Transcriber’s Note
Superscripts are preceded by a ^ or enclosed in ^{braces}; italics are
enclosed in _underscores_; boldface is enclosed in =equals signs=.
_THE CENTURY SCIENCE SERIES_
EDITED BY SIR HENRY E. ROSCOE, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S.
MICHAEL FARADAY
HIS LIFE AND WORK
The Century Science Series.
_Edited by_ SIR HENRY ROSCOE, D.C.L., F.R.S.
3s. 6d. _each_.
Pasteur.
By PERCY FRANKLAND, Ph.D.(Würzburg), B.Sc. (Lond.), F.R.S., and
Mrs. PERCY FRANKLAND.
Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher.
By T. E. THORPE, LL.D., F.R.S.
Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection.
By EDWARD B. POULTON, M.A., F.R.S.
John Dalton and the Rise of Modern Chemistry.
By Sir HENRY E. ROSCOE, F.R.S.
Major Rennell, F.R.S., and the Rise of English Geography.
By Sir CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, C.B., F.R.S.
Justus von Liebig: his Life and Work (1803–1873).
By W. A. SHENSTONE, F.I.C., Lecturer on Chemistry in Clifton
College.
The Herschels and Modern Astronomy.
By AGNES M. CLERKE.
Charles Lyell and Modern Geology.
By Professor T. G. BONNEY, F.R.S.
J. Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics.
By R. T. GLAZEBROOK, F.R.S.
* * * * *
Michael Faraday: his Life and Work.
By Prof. SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, F.R.S. 5s.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, _London; Paris, New York & Melbourne_.
[Illustration: Ever Yours Truly
M Faraday]
_THE CENTURY SCIENCE SERIES_
MICHAEL FARADAY
HIS LIFE AND WORK
BY
SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, D.Sc., F.R.S.
PRINCIPAL OF AND PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN THE CITY AND GUILDS
OF LONDON TECHNICAL COLLEGE, FINSBURY
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_
1898
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]
[Illustration]
ON A PORTRAIT OF FARADAY.
Was ever man so simple and so sage,
So crowned and yet so careless of a prize!
Great Faraday, who made the world so wise,
And loved the labour better than the wage.
And this you say is how he looked in age,
With that strong brow and these great humble eyes
That seem to look with reverent surprise
On all outside himself. Turn o’er the page,
Recording Angel, it is white as snow.
Ah God, a fitting messenger was he
To show Thy mysteries to us below.
Child as he came has he returned to Thee.
Would he could come but once again to show
The wonder-deep of his simplicity.
COSMO MONKHOUSE.
PREFACE
Shortly after the death of Faraday in 1867, three biographies of
him--each admirable in its own line--were published. The “Life and
Letters of Faraday,” by Dr. Bence Jones, secretary of the Royal
Institution, which was issued in 1868 in two volumes, has long been
out of print. “Faraday as a Discoverer,” written in 1868 by Professor
Tyndall, which, though slighter as a record, brings out many points of
character into striking relief, is also now exhausted. Dr. Gladstone’s
“Michael Faraday,” published in 1872, so rich in reminiscences, and
so appreciative of the moral and religious side of his character, is
also out of print. Other and briefer biographies exist; the “Éloge
Historique” of M. Dumas; the article “Faraday” in the “Encyclopædia
Britannica” by Professor Clerk Maxwell; and the chapter on Faraday
in Dr. W. Garnett’s “Heroes of Science.” But there seems room for
another account of the life and labours of the man whose influence
upon the century in which he lived was so great. For forty years he
was a living and inspiring voice in the Royal Institution, beyond all
question the greatest scientific expositor of his time. Throughout
almost the whole of that time his original researches in physics, and
chiefly in electricity, were extending the boundaries of knowledge
and laying the foundations not only for the great developments of
electrical engineering of the last twenty years but for those still
greater developments in the theories of electricity, magnetism, and
light which are every year being extended and made fruitful. Were there
no other reason than these developments in practice and theory, they
would amply justify the effort to review now, after so many years, the
position of Faraday amongst the eminent men of the century now drawing
to its close.
Those who were intimately acquainted with him are a fast dwindling
band. In the recollection of such as have survived him, his image lives
and moves, surrounded with gracious memories, a vivid personality
instinct with rare and unselfish kindliness. But the survivors are few,
and their ranks grow thinner with each succeeding year. And so it comes
about that the task of writing of his life and work has been entrusted
to one who never ceases to regret that he never met Faraday.
Thanks to the permission of the managers of the Royal Institution,
a number of short extracts from Faraday’s notebooks, hitherto
unpublished, are now printed for the first time. Much more remains
which it is to be hoped, for the benefit of science, may be published
ere long. The author desires further to acknowledge the kindness
of Messrs. Longmans & Co. in allowing the reproduction of the
illustrations on pages 3 and 258, which are taken from Bence Jones’s
“Life and Letters of Faraday,” published in 1868. Mr. Elkin Mathews has
kindly permitted the insertion of the sonnet by Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse
which follows the title-page. The author is also indebted to Dr. J.
