vi WORK AT MANCHESTER 137 



party at Mr. Hardcastle's, who was then Member 

 for Bury St. Edmunds, and a connection by marriage 

 of the Herschels, to meet Sir John Herschel, whom I 

 had never seen. I found the great astronomer, who was 

 only a year younger than Faraday (Herschel was born 

 in 1792, Faraday in 1791), in perfect possession of his 

 faculties, and the contrast between the two intellects, 

 the one dying out, and the other still in full vigour, 

 was brought home to me still further by a conversation 

 which I had with Herschel. I mentioned to him a 

 fact I had just learnt, which I knew would interest 

 him. This was, that a day or two before our inter- 

 view, my friend Joseph Baxendell, the well-known 

 Manchester astronomer, had observed that a new star 

 near the Greenwich variable No. 1773 of the 12 year 

 Catalogue (iS64) 1 had suddenly burst out and become 

 a star of the first or second magnitude. Herschel was 

 very much interested, of course, in this observation of 

 the nova, which was new to him, and remarked : " Do 

 you know that when I was at the Cape, I observed a 

 similar phenomenon ? " Then, considering for a while, 

 " Yes, it was in the year 1835," and again after a pause, 

 ''On August the i6th, at one o'clock in the morning." 

 To say that Faraday was kindness itself to me, 

 when as a young man I was lecturing at the Institu- 

 tion, is only to express what everyone experienced 

 who came in contact with him. I remember so well 

 how he used to come down with his cheerful face and 

 manner, dangling his spectacles in his hand, to inspect 

 the lecture table upon which I was making prepara- 

 tions for my lecture, and say : " Now, are you quite 

 sure that all your experiments will go ? Because, you 

 know, if you are not, and if there is one which you 



1 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society Proceedings, vol. iv. 



p. 22, 



