1868. | Faraday. 51 
the deeds by which he has been distinguished, the triumphs which 
he has won. Whereas the man who has devoted all the powers 
of his mind with unwearying industry to seeking out “the know- 
ledge of causes, and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of 
the bounds of human empire ;”* the man who really advances the 
human race by dispelling ignorance, by dethroning superstition, by 
throwing light into dark places, and by training all in the right 
use of that intellect with which they have been gifted, and by the 
strength of which alone they can fulfil the first command of the 
Creator and subdue the earth—he passes away in silence, and is 
consigned to “the lap of earth,” with the mournful tribute of the 
tears of a few; but with slight indications of sorrow from the many. 
“The storied urn or animated bust,’ however, which rises in honour 
of him who has trodden “the paths of glory ” are but short lived in 
comparison with the monument which is reared for him who has 
linked his name with the discovery of some Eternal Truth. 
Mr. Davies Gilbert, to whom we are indebted for the discovery 
of the Carver’s Son, at Penzance, who “was said to be fond of 
making chemical experiments,” who raised himself to the temporal 
rank of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., and to the intellectual position 
of the leader of Science, once said, paraphrasing a remark made 
respecting Bergman and Scheele, “The greatest discovery Davy 
ever made was the discovery of Faraday.” This, be it remembered, 
was not spoken by Davies Gilbert in depreciation of the master, but 
it was a forcible way of putting his high appreciation of the merits 
of the man. 
In recording our sense of the loss which the world has sustained, 
we have no intention of writing a memoir of Michael Faraday, even 
in brief: That he was born on the 20th September in 1791, the 
son of a blacksmith at Newington, in Surrey, and that he died,— 
having achieved for himself a world-wide reputation,—in the Royal 
Palace of Hampton Court in 1867, at the age of seventy-six, 1s the 
sum of our notice of the ordinary life of Faraday. But we have 
something more to say respecting the higher life, the intellectual 
labours of this great man. Faraday’s childhood was one of promise, 
and all the learning which a common day-school could give him 
was turned to early account. At thirteen he became the apprentice 
of a bookbinder, and the books of Science which he bound, he so 
far made his own as to be enabled by their guidanc> to construct 
electrical machines and to try chemical experiments. In 1812, 
through the attention of Mr. Dance, Michael Faraday was taken to 
hear some of Davy’s lectures in the Royal Institution. “I took,” 
Faraday writes to Dr. Paris, “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 
* Bacon: ‘New Atlantis.’ 
E 2 