Hall Gladstone, F.R.S., for many valuable notes and suggestions, and to
Miss M. K. Reynolds for photographs used in preparing Fig. 14. Most of
all he is indebted to Miss Jane Barnard for access to Faraday’s private
papers, and for permission to print certain extracts from them.
S. P. T.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAP. I.--EARLY LIFE, TRAINING, AND TRAVEL 1
CHAP. II.--LIFE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 35
CHAP. III.--SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES--FIRST PERIOD 75
CHAP. IV.--SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES--SECOND PERIOD 102
CHAP. V.--SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES--THIRD PERIOD 172
CHAP. VI.--MIDDLE AND LATER LIFE 222
CHAP. VII.--VIEWS ON THE PURSUIT OF SCIENCE AND ON EDUCATION 261
CHAP. VIII.--RELIGIOUS VIEWS 286
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait _Frontispiece_
FIGS. PAGE
1. Riebau’s Shop 3
2. Electromagnetic Rotations (facsimile sketch) 88
3. Apparatus for Rotation (facsimile sketch) 88
4. Faraday’s Ring (facsimile sketch) 108
5. Induction Experiment (facsimile sketch) 111
6. The “New Electrical Machine” (facsimile sketch) 121
7. The Teetotum Apparatus 123
8. The Revolving Copper Cylinder (facsimile sketch) 124
9. Earth Inductor 125
10. A Spark from a Magnet (facsimile sketch) 129
11. How to Cut the Magnetic Lines 133
12. Illustration of the New Terms (facsimile sketch) 145
13. Bundle of Wires (facsimile sketch) 151
14. Apparatus for Investigating Dielectric Capacity 159
15. Block of Heavy-glass (facsimile sketch) 176
16. Action of Magnet on Light (facsimile sketch) 177
17. Arrangements of Magnets (facsimile sketch) 178
18. The Ring Electromagnet (facsimile sketch) 179
19. The Equatorial Position 188
20. Illustration of Lateral Vibrations 195
21. A Lecture Model 239
22. Cottage at Hampton Court 258
MICHAEL FARADAY.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY LIFE, TRAINING, AND TRAVEL.
On the 22nd of September, 1791, was born, at Newington Butts, then an
outlying Surrey village, but since long surrounded and swallowed up
within the area of Greater London, the boy Michael Faraday. He was
the third child of his parents, James and Margaret Faraday, who had
but recently migrated to London from the little Yorkshire village of
Clapham. Clapham lies under the shadow of Ingleborough, on the western
border of the county, midway between Settle and Kirkby Lonsdale.
The father, James Faraday, was a working blacksmith; the mother,
daughter of a farmer of Mallerstang, the romantic valley which runs
past Pendragon Castle to Kirkby Stephen. James Faraday was one of the
ten children of a Robert Faraday, who in 1756 had married Elizabeth
Dean, the owner of a small homestead known as Clapham Wood Hall, since
pulled down. All Robert Faraday’s sons appear to have been brought up
to trades, one being a shoemaker, another a grocer, another a farmer,
another a flax-worker, and another a shopkeeper. Descendants of some of
these still live in the district.
After Michael’s birth, his parents moved to the north side of the
Thames, living for a short time in Gilbert Street, but removing in
1796 to rooms over a coach-house in Jacob’s Well Mews, Charles Street,
Manchester Square, where they lived till 1809. In that year, young
Michael being now nearly eighteen years old, they moved to 18, Weymouth
Street, Portland Place. Here in the succeeding year James Faraday, who
had long been an invalid, died; his widow, who for some years remained
on at Weymouth Street, maintaining herself by taking in lodgers until
her sons could support themselves and her, survived till 1838. Though
a capable woman and a good mother, she was quite uneducated. In her
declining years she was wholly supported by her son, of whom she was
very proud, and to whom she was devoted.
Michael received very little schooling. One of his nephews tells
the following tale of his boyhood. He was at a dame’s school; and,
either from some defect in his speech or because he was too young
to articulate his _r_’s properly, he pronounced his elder brother’s
name “Wobert.” The harsh schoolmistress, bent on curing the defect by
personal chastisement, sent the aforesaid “Wobert” out with a halfpenny
to get a cane, that young Michael might be duly flogged. But this
refinement of cruelty reacted on itself; for Robert, boiling with
indignation, pitched the halfpenny over a wall, and went home to tell
his mother, who promptly came down to the scene of action and removed
both boys from the school. From the age of five to thirteen Michael
lived at Jacob’s Well Mews, spending his out-of-school hours at home or
in the streets playing at marbles and other games with the children of
the neighbourhood.
[Illustration: RIEBAU’S SHOP.]
[Sidenote: BOOKBINDER’S ERRAND-BOY.]
In 1804 he went on trial for twelve months as errand-boy to a
bookseller and stationer at No. 2, Blandford Street--Mr. George Riebau.
