevertheless, I 

 hope it may be useful." And again he says : " I think the system 

 of education that could leave the mental condition of the public body 

 in the state in which this subject has found it must have been greatly 

 deficient in some very important principle." 



Many scientific men in Great Britain have surpassed Faraday in 

 the clearness, elegance, and eloquence of their writings. But no one, 

 unless it were Davy, possessed to such a degree Faraday's gift of im- 

 parting to others, in the lecture-room, what he had discovered for him- 

 self. If, as De la Rive said of him, he was never caught in a mistake 

 in his laboratory, " the hand marvellously seconding the resolves of 

 the brain," we may add that he seldom disheartened his audience by 

 the miscarriage of an experiment, destroying the spell by which he 

 had hitherto bound them. Though he was less dramatic, we might 

 almost say less theatrical, in his style of address than Davy, he never 

 failed to attract an admiring crowd, not only of the thoughtful and the 

 educated, but of the gay and the high-born. He was equally at home 

 with the juvenile audiences which listened to him during the Christmas 

 holidays. 



For fifty years, Davy and Faraday together have sustained the glory 

 of the Royal Institution as with the brightness of a whole Academy ; 

 both of them of unchallenged greatness, not only as discoverers of 

 physical truths, but as expositors also. In Davy was found a rare com- 

 bination of poetry and science. Coleridge, it was said, frequented his 

 lectures " to increase his stock of metaphors." Davy preferred the 

 blazing battery of the Royal Institution to the chemist's balance. His 

 generalizations were bold and dazzling. Quality, and not quantity, ex- 

 cited his mind. In ten»years he stood on the pinnacle of fame. He 

 was knighted ; he was courted ; and then his position at the Royal In- 

 stitution was almost honorary. Faraday relied less on his imagination 

 and more on his experiments. Brilliant as were his triumphs, they 

 were won by hard work. His whole scientific life was one protracted 

 campaign, — and that was a war of posts, and not a succession of bril- 



