xxvi 



ments in the bright sunlight, covering up one half, and noticing the effect 

 of light and gases on the other. 



" On one of our sea-side excursions we were bathing together, when Fara- 

 day, who was a fair swimmer, on coming in was overtaken by a tremendous 

 wave which overtopped his head, and dashed him with violence on the 

 beach, bruising him much. He impressed on me never to think any one 

 could stand against such a breaker ; that one should turn round and dive 

 through it, throwing one's self off the ground. Faraday did not fish at 

 all during these country trips, but just rambled about geologizing or 

 botanizing." 



If Faraday's scientific life had ended here it might well have been called a 

 noble success. He had made two leading discoveries, the one on electro-mag- 

 netic motions, the other on the condensation of several gases into liquids. 

 He had carried out two important and most laborious investigations on 

 the alloys of steel and on the manufacture of optical glass. He had made 

 many communications to the Royal Society, and many more to the Quar- 

 terly Journal of Science. From assistant in the laboratory he had be- 

 come its director. He was constantly lecturing in the great theatre, and 

 he had probably prolonged the existence of the Royal Institution by taking 

 the most active part in the establishment of the Friday evening meetings. 



But when we turn to the eight volumes of manuscripts of his ' Experi- 

 mental Researches,' which he bequeathed to the Royal Institution, we 

 find that he was just going to begin to work. The first of these large 

 folio volumes begins in 1831 with paragraph 1, and continues in the 

 seventh to paragraph 15,389 in 1856. The results of this work he has 

 collected himself in four volumes octavo. The three volumes on elec- 

 tricity were published in 1839, in 1844, and in 1855 ; the last volume, on 

 chemistry and physics, he published in 1859. Whenever he was about 

 to investigate a subject, he wrote out, on separate slips of paper, different 

 queries regarding it which his genius made him think were " naturally pos- 

 sible" to be answered by experiment. He slightly fixed them one beneath 

 another, in the order in which he intended to experiment. As a slip was 

 answered it was removed, and others were added in the course of the in- 

 vestigation, and these in their turn were worked out and removed. If no 

 answer was obtained, the slip remained to be returned to at another time. 

 Out of the answers the manuscript volumes were formed, and from 

 these the papers were written for the Royal Society, where they were 

 always read before the popular account of them was given to the Royal In- 

 stitution at a Friday evening meeting. 



When nearly fifty years of age, he became so seriously troubled with 

 want of memory and giddiness that he thought he should be unable to 

 do any more, and in his most exact way he drew up the following table 

 of the work he had given up temporarily during the first ten years that 

 his experimental investigations in electricity had lasted 