This house, which is still kept as a stationer’s shop (by Mr. William
Pike), is now marked with an enamelled tablet recording its connection
with the life of Faraday.[1] When he first went to Mr. Riebau, it was
his duty to carry round the newspapers in the morning. He has been
graphically described as a bright-eyed errand-boy who “slid along the
London pavements, with a load of brown curls upon his head and a packet
of newspapers under his arm.” Some of the journals were lent out, and
had to be called for again. He was very particular on Sunday mornings
to take them round early, that he might complete his work in time to
go with his parents to their place of worship. They belonged--as his
grandfather before him--to the sect known as Sandemanians, a small
body which separated from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland towards
the middle of the eighteenth century. Their views, which were very
primitive, were held with intense earnestness and sincerity of purpose.
Their founder had taught that Christianity never was or could be the
formal or established religion of any nation without subverting its
essential principles; that religion was the affair of the individual
soul; and that “the Bible” alone, with nothing added to it or taken
away from it by man, was the sole and sufficient guide for the soul.
They rejected all priests or paid ministers, but recognised an
institution of unpaid eldership. Their worship was exceedingly simple.
Though their numbers were few, they were exceedingly devout, simple,
and exclusive in their faith. Doubtless the rigorous moral influences
pervading the family and friends of James Faraday had a great part in
moulding the character of young Michael. To his dying day he remained a
member of this obscure sect. As he was no merely nominal adherent, but
an exceedingly devoted member, and at two different periods of his life
an elder and a preacher, no review of his life-work would be complete
without a fuller reference to the religious side of his character.
[Sidenote: APPRENTICED AS BOOKBINDER.]
After the year of trial, Michael Faraday was formally apprenticed to
learn the arts of bookbinder, stationer, “and bookseller,” to Mr.
Riebau. The indenture[2] is dated October 7, 1805. It is stated that,
“in consideration of his faithful service, no premium is given.” During
his seven years of apprenticeship there came unexpected opportunities
for self-improvement. Faraday’s lifelong friend and co-religionist,
Cornelius Varley, says:--“When my attention was first drawn to Faraday,
I was told that he had been apprenticed to a bookbinder. I said he
was the best bookworm for eating his way to the inside; for hundreds
had worked at books only as so much printed paper. Faraday saw a mine
of knowledge, and resolved to explore it.” To one of his friends he
said that a book by Watts, “On the Mind,” first made him think, and
that the article on “Electricity” in a cyclopædia which came into his
hands to be bound first turned his attention to science. He himself
wrote:--“Whilst an apprentice I loved to read the scientific books
which were under my hand; and, amongst them, delighted in Marcet’s
‘Conversations in Chemistry’ and the electrical treatises in the
‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ I made such simple experiments in chemistry
as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and
also constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass phial, and
afterwards with a real cylinder, as well as other electrical apparatus
of a corresponding kind.” This early machine[3] is now preserved at
the Royal Institution, to which it was presented by Sir James South.
Amongst the books which he had to bind were Lyons’ “Experiments on
Electricity” and Boyle’s “Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall
Principles,” which books, together with Miss Burney’s “Evelina,” all
bound with his own hands, are still preserved in the Royal Institution.
[Sidenote: NEW ACQUAINTANCES.]
Walking near Fleet Street, he saw displayed a bill announcing that
evening lectures on natural philosophy were delivered by Mr. Tatum
at 53, Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, E.C., price of admission one
shilling. With his master’s permission, and money furnished by his
elder brother Robert, who was a blacksmith and (later) a gasfitter,
Michael began to taste scientific teaching. Between February, 1810,
and September, 1811, he attended some twelve or thirteen lectures. He
made full and beautiful notes of all he heard: his notebooks, bound
by himself, being still preserved. At these lectures he fell in with
several thoroughly congenial comrades, one of them, by name Benjamin
Abbott, being a well-educated young Quaker, who was confidential
clerk in a mercantile house in the City. Of the others--amongst
whom were Magrath, Newton, Nicol, Huxtable, and Richard Phillips
(afterwards F.R.S. and President of the Chemical Society)--several
remained lifelong friends. Happily for posterity, the letters--long
and chatty--which the lad wrote in the fulness of his heart to Abbott
have been preserved; they are published in Bence Jones’s “Life and
Letters.” They are remarkable not only for their vivacity and freshness
but for their elevated tone and excellent composition--true specimens
of the lost art of letter-writing. The most wonderful thing about them
is that they should have been written by a bookbinder’s apprentice of
no education beyond the common school of the district. In his very
first letter he complains that ideas and notions which spring up in his
mind “are irrevocably lost for want of noting at the time.” This seems
the first premonition of that loss of memory which so afflicted him
in after life. In his later years he always carried in his waistcoat
pocket a card on which to jot down notes and memoranda. He would
stop to set down his notes in the street, in the theatre, or in the
laboratory.
