404 FBAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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 hirn 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 difficult and requires more caution than philoso- 

 phical deduction, 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 con- 

 trast with this intellectual expansiveness was his fixity 

 in religion, but this is a subject which cannot be dis- 

 cussed 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 earnest- 

 ness.' 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 vary- 

 ing moods which preceded his acceptance. They reveal 

 more than the common alternations of light and gloom ; 



