204 
MICHAEL EARADAY. 
electro-magnetic rotations. The experiments were mainly carried on in the 
battery-room, Hare’s calorimeter being much used as the source of electricity ; 
and many were the devices resorted to with the view of showing the rotation 
of a conducting wire round a magnet, and that of a magnet round a wire. 
The writer was by Faraday’s side when the two rough arrangements began 
to work. He can see the face of the experimenter now, as it appeared forty- 
six years ago, beaming with joy—a joy not unmixed with thankful pride— 
at hen the magnet commenced to move round the wire, and the wire round 
the magnet. Well does he remember the exclamation, ‘There they go! 
there they go! We have succeeded at last.’ After this great discovery, 
Faraday considered that he was entitled to a little recreation, and to please 
the writer he suggested a visit to Astley’s Theatre.” 
Although these results were obtained in 1821, the subject does not appear 
to have been followed up for several years. It was in 1831 (after a lapse of 
ten years), that he commenced the series of “Experimental Researches in 
Electricity,” which were communicated to the Royal Society in rapid suc¬ 
cession between 1831 and 1840, and upon which his great reputation as an 
investigator and philosopher was mainly founded. 
But Faraday was something more than an expert manipulator, a success¬ 
ful investigator, and a great philosopher; he was one of the best and most 
popular of lecturers. None but those who have heard him lecture to the 
juvenile audiences at Christmas, as well as to the aristocratic Friday evening 
assemblages, at the Royal Institution, can form a just estimate of his powers 
in that direction, of the enthusiasm he was capable of exciting among his 
audience, and the attention he always riveted to his subject. There was a 
charm in his easy, unrestrained manner, and the apparently unpremeditated 
substance of his discourse, while there was never-failing confidence in the 
success of his experiments. 
In recognition of the great value of even the earliest of his electrical re¬ 
searches, the University of Oxford conferred upon him the honorary degree 
of Doctor of Civil Law in 1832, and the Royal Society, at the same time, 
awarded him the Copley Medal. In 1833, he was appointed Fullerian Pro¬ 
fessor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution, by the express desire of Mr. 
Fuller, who had founded the Chair and endowed it. In 1835, the Government 
of Lord Melbourne testified their appreciation of his services to science by 
granting him a pension of £300 a year, and at a subsequent period, in 1858, 
the Queen allotted him a house on Hampton Court Green, where he re¬ 
sided in the summer months of the latter years of his life. The Copley Medal 
was awarded to him a second time in 1838, and the Rumford Medal in 1846. 
Faraday was a man of very simple habits. Until he moved to Hampton 
Court Green, he and his wife (they had no family) lived entirely at the 
Royal Institution. About 1821 he became a member of a congregational 
church of the body called Sandemanians in England and Glasites in Scotland, 
who profess to derive their doctrines and practices wholly from the Bible, 
and he continued to belong to this body throughout his life, and took 
an active part in their proceedings. The influence of this association no 
doubt marked his character and actions, as he aimed at being a Christian of 
the original type. He avoided display of every sort, and although over¬ 
whelmed with honours, which were heaped upon him both at home and 
abroad, he made no display of such distinctions. It was consistent with his 
habits in life, that when at last he had passed away, after an unusually long 
course of active and most prolific exertion as a scientific investigator, and 
several years of forced cessation from work under the influence of bodily 
prostration, and consequent mental debility, his remains were followed to the 
silent grave, without pomp or ceremony, by a small company of immediate 
relatives and most intimate friends. 