Riebau, his master in the bookbinding business, seems, from the way
he encouraged the studies of his young apprentice, to have been no
ordinary man. His name would suggest a foreign extraction; and to his
shop resorted more than one political refugee. There lodged at one time
at Riebau’s an artist named Masquerier,[4] who had painted Napoleon’s
portrait and had fled from France during the troublous times. For
the apprentice boy, who used to dust his room and black his boots,
Masquerier took a strong liking. He lent him books on perspective
and taught him how to draw. Another frequenter of Riebau’s shop was
a Mr. Dance, whose interest in the industry and intelligence of the
apprentice led him to an act which changed the whole destiny of his
life. Faraday himself, in the very few autobiographical notes which he
penned, wrote thus:--
During my apprenticeship I had the good fortune, through the
kindness of Mr. Dance, who was a customer of my master’s shop
and also a member of the Royal Institution, to hear four of the
last lectures of Sir H. Davy in that locality.[5] The dates
of these lectures were February 29, March 14, April 8 and 10,
1812. Of these I made notes, and then wrote out the lectures in
a fuller form, interspersing them with such drawings as I could
make. The desire to be engaged in scientific occupation, even
though of the lowest kind, induced me, whilst an apprentice,
to write, in my ignorance of the world and simplicity of my
mind, to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society.
Naturally enough, “No answer” was the reply left with the
porter.
[Sidenote: LETTERS TO ABBOTT.]
He submitted his notes to the criticism of his friend Abbott, with whom
he discussed chemical and electrical problems, and the experiments
which they had individually tried. Out of this correspondence, one
letter only can be given; it was written September 28, 1812, ten days
before the expiry of his apprenticeship:--
Dear A----, ... I will hurry on to philosophy, where I am a
little more sure of my ground. Your card was to me a very
interesting and pleasing object. I was highly gratified in
observing so plainly delineated the course of the electric
fluid or fluids (I do not know which). It appears to me that by
making use of a card thus prepared, you have hit upon a happy
illustrating medium between a conductor and a non-conductor;
had the interposed medium been a conductor, the electricity
would have passed in connection through it--it would not have
been divided; had the medium been a non-conductor, it would
have passed in connection, and undivided, as a spark over
it, but by this varying and disjoined conductor it has been
divided most effectually. Should you pursue this point at
any time still further, it will be necessary to ascertain by
what particular power or effort the spark is divided, whether
by its affinity to the conductor or by its own repulsion; or
if, as I have no doubt is the case, by the joint action of
these two forces, it would be well to observe and ascertain
the proportion of each in the effect. There are problems,
the solution of which will be difficult to obtain, but the
science of electricity will not be complete without them;
and a philosopher will aim at perfection, though he may not
hit it--difficulties will not retard him, but only cause a
proportionate exertion of his mental faculties.
I had a very pleasing view of the planet Saturn last week
through a refractor with a power of ninety. I saw his ring
very distinctly; ’tis a singular appendage to a planet, to
a revolving globe, and I should think caused some peculiar
phenomena to the planet within it. I allude to their mutual
action with respect to meteorology and perhaps electricity....
The master, a French emigré named De la Roche, of King Street, Portman
Square, to whom he engaged himself as a journeyman bookbinder, was of
a very passionate disposition, and made Faraday very uncomfortable. He
longed to get out of trade, and under the encouragement of Mr. Dance
he wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, sending, “as a proof of my earnestness,”
the notes he had taken of Davy’s last four lectures. Faraday’s letter,
which has been preserved but never published, is an astounding example
of the high-flown cringing style in vogue at that date. Davy’s reply
was favourable, and led to a temporary engagement of some days as
amanuensis at the time when he was wounded in the eye by an explosion
of the chloride of nitrogen. Faraday himself, nearly twenty years
afterwards, wrote[6] a full account of the circumstances.
[_M. Faraday to Dr. J. A. Paris._]
Royal Institution, December 23, 1829.
MY DEAR SIR,--You asked me to give you an account of my first
introduction to Sir H. Davy, which I am very happy to do, as I
think the circumstances will bear testimony to his goodness of
heart.
When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of
experiment and very adverse to trade. It happened that a
gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear
some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took
notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto
volume.
My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and
selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I
imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at
last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H.
Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity
came in his way, he would favour my views; at the same time, I
sent the notes I had taken of his lectures.
The answer, which makes all the point of my communication, I
send you in the original, requesting you to take great care of
it, and to let me have it back, for you may imagine how much I
value it.
You will observe that this took place at the end of the year
1812, and early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me
of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal
Institution, then just vacant.
At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to
scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the
prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh
mistress; and in a pecuniary point of view but poorly rewarding
those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my
notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and
said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set
me right on that matter.
Finally, through his good efforts I went to the Royal
Institution early in March of 1813, as assistant in the
laboratory; and in October of the same year went with him
abroad as his assistant in experiments and in writing. I
returned with him in April, 1815, resumed my station in the
Royal Institution, and have, as you know, ever since remained
there.
