*26 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



and he sometimes swerved into word-play about love; 

 but up to 1820, or thereabout, the passion was potential 

 merely. Faraday's journal, indeed, contains entries which 

 show that he took pleasure in the assertion of his con- 

 tempt for love; but these very entries became links in his 

 destiny. It was through them that he became acquainted 

 with one who inspired him with a feeling which only 

 ended with his life. His biographer has given us the 

 means of tracing the varying moods which preceded his 

 acceptance. They reveal more than the common alterna- 

 tions of light and gloom; at one moment he wishes that 

 his flesh might melt and that he might become nothing; 

 at another he is intoxicated with hope. The impetuosity 

 of his character was then unchastened by the discipline to 

 which it was subjected in after years. The very strength 

 of his passion proved for a time a bar to its advance, 

 suggesting, as it did, to the conscientious mind of Miss 

 Barnard, doubts of her capability to return it with ade- 

 quate force. But they met again and again, and at each 

 successive meeting he found his heaven clearer, until at 

 length he was able to say, "Not a moment's alloy of this 

 evening's happiness occurred. Everything was delightful 

 to the last moment of my stay with my companion, be- 

 cause she was so." The turbulence of doubt subsided, 

 and a calm and elevating confidence took its place. 

 "What can I call myself," he writes to her in a sub- 

 sequent letter, "to convey most perfectly my affection and 

 love for you? Can I or can truth say more than that for 

 this world I am yours ? ' ' Assuredly he made his pro- 

 fession good, and no fairer light falls upon his character 

 than that which reveals his relations to his wife. Never, 

 1 believe, existed a manlier, purer, steadier love. Like a 



