406 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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 cele- 

 brated discovery which connects electricity with mag- 

 netism, and immediately afterwards the acute mind of 

 Wollaston perceived that a wire carrying a current 

 ought to rotate round its own axis under the influence 

 of a magnetic pole. In 1821 he tried, but failed, to 

 realise this result in the laboratory of the Eoyal Insti- 

 tution. Faraday was not present at the moment, but 

 he came in immediately afterwards and heard the con- 

 versation of Wollaston and Davy about the experiment. 

 He had also heard a rumour of a wager that Dr. Wol- 

 laston 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 while thus instructing himself that 

 he succeeded in causing a wire, carrying an electric 

 current, to rotate round a magnetic pole. This was 

 not the result sought by Wollaston, but it was closely 

 related to that result. 



The strong tendency of Faraday's mind to look 

 upon the reciprocal actions of natural forces gave birth 

 to his greatest discoveries; and we, who know this, 

 should be justified in concluding that, even had Wol- 

 laston not preceded him, the result would have been 

 the same. But in judging Davy we ought to transport 

 ourselves to his time, and carefully exclude from our 

 thoughts and feelings that noble subsequent life, which 

 would render simply impossible the ascription to Fara- 

 day of anything unfair. It would be unjust to Davy to 

 put our knowledge in the place of his, or to credit him 

 with data which he could not have possessed. Rumour 

 and fact had connected the name of Wollaston with 



