Life of Count Rumford. 423 



in Paris in the autumn and winter of 1813 as the com- 

 panion of Davy. 



Considering that there was then in London no other 

 well-furnished laboratory, and indeed no other estab- 

 lishment with an endowment and an organization for 

 securing the best opportunities for experimental re- 

 search with the facilities and the patronage of an appre- 

 ciative audience in attendance upon lectures, we may 

 well claim for the Royal Institution the honor of 

 adopting Faraday perhaps the most distinguished 

 man in the whole of his own field which the world has 

 produced as its most accomplished alumnus. In 

 those qualities of character which made him so lov- 

 able, for magnanimity, simplicity, ingenuousness, and 

 modesty, as well as for his single-hearted devotion to 

 science, he stands without a rival at the head of the roll 

 of fame. The foibles of vanity, self-assertion, and arro- 

 gance which we have to lament on his own account 



D 



in Davy show no traces of their presence or influence 

 in Faraday. It would have been pleasant to trace, if 

 facts would have enabled us to do so, any tokens of an 

 acquaintance, which we may be sure would have been 

 a friendship, between him and Rumford; for we may 

 say of the latter, with full confidence, that he was 

 free from jealousy, and that, whatever foibles he may 

 have exhibited, he would have found in Faraday one 

 whom he would have most cordially appreciated and 

 admired, and one whom he would have delighted to 

 extol. 



M. Pictet would appear to have been the most ad- 

 miring, constant, and enthusiastic among the many 

 devoted friends of Count Rumford. He was himself 

 highly cultivated and passionately fond of scientific pur- 



