FAKADAY. 421 



reconstruction. In the coming time some sympathetic 

 spirit, with the requisite strength, knowledge, and 

 solvent power, will, I doubt not, render these materials 

 plastic, give them more perfect organic form, and send 

 through them, with less of interruption, the currents of 

 Faraday's life. ' He was too good a man,' writes his 

 present biographer, ' for me to estimate rightly, and too 

 great a philosopher for me to understand thoroughly.' 

 That may be : but the reverent affection to which we 

 owe the discover} 7 , selection, and arrangement of the 

 materials here placed before us, is probably a surer 

 guide than mere literary skill. The task of the artist 

 who may wish in future times to reproduce the real 

 though unobtrusive grandeur, the purity, beauty, and 

 childlike simplicity of him whom we have lost, will 

 find his chief treasury already provided for him bj 

 Dr. Bence Jones's labour of love. 



