LIPS! AND LETTERS OF FARADAY. 31 7 
Smith's shop and anything relating to smithery. My father 
was a smith." This is from his journal; but he is uncon- 
sciously speaking to somebody perhaps to the world. 
His description of the Staubbach, Giessbach, and of the 
scenic effects of sky and mountain, are all fine and sympa- 
thetic. But amid it all, and in reference to it all, he tells 
his sister that " true enjoyment is from within, not from 
without." In those days Agassiz was living under a slab 
of gneiss on the glacier of the Aar. Faraday met Forbes 
at the Grimsel, and arranged with him an excursion to 
the " Hotel des Neuchtelaois;" but indisposition put the 
project out. 
From the Fort of Ham, in 1843, Faraday received a 
letter addressed to him by Prince Louis Napoleon Bona- 
parte. He read this letter to me many years ago, and the 
desire, shown in various ways by the French emperor, to 
turn modern science to account, has often reminded me of 
it since. At the age of thirty-five the prisoner of Ham 
speaks of " rendering his captivity less sad by studying the 
great discoveries" which science owes to Faraday; and he 
asks a question which reveals his cast of thought at the 
time: " What is the most simple combination to give to a 
voltaic battery, in order to produce a spark capable of set- 
ting fire to powder under water or under ground?" 
Should the necessity arise, the French emperor will not 
lack at the outset the best appliances of modern science; 
while we, I fear, shall have to learn the magnitude of the 
resources we are now neglecting amid the pangs of actual 
war.* 
One turns with renewed pleasure to Faraday's letters to 
his wife, published in the second volume. Here surely the 
loving essence of the man appears more distinctly than any- 
where else. From the house of Dr. Percy, in Birmingham, 
he writes thus: 
" Here even here the moment I leave the table, I wish 
I were with you iis" QUIET. Oh, what happiness is ours! 
My runs into the world in this way only serve to make me 
esteem that happiness the more." 
*The "science" has since been applied, with astonishing effect , 
by those who had studied it far more thoroughly than the emperor of 
the French. We also, I am happy to think, have improved the time 
since the above words were written [1878]. 
