LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY 439 



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. Fara- 

 day met Forbes at the Grimsel, and arranged with him 

 an excursion to the "Hotel des Neuch^telois" ; but indis- 

 position put the project out. 



From the Fort of Ham, in 1843, Faraday received a 

 letter addressed to him by Prince Louis Napoleon Bona- 

 parte. He read this letter to me many years ago, and the 

 desire, shown in various ways by the French Emparor, 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 Em 

 peror 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.* 



One turns with renewed pleasure to Faraday's letters 

 to his wife, published in the second volume. Here surely 

 the loving essence of the man appears more distinctly than 



* 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 the time since the above words were 

 written [1878J. 