I am, dear Sir, very truly yours,
M. FARADAY.
[Sidenote: WINS FAVOUR WITH DAVY.]
The following is Davy’s note:--
_Mr. P. Faraday, 188, Weymouth St., Portland Place._
December 24, 1812.
SIR,--I am far from displeased with the proof you have given
me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power
of memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of Town, and
shall not be settled in town till the end of Jan^y I will then
see you at any time you wish. It would gratify me to be of any
service to you; I wish it may be in my power.
I am Sir
your obt. humble servt.
H. DAVY.
Accordingly, Faraday called on Davy, who received him in the anteroom
to the lecture theatre, by the window nearest to the corridor. He
advised him then to stick to bookbinding, promising to send him books
from the Institution to bind, as well as other books. He must have been
agreeably impressed, otherwise he would not, when disabled, have sent
for Faraday to write for him. Early in 1813 the humble household, in
which Faraday lived with his widowed mother in Weymouth Street, was one
night startled by the apparition of Sir Humphry Davy’s grand coach,
from which a footman alighted and knocked loudly at the door. For young
Faraday, who was at that moment undressing upstairs, he left a note
from Sir Humphry Davy requesting him to call next morning. At that
interview Davy asked him whether he was still desirous of changing his
occupation, and offered him the post of assistant in the laboratory in
place of one who had been dismissed. The salary was to be twenty-five
shillings a week, with two rooms at the top of the house. The minute
appointing him is dated March 1, 1813:--
[Sidenote: ENTERS ROYAL INSTITUTION.]
Sir Humphry Davy has the honour to inform the managers that
he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation
in the Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name
is Michael Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age.
As far as Sir H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain,
he appears well fitted for the situation. His habits seem
good, his disposition active and cheerful, and his manner
intelligent. He is willing to engage himself on the same
terms as those given to Mr. Payne at the time of quitting the
Institution.
Resolved--That Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the situation
lately occupied by Mr. Payne on the same terms.[7]
There have come down several additions to the story. One, probably
apocryphal, says that Faraday’s first introduction to Davy was
occasioned by Davy’s calling at Riebau’s to select some bookbinding,
and seeing on the shelves the bound volume of manuscript notes of
his own lectures. The other was narrated by Gassiot to Tyndall, as
follows:--
Clapham Common, Surrey,
November 28, 1867.
MY DEAR TYNDALL,--Sir H. Davy was accustomed to call on the
late Mr. Pepys in the Poultry, on his way to the London
Institution, of which Pepys was one of the original managers;
the latter told me that on one occasion Sir H. Davy, showing
him a letter, said, “Pepys, what am I to do?--here is a letter
from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my
lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal
Institution--what can I do?” “Do?” replied Pepys, “put him
to wash bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it
directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing.” “No, no,”
replied Davy, “we must try him with something better than
that.” The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the
Laboratory at weekly wages.
Davy held the joint office of Professor of Chemistry and
Director of the Laboratory; he ultimately gave up the former to
the late Professor Brande, but he insisted that Faraday should
be appointed Director of the Laboratory, and, as Faraday told
me, this enabled him on subsequent occasions to hold a definite
position in the Institution, in which he was always supported
by Davy. I believe he held that office to the last.
Believe me, my dear Tyndall, yours truly,
J. P. GASSIOT.
In 1808 Mr. Tatum had founded a City Philosophical Society.[8] It
consisted of thirty or forty young men in humble or moderate rank, who
met on Wednesdays for mutual instruction; lectures being given once
a fortnight by the members in turn. Tatum introduced Faraday to this
Society in 1813. Edward Magrath was secretary. Amongst Faraday’s notes
of his life is the following:--
During this spring Magrath and I established the
mutual-improvement plan, and met at my rooms up in the attics
of the Royal Institution, or at Wood Street at his warehouse.
It consisted perhaps of half-a-dozen persons, chiefly from
the City Philosophical Society, who met of an evening to read
together, and to criticise, correct, and improve each other’s
pronunciation and construction of language. The discipline was
very sturdy, the remarks very plain and open, and the results
most valuable. This continued for several years.
[Sidenote: AT WORK IN CHEMISTRY.]
He writes, after a week of work at the Royal Institution, to Abbott:--
Royal Institution, March 8, 1813.
It is now about nine o’clock, and the thought strikes me that
the tongues are going both at Tatum’s and at the lecture in
Bedford Street; but I fancy myself much better employed than
I should have been at the lecture at either of those places.
Indeed, I have heard one lecture already to-day, and had a
finger in it (I can’t say a hand, for I did very little). It
was by Mr. Powell, on mechanics, or rather on rotatory motion,
and was a pretty good lecture, but not very fully attended.
As I know you will feel a pleasure in hearing in what I have
been or shall be occupied, I will inform you that I have been
employed to-day, in part, in extracting the sugar from a
portion of beetroot, and also in making a compound of sulphur
and carbon--a combination which has lately occupied in a
considerable degree the attention of chemists.
