Ixviii 



"My dear old friend, I would fain write to you, but, indeed, write to 

 no one, and have now a burn on the fingers of my right hand which 

 adds to my trouble ; so that I still use my dear J.'s hand as one better 

 than my own, and fear I give her great work by so doing. She has, 

 I understand, written to you this- morning, and told you how averse I 

 am to meddling with sepulchral honours in any case. I shall mention 

 your good will to Anderson" [here Faraday took the pen, because his niece 

 made some objection to the words " mention the good will to Anderson," 

 who was dead] ; "but I tell them what are my feelings. I have told seve- 

 ral what may be my own desire ; to have a plain simple funeral, attended 

 by none but my own relatives, followed by a gravestone of the most ordi- 

 nary kind, in the simplest earthly place. 



"As death draws nigh to old men or people, this world disappears, or 

 should become of little importance. It is so with me ; but I cannot say 

 it simply to others [here he stopped his writing, and his niece finished the 

 note], for I cannot write it as I would. Yours, dear old friend, whilst 

 permitted." 



The Society of Arts this summer gave him a medal for his scientific dis- 

 coveries. 



During the winter he became very feeble in all muscular power. Almost 

 the last interest he showed in scientific things was in a Holtz electric 

 machine. 



In the spring, for a short time, with decreasing power, there was at 

 times wandering of mind. One day he fancied he had made some disco- 

 very somehow related to Pasteur's dextro- and leevo-racemic acid. He de- 

 sired the traces of it to be carefully preserved, for "it might be a glorious 

 discovery." 



His loss of power became more and more plain during the summer and 

 autumn and winter : all the actions of the body were carried on with diffi- 

 culty ; he was scarcely able to move ; but his mind continually overflowed 

 with the consciousness of the affectionate care of those dearest to him. 



Mt. 75 (1867). 



At times he could hardly speak a word, and with difficulty swallow a 

 mouthful. 



In the spring he went to Hampton Court. Gradually he became more 

 and more torpid, and on the 25th of August he died there. 



He said of himself, " In early life I was a very lively imaginative person, 

 who could believe in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the Encyclopsedia. 

 But facts were important to me and saved me. I could trust a fact." 

 And so afterwards this blacksmith's son from Jacob's Well Mews, full of 

 inborn religion, and gentleness, genius, and energy, searched for and trusted 

 to facts in his experimental researches, and thus left to science a monu- 

 ment of himself that may be compared even to that of Newton. 



H. B. J. 



