LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARAD A T. 315 
illustrative of the power of the inductive philosophy. The 
brain may be filled with that philosophy; but without the 
energy and insight which this man possessed, and which 
with him were personal and distinctive, we should never 
rise to the level of his achievements. His power is that of 
individual genius, rather than of philosophical method; the 
energy of a strong soul expressing itself after its own 
fashion, and acknowledging no mediator between it and 
Nature. 
The second volume of the " Life and Letters," like the 
first, is a historic treasury as regards Faraday's work and 
character, and his scientific and social relations. It con- 
tains letters from Humboldt, Herschel, Hachette, De la 
Eive, Dumas, Liebig, Melloni, Becquerel, Oersted, Pliicker, 
Du Bois-Reymoud, Lord Melbourne, Prince Louis Napo- 
leon, and many other distinguished men. I notice with 
particular pleasure a letter from Sir John Herschel, in 
reply to a sealed packet addressed to him by Faraday, but 
which he had permission to open if he pleased. The 
packet referred to one of the many unfulfilled hopes which 
spring up in the minds of fertile investigators: 
" Go on and prosper, 'from strength to strength,' like 
a victor inarching, with assured step to further conquests; 
and be certain that no voice will join more heartily in the 
peans that already begin to rise, and will speedily swell 
into a shout of triumph, astounding even to yourself, than 
that of J. F. W. Herschel." 
Faraday's behavior to Melloni in 1835 merits a word of 1 
notice. The young man was a political exile in Paris. 
He had newly fashioned and applied the thermo-electric 
pile, and had obtained with it results of the greatest im- 
portance. But they were not appreciated. With the 
sickness of disappointed hope Melloni waited for the re- 
port of the commissioners, appointed by the Academy of 
Sciences to examine the primier. At length he published 
his researches in the " Annales de Chimie." They thus 
fell into the hands of Faraday, who, discerning at once 
their extraordinary merit, obtained for their author the 
Rum ford Medal of the Royal Society. A sum of money 
always accompanies this medal; and the pecuniary help 
was, at this time, even more essential than the mark of 
honor to the young refugee. Melloni's gratitude was 
boundless; 