With respect to next Wednesday, I shall be occupied until late
in the afternoon by Sir H. Davy, and must therefore decline
seeing you at that time; this I am the more ready to do as I
shall enjoy your company next Sunday, and hope to possess it
often in a short time.
The next letter to Abbott, dated April 9, recounts an explosion in
which both he and Sir Humphry Davy received considerable injury.
In June he wrote to Abbott four very remarkable letters concerning
lectures and lecturers. He had already heard Tatum and Davy, and had
now assisted Brande and Powell in their lectures, and had keenly
observed their habits, peculiarities, and defects, as well as the
effects they produced on the audience. He writes without the slightest
suspicion of suggestion that he himself has any likelihood of becoming
a lecturer, and says that he does not pretend to any of the requisites
for such an office. “If I am unfit for it,” he says, “’tis evident
that I have yet to learn; and how learn better than by the observation
of others? If we never judge at all, we shall never judge right.” “I,
too, have inducements in the C[ity] P[hilosophical] S[ociety] to draw
me forward in the acquisition of a small portion of knowledge on this
point.” “I shall point out but few beauties or few faults that I have
not witnessed in the presence of a numerous assembly.”
He begins by considering the proper shape of a lecture-room; its proper
ventilation, and need of suitable entrances and exits. Then he goes
on to consider suitability of subjects and dignity of subject. In the
second of the letters he contrasts the perceptive powers of the eye and
ear, and the proper arrangements for a lecturer’s table; then considers
diagrams and illustrations. The third letter deals with the delivery
and style of the lecture, the manner and attitudes of the lecturer, his
methods of keeping alive the attention of the audience, and duration of
the discourse. In the fourth of these letters (see p. 228), he dwells
on the mistakes and defects of lecturers, their unnecessary apologies,
the choice of apt experiments, and avoidance of trivialities.
[Sidenote: PROPOSALS FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.]
In September, 1813, after but six months of work in the laboratory,
a proposition came to him from Sir Humphry Davy which resulted in
a complete change of scene. It was an episode of foreign travel,
lasting, as it proved, eighteen months. In the autobiographical notes
he wrote:--
In the autumn Sir H. Davy proposed going abroad, and offered
me the opportunity of going with him as his amanuensis, and
the promise of resuming my situation in the Institution upon
my return to England. Whereupon I accepted the offer, left the
Institution on October 13, and, after being with Sir H. Davy in
France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Geneva, &c., in that and
the following year, returned to England and London April 23,
1815.
Before he left England, on September 18, 1813, at the request of
his mother, he wrote to an uncle and aunt the following account of
himself:--
I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am now turned
philosopher, which happened thus:--Whilst an apprentice, I,
for amusement, learnt a little of chemistry and other parts
of philosophy, and felt an eager desire to proceed in that
way further. After being a journeyman for six months, under
a disagreeable master, I gave up my business, and, by the
interest of Sir H. Davy, filled the situation of chemical
assistant to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in
which office I now remain, and where I am constantly engaged
in observing the works of Nature and tracing the manner in
which she directs the arrangement and order of the world. I
have lately had proposals made to me by Sir Humphry Davy to
accompany him, in his travels through Europe and into Asia, as
philosophical assistant. If I go at all I expect it will be
in October next, about the end, and my absence from home will
perhaps be as long as three years. But as yet all is uncertain.
I have to repeat that, even though I may go, my path will not
pass near any of my relations, or permit me to see those whom I
so much long to see.
To Faraday, who was now twenty-two years old, foreign travel meant much
more than to most young men of equal age. With his humble bringing
up and slender resources, he had never had the chance of seeing the
outside world; he had never, to his own recollection, even seen the
sea. When on Wednesday, October 13, he started out on the journey
to Plymouth, in order to cross to the port of Morlaix, he began his
journal of foreign travel thus:--
This morning formed a new epoch in my life. I have never
before, within my recollection, left London at a greater
distance than twelve miles.
[Sidenote: A NEW ELEMENT.]
This journal he kept with minute care, with the sole purpose of
recalling events to his mind. It gives full details as to Davy’s
scientific friends and work, intermingled with graphic descriptions
of scenery; and is remarkable also for its personal reticence. As
with many another, so with Faraday, foreign travel took in his life
the place of residence at a University. In France, in Italy, he
received enlarged ideas; and what he saw of learned men and academies
of science exercised no small formative effect upon one then at the
most impressionable age. He comments gaily on the odd incidents of
travel; the luminescence of the sea at night; the amazing fuss at the
Custom House; the postilion with his jack-boots, whip, and pouch; the
glow-worm (the first glow-worm he had ever seen); and the slim pigs of
Normandy. At Paris he visits the Louvre, where his chief comment on
its treasures is, that by their acquisition France has made herself
“a nation of thieves.” He goes to the Prefecture of Police for his
passport, in which he is described as having “a round chin, a brown
beard, a large mouth, a great nose,” etc. He visits the churches,
where the theatrical air pervading the place “makes it impossible to
attach a serious or important feeling to what is going on.” He comments
on the wood fires, the charcoal used in cooking, the washerwomen on
the river bank, the internal decorations of houses, the printing of
the books. Then he goes about with Davy amongst the French chemists.
