FARADAY. 337 



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 profession good, and no fairer light 

 falls upon his character than that which reveals his relations 

 to his wife. Never, I believe, existed a manlier, purer, 

 steadier love. Like a burning diamond it continued to shed 

 for six-and-forty years its white and smokeless glow. 



Faraday was married on June 12, 1821 ; and up to this 

 date Davy appears throughout as his friend. Soon after- 

 ward, however, disunion occurred between them, which, 

 while it lasted, must have given Faraday intense pain. It 

 is impossible to doubt the honesty of conviction with which 

 this subject has been treated by Dr. Bence Jones, and there 

 may be facts known to him, but not appearing in these 

 volumes, which justify his opinion that Davy in those days 

 had become jealous of Faraday. This, which is the preva- 

 lent belief, is also reproduced in an excellent article in 

 the March number of Eraser's Magazine. But the best 

 analysis I can make of the data fails to present Davy in 

 this light to me. The facts, as I regard them, are briefly 

 these : 



In 1820, Oersted, of Copenhagen, made the celebrated 

 discovery which connects electricity with magnetism, and 

 immediately afterward the acute mind of Wollaston per- 

 ceived that a wire carrying a current ought to rotate 

 round it own axis under the influence of a magnetic pole. 

 In 1821 he tried, but failed, to realize this result in the 

 laboratory of the Royal Institution. Faraday was not pres- 

 ent at the moment, but he came in immediately afterward, 

 and heard the conversation of Wollaston and Davy about 

 the experiment. He had also heard a rumor of a wager 

 that Dr. Wollaston would eventually succeed. 



This was in April. In the autumn of the same year 

 Faraday wrote a history of electro-magnetism, and repeated 

 for himself the experiments which he described. It was 

 15 



