332 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



proposition that no new inquiry should be started between 

 them before the old one had been exhaustively discussed, 

 Faraday objects. " Your notion," he says, " I can hardly 

 allow, for the following reason : ideas and thoughts spring 

 up m my mind which are irrevocably lost for want of 

 noting at the time." Gentle as he seemed, he wished to 

 have his own way, and he had it throughout his life. 

 Differences of opinion sometimes arose between the two 

 friends, and then they resolutely faced each other. "I 

 accept your offer to fight it out with joy, and shall in the 

 battle of experience cause not pain, but, I hope, pleasure." 

 Faraday notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly checks 

 it. There is at times something mechanical in his self- 

 restraint. In another nature it would have hardened into 

 mere " correctness " of conduct ; but his overflowing affec- 

 tions prevented this in his case. The habit became a second 

 nature to him at last, and lent serenity to his later years. 



In October, 1812, he was engaged by a Mr. De la 

 Roche as a journeyman bookbinder ; but the situation did 

 not suit him. His master appears to have been an austere 

 and passionate man, and Faraday was to the last degree 

 sensitive. All his life he continued so. He suffered at 

 times from dejection ; and a certain grimness, too, pervaded 

 his moods. " At present," he writes to Abbott, " I am as 

 serious as you can be. and would not scruple to speak a 

 truth to any human being, whatever repugnance it might 

 give rise to. Being in this state of mind, I should have 

 refrained from writing to you, did I not conceive from the 

 general tenor of your letters that your mind is, at proper 

 times, occupied upon serious subjects to the exclusion of 

 those that are frivolous." Plainly he had fallen into that 

 stern Puritan mood which not only crucifies the flesh, affec- 

 tions, and lusts of him who harbors it, but is often a cause 

 of disturbed digestion to his friends. 



About three months after his engagement with De la 