Ampère, Clément, and Désormes come to Davy to show him the new and
strange substance “X,” lately discovered by M. Courtois. They heat
it, and behold it rise in vapour of a beautiful violet colour. Ampère
himself, on November 23rd, gives Davy a specimen. They carefully note
down its characters. Davy and his assistant make many new experiments
on it. At first its origin is kept a profound secret by the Frenchman.
Then it transpires that it is made from ashes of seaweed. They work
on it at Chevreul’s laboratory. Faraday borrows a voltaic pile from
Chevreul. With that intuition which was characteristic of him, Davy
jumps almost at once to a conclusion as to the nature of the new body,
which for nearly two years had been in the hands of the Frenchmen
awaiting elucidation. When he leaves Paris, they do not wholly
bless his rapidity of thought. But Faraday has seen--with placid
indifference--a glimpse of the great Napoleon “sitting in one corner
of his carriage, covered and almost hidden by an enormous robe of
ermine, and his face overshadowed by a tremendous plume of feathers,
that descended from a velvet hat”; he has also met Humboldt, and he has
heard M. Gay Lussac lecture to about two hundred pupils.
Dumas has recorded in his “Éloge Historique” a reflection of the
impressions left by the travellers. After speaking of the criticism to
which Davy was exposed during his visit, he says:--
His laboratory assistant, long before he had won his great
celebrity by his works, had by his modesty, his amiability,
and his intelligence, gained most devoted friends at Paris,
at Geneva, at Montpellier. Amongst these may be named in the
front rank M. de la Rive, the distinguished chemist, father of
the illustrious physicist whom we count amongst our foreign
associates. The kindnesses with which he covered my youth
contributed not a little to unite us--Faraday and myself.
With pleasure we used to recall that we made one another’s
acquaintance under the auspices of that affectionate and
helpful philosopher whose example so truly witnessed that
science does not dry up the heart’s blood. At Montpellier,
beside the hospitable hearth of Bérard, the associate of
Chaptal, doyen of our corresponding members, Faraday has left
memories equally charged with an undying sympathy which his
master could never have inspired. We admired Davy, we loved
Faraday.
It is December 29 when the travellers leave Paris and cross the forest
of Fontainebleau. Faraday thinks he never saw a more beautiful scene
than the forest dressed in an airy garment of crystalline hoar frost.
They pass through Lyons, Montpellier, Aix, Nice, searching on the
way for iodine in the sea-plants of the Mediterranean. At the end
of January, 1814, they cross the Col de Tende over the snow at an
elevation of 6,000 feet into Italy, and find themselves in the midst
of the Carnival at Turin. They reach Genoa, and go to the house of a
chemist to make experiments on the _raia torpedo_, the electric skate,
trying to ascertain whether water could be decomposed by the electrical
discharges of these singular fishes. From Genoa they go by sea to
Lerici in an open boat, with much discomfort and fear of ship-wreck;
and thence by land to Florence.
[Sidenote: WITH DAVY IN ITALY.]
At Florence he goes with Davy to the Accademia del Cimento. He sees the
library, the gardens, the museum. Here is Galileo’s own telescope--a
simple tube of paper and wood, with lenses at each end--with which he
discovered Jupiter’s satellites. Here is the great burning glass of the
Grand Duke of Tuscany. And here is a numerous collection of magnets,
including one enormous loadstone supporting a weight of 150 pounds.
They make “the grand experiment of burning the diamond” in oxygen by
the sun’s heat concentrated through the Grand Duke’s burning glass.
They find the diamond to be pure carbon. Then early in April they
depart for Rome.
From Rome Faraday wrote to his mother a long chatty letter summarising
his travels, and sending messages of kindly remembrance to his
old master Riebau and others. He tells how, in spite of political
troubles, Sir Humphry Davy’s high name has procured them free admission
everywhere, and how they have just heard that Paris has been taken by
the Allied troops.
At Rome they witness unconvinced some attempts of Morichini to impart
magnetism to steel needles by the solar rays. They pass the Colosseum
by moonlight, making an early morning start across the Campagna, on
the road to Naples, with an armed guard for fear of brigands. Twice,
in the middle of May, they ascend Vesuvius, the second time during a
partial eruption rendered all the more vivid by the lateness of the
hour--half-past seven--at which the edge of the crater was reached. In
June they visit Terni, and note the nearly circular rainbow visible in
the spray of the cataract; and so across the Apennines to Milan.
At Milan occurs the following entry:--
Friday 17th [June, 1814], Milan. Saw M. Volta, who came to Sir
H. Davy, an hale elderly man, bearing the red ribbon, and very
free in conversation.
