LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY 427 



burning diamond, it continued to sTied, for six-and-forty 

 years, its white and smokeless glow. 



Faraday was married on June 12, 1821; and up to this 

 date Davy appears throughout as his friend. Soon after- 

 ward, however, disunion occurred between them, which, 

 while it lasted, must have given Faraday intense pain. It 

 is impossible to doubt the honesty of conviction with 

 which this subject has been treated by Dr. Bence Jones, 

 and there may be facts known to him, but not appearing 

 in these volumes, which justify his opinion that Davy in 

 those days had become jealous of Faraday. This, which 

 is the prevalent belief, is also reproduced in an excellent 

 article in the March number of "Fraser's Magazine.^' 

 But the best analysis I can make of the data fails to 

 present Davy in this light to me. The facts, as I regard 

 them, are briefly these. 



In 1820, Oersted of Copenhagen made the celebrated 

 discovery which connects electricity with magnetism, and 

 immediately afterward the acute mind of Wollaston per- 

 ceived that a wire carrying a current ought to rotate 

 round its own axis under the influence of a magnetic 

 pole. In 1821 he tried, but failed, to realize this result 

 in the laboratory of the Eoyal Institution. Faraday was 

 not present at the moment, but he came in immediately 

 afterward and heard the conversation of Wollaston and 

 Davy about the experiment. He had also heard a rumor 

 of a wager that Dr. Wollaston would eventually succeed. 



This was in April. In the autumn of the same year 

 Faraday wrote a history of electro-magnetism, and re- 

 peated for himself the experiments which he described. 

 It was while thus instructing himself that he succeeded 

 in causing a wire, carrying an electric current, to rotate 



