( 232 ) [April, 



NOTICES OF SCIENTIFIC WORKS. 



FAEADAY, HIS LIFE AND LETTEBS 



One of the prettiest spots on the rail between Lancaster and Leeds 

 is the village of Clapham. Here the bold Yorkshire scenery loses 

 its nakedness, the hill-sweeps are cultivated, and a winding stream 

 runs through the somewhat wooded valley. At a considerable ele- 

 vation the railway bridges this valley, and as the station is neared 

 a few scattered stone cottages mark the commencement of the distant 

 village. This is the ancestral home of Faraday, and here his family 

 name is still to be found. The Clapham parish register of 1708 

 contains the earliest record of the family of our great philosopher 

 in the person of one " Eichard Ffaraday." After this we find that 

 at Clapham Wood Hall, there lived a Eobert Faraday, one of whose 

 sons, James, became a blacksmith. Soon after his marriage, in 1786, 

 James Faraday moved to London, and lived for a while at Newing- 

 ton Butts, where his third child, Michael, was born on Sept. 22nd, 

 1791. This Michael was afterwards the "Faraday" whose name 

 is now a household word, and the lustre of whose fame time will 

 increasingly brighten. 



The stages of Faraday's early life are well known ; how, from 

 being a newspaper boy, he rose to be a bookbinder's apprentice, then 

 to be the assistant, and finally, the successor of Davy. It would, 

 however, hardly be thought likely that the quiet and simple life of 

 Faraday would furnish sufficient materials lor so extensive a bio- 

 graphy as that which Dr. Bence Jones has compiled. But it must 

 be remembered that Faraday's life was full of his own stirring dis- 

 coveries, and forms the link between the scientific men of the past 

 and those of the present. The true function of a biographer is to 

 sink himself in his subject, and this Dr. Bence Jones has done in an 

 eminent degree. Hence the work reads like an autobiography. It 

 gives us a picture of Faraday's intensely active and penetrating mind, 

 from which there flowed at first sagacious letters to his friends ; then 

 a journal of foreign travel, full of acute observation ; then a record 

 of his early work in the laboratory ; then his early triumphs as a 

 lecturer ; and, when he had fully trained himself for the fight, his 

 grand conquests over the secrets of nature. So that one reads on 

 with an eager and almost breathless interest as Faraday hotly pur- 

 sues his electrical researches, and goes from strength to strength in 

 the mysteries he reveals. 



The first traces of Faraday's greatness of mind are to be found 

 in his letters to his early friend Abbott. This correspondence, to- 



* * The Life and Letters *of Faraday,' by Dr. Bence Jones, Secretary to the 

 Royal Institution. London : Longmans, 1870. 



