FAKADAY. 417 



operation to observe. I love a smith's shop and any- 

 thing relating to smithery. My father was a smith/ 

 This is from his journal ; but he is unconsciously speak- 

 ing to somebody perhaps to the world. 



His description of the Staubbach, Giessbach, and 

 of the scenic effects of sky and mountain, are all fine 

 arid sympathetic. But amid it all, and in reference to 

 it all, he tells his sister that ' true enjoyment is from 

 within, not from without.' In those days Agassiz was 

 living under a slab of gneiss on the glacier of the Aar. 

 Faraday met Forbes at the Grimsel, and arranged 

 with him an excursion to the ' Hotel des Neuchatelois ' ; 

 but indisposition put the project out. 



From the Fort of Ham, in 1 843, Faraday received 

 a letter addressed to him by Prince Louis Napoleon 

 Bonaparte. He read this letter to me many yoars ago, 

 and the desire, shown in various ways by the French 

 Emperor, to turn modern science to account, has often 

 reminded me of it since. At the age of thirty-five the 

 prisoner of Ham speaks of * rendering his captivity 

 less sad by studying the great discoveries' which 

 science owes to Faraday ; and he asks a question which 

 reveals his cast of thought at the time : ' What is the 

 most simple combination to give to a voltaic battery, 

 in order to produce a spark capable of setting fire to 

 powder under water or under ground?' Should the 

 necessity arise, the French Emperor will not lack at 

 the outset the best appliances of modern science ; while 

 we, I fear, shall have to learn the magnitude of the 

 resources we are now neglecting amid the pangs of 

 actual war. 1 



1 The science ' has since been applied, with astonishing effect, 

 by those who had studied it far more thoroughly than the Emperor 

 of the French. We also, I am happy to think, have improved th 

 time since the above words were written [1878]. 



