54 Faraday. [Jan., 
quantity of Electricity associated with the particles or atoms of 
Matter.” To this series of his Researches we are indebted for the 
enunciation of the startling truth that “The Chemical Action of a 
grain of water upon four grains of Zinc can evolve Electricity equal 
in quantity to that of a powerful thunderstorm,” and that this 
enormous quantity of the Electrical Element is exactly that which 
is required to maintain the atoms of Oxygen and Hydrogen in the 
condition of a grain of water. 
Faraday was not a Deductive Philosopher. As long as he 
solicited nature with his wands,—his experimental and ever beauti- 
fully contrived apparatus,—he was the Arch-evocator who proudly 
compelled an answer to his evocations, but, when he laid aside his 
wands and endeavoured to think out truths, he was still as noble 
as Prospero, but as powerless as the Duke of Milan, when he “ his 
magic did abjure,” breaking his staff to “ bury it certain fathoms in 
the earth.” 
No other evidence of this is required than Faraday’s “ Specula- 
tions touching Electrical Conduction and the Nature of Matter,”* 
and his clever papers “ On Magnetic Hypothesis,’} and “ On*some 
points of Magnetic Philosophy.”{ In these, and in other essays 
which might be named, Faraday displays his remarkable genius, in 
picking up the threads of an argument and weaving them together 
into a symmetrical cord, but when he casts that from his hand as a 
lasso to entangle a distant and flying truth, he shows that he is not 
practised in the art. His early education (and “the child is ever 
father of the man”) unfitted him for large generalization. In this 
he stood on a lower pedestal than Davy, and why? The circum- 
stances of the place of birth had much to do with this. Faraday 
was born and educated at Newington, and apprenticed im Soho. 
Davy was born on the beautiful heights of Ludgvan, looking down 
upon a bay, unrivalled in the world; and he was educated at Pen- 
zance, Where nature has been lavish of her charms. Faraday learnt 
to love nature in the mechanical aspects which she assumes m the 
fuligious metropolis, 
‘“* But ’midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,” 
Davy’s boyish delight was 
“lo sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell, 
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene ; ” 
and thus, in the day-spring of life, 
“to hold 
Converse with Nature’s charms and view her stores unroll’d.” 
* «Philosophical Magazine.’ 1844, vol. xxiv. 
+ ‘ Experimental Researches,’ vol. iii. 
t ‘ Philosophical Magazine,’ Feb., 1859. 
