336 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



doctrine ; but that he united flexibility with his strength. 

 In striking contrast "with this intellectual expansiveness is 

 his fixity in religion, but this is a subject which cannot be 

 discussed here. 



Of all the letters published in these volumes none 

 possess a greater charm than those of Faraday to his wife. 

 Here, as Dr. Bence Jones truly remarks, " he laid open all 

 his mind and the whole of his character, and what can be 

 made known can scarcely fail to charm every one by its 

 loveliness, its truthfulness, and its earnestness." Abbott 

 and he sometimes swerved into word-play about love ; but 

 up to 1820, or thereabouts, the passion was potential 

 merely. Faraday's journal, indeed, contains entries which 

 show that he took pleasure in the assertion of his contempt 

 for love ; but these very entries became links in his destiny. 

 It was through them that he became acquainted with one 

 who inspired him with a feeling which only ended with his 

 life. His biographer has given us the means of tracing the 

 varying moods which preceded his acceptance. They reveal 

 more than the common alternations of fight and gloom ; at 

 one moment he wishes that his flesh might melt and he 

 become nothing ; at another he is intoxicated with hope. 

 The impetuosity of his character was then unchastened by 

 the discipline to which it was subjected in after-years. The 

 very strength of his passion proved for a time a bar to its 

 advance, suggesting as it did to the conscientious mind of 

 Miss Barnard doubts of her capability to return it with 

 adequate force. But they met again and again, and at 

 each successive meeting he found his heaven clearer, until 

 at length he was able to say, " Not a moment's alloy of tins 

 evening's happiness occurred. Every thing was delightful 

 to the last moment of my stay with my companion, because 

 she was so." The turbulence of doubt subsided, and a calm 

 and elevating confidence took its place. " What can I call 

 itself," he writes to her in a subsequent letter, " to convey 



