LIFE AND LETTERS OF FAR AD A T. 31 1 
Here a name of noble intellectual associations is sur- 
rounded by injurious rumors which I would willingly scatter 
forever. The pupil's magnitude, and the splendor of his 
position, are too great and absolute to need as a foil the 
humiliation of his master. Brothers in intellect, Davy and 
Faraday, however, could never have become brothers in 
feeling; their characters were too unlike. Davy loved the 
pomp and circumstance of fame; Faraday the inner con- 
sciousness that he had fairly won renown. They were both 
proud men. But with Davy pride projected itself into the 
outer world; while with Faraday it became a steadying and 
dignifying inward force. In one great particular they 
agreed. Each of them could have turned his science to 
immense commercial profit, but neither of them did so. 
The noble excitement of research, and the delight of dis- 
covery, constituted their reward. I commend them to the 
reverence which great gifts greatly exercised ought to in- 
spire. They were botli ours; and through the coming cen- 
turies England will be able to point with just pride to the 
possession of such men. 
The first volume of the " Life and Letters " reveals to 
us the youth who was to be father to the man. Skillful, 
aspiring, resolute, he grew steadily in knowledge and in 
power. Consciously or unconsciously, the relation of 
Action to Reaction was ever present to Faraday's mind. It 
had been fostered by his discovery of Magnetic Rotations, 
and it planted in him more daring ideas of a similar kind. 
Magnetism he knew could be evoked by electricity, and he 
thought that electricity, in its turn, ought to be capable of 
evolution by magnetism. On August 29, 1831, his experi- 
ments on this subject began. He had been fortified by 
previous trials, which, though failures, had begotten 
instincts directing him toward the truth. He, like every 
strong worker, might at times miss the outward object, but 
he always gained the inner light, education, and expansion. 
Of this Faraday's life was a constant illustration. By 
November he had discovered and colligated a multitude of 
the most wonderful and unexpected phenomena. He had 
generated currents by currents; currents by magnets, per- 
manent and transitory; and he afterward generated cur- 
rents by the earth itself. Arago's "Magnetism of Rotation/' 
