LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY. 307 



He returned in 1815 to the Royal Institution. Here he 

 helped Davy for years; he worked also for himself, and 

 lectured frequently at the City Philosophical Society. He 

 took lessons in elocution, happily without damage 'to his 

 natural force, earnestness, and grace of delivery. He was 

 never pledged to theory, and he changed in opinion as 

 knowledge advanced. With him life was growth. In 

 those early lectures we hear him say, " In knowledge, that 

 man only is to be contemned and despised who is not in a 

 state of transition." And again: "Nothing is more dif- 

 ficult and requires more caution than philosophical deduc- 

 tion, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than 

 fixity of opinion." Not that he was wafted about by every 

 wind of doctrine; but that he united flexibility with his 

 strength. In striking contrast with this intellectual ex- 

 pansiveness was his fixity in religion, but this is a subject 

 which cannot be discussed here. 



Of all the letters published in these volumes none possess 

 a greater charm than those of Faraday to his wife. Here, 

 as Dr. Bence Jones truly remarks, " he laid open all his 

 mind and the whole of his character, and what can be 

 made known can scarcely fail to charm every one by its 

 loveliness, its truthfulness, and its earnestness." Abbott 

 and he sometimes swerved into word-play about love; 

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

 merely. Faraday's journal indeed contains entries which 

 show that he took pleasure in the assertion of his contempt 

 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 alternations 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 



Dr. Bence Jones that I asked Irini to do so. The rumor of a banquet 

 at Geneva illustrates the tendency to substitute for the youth of 1814 

 the Faraday of later years. 