He does _not_ record how the ceremonious old Count, who had specially
attired himself in his Court uniform to welcome the illustrious
chemist, was horrified at the informal manners and uncourtly dress of
the tourist philosopher.
So, travelling by Como and Domo d’Ossola, they come to Geneva, and
here remain a long time; and Faraday writes again to his mother and
to Abbott. He can even find time to discuss with the latter the
relative merits of the French and Italian languages, and the trend of
civilisation in Paris and in Rome. Twice he sends messages to Riebau.
One of his letters to Abbott, in September, contains passages of more
than transient interest:--
Some doubts have been expressed to me lately with respect
to the continuance of the Royal Institution; Mr. Newman can
probably give a guess at the issue of them. I have three boxes
of books, &c., there, and I should be sorry if they were lost
by the turning up of unforeseen circumstances; but I hope all
will end well (you will not read this out aloud). Remember
me to all friends, if you please. And “now for you and I to
ourselves.”...
In passing through life, my dear friend, everyone must expect
to receive lessons, both in the school of prosperity and in
that of adversity; and, taken in a general sense, these schools
do not only include riches and poverty, but everything that
may cause the happiness and pleasure of man, and every feeling
that may give him pain. I have been in at the door of both
these schools; nor am I so far on the right hand at present
that I do not get hurt by the thorns on my left. With respect
to myself, I have always perceived (when, after a time, I saw
things more clearly) that those things which at first appeared
as misfortunes or evils ultimately were actually benefits,
and productive of much good in the future progress of things.
Sometimes I compared them to storms and tempests, which cause a
temporary disarrangement to produce permanent good; sometimes
they appeared to me like roads--stony, uneven, hilly, and
uncomfortable, it is true--but the only roads to a good beyond
them; and sometimes I said they were clouds which intervened
between me and the sun of prosperity, but which I found were
refreshing, reserving to me that tone and vigour of mind which
prosperity alone would enervate and ultimately destroy....
[Sidenote: HINTS OF DISCOMFORT.]
You talk of travelling, and I own the word is seducing, but
travelling does not secure you from uneasy circumstances. I
by no means intend to deter you from it; for though I should
like to find you at home when I come home, and though I know
how much the loss would be felt by our friends, yet I am aware
that the fund of knowledge and of entertainment opened would
be almost infinite. But I shall set down a few of my own
thoughts and feelings, &c., in the same circumstances. In the
first place, then, my dear B., I fancy that when I set my foot
in England I shall never take it out again; for I find the
prospect so different from what it at first appeared to be,
that I am certain, if I could have foreseen the things that
have passed, I should never have left London. In the second
place, enticing as travelling is--and I appreciate fully its
advantages and pleasures--I have several times been more
than half decided to return hastily home; but second thoughts
have still induced me to try what the future may produce, and
now I am only retained by the wish of improvement. I have
learned just enough to perceive my ignorance, and, ashamed of
my defects in everything, I wish to seize the opportunity of
remedying them. The little knowledge I have gained in languages
makes me wish to know more of them, and the little I have
seen of men and manners is just enough to make me desirous of
seeing more; added to which, the glorious opportunity I enjoy
of improving in the knowledge of chemistry and the sciences
continually determines me to finish this voyage with Sir
Humphry Davy. But if I wish to enjoy those advantages, I have
to sacrifice much; and though those sacrifices are such as an
humble man would not feel, yet I cannot quietly make them.
Travelling, too, I find, is almost inconsistent with religion
(I mean modern travelling), and I am yet so old-fashioned as
to remember strongly (I hope perfectly) my youthful education;
and upon the whole, _malgré_ the advantages of travelling, it
is not impossible but that you may see me at your door when you
expect a letter.
You will perceive, dear B., that I do not wish you hastily
to leave your present situation, because I think that a
hasty change will only make things worse. You will naturally
compare your situation with others you see around you, and
by this comparison your own will appear more sad, whilst the
others seem brighter than in truth they are; for, like the two
poles of a battery, the ideas of each will become exalted by
approaching them. But I leave you, dear friend, to act in this
case as your judgment may direct, hoping always for the best.
* * * * *
Sir Humphry works often on iodine, and has lately been making
experiments on the prismatic spectrum at M. Pictet’s. They
are not yet perfected, but from the use of very delicate air
thermometers, it appears that the rays producing most heat are
certainly out of the spectrum and beyond the red rays. Our time
has been employed lately in fishing and shooting; and many a
quail has been killed in the plains of Geneva, and many a
trout and grayling have been pulled out of the Rhone.
* * * * *
I need not say, dear Ben, how perfectly I am yours,
M. FARADAY.
[Sidenote: ARISTOCRATIC HAUTEUR.]
This letter reveals, what the diary of travel so scrupulously hides,
the existence of circumstances which were hardly tolerable in Faraday’s
position. To make the reference intelligible it should be remembered
that Davy, who had come up to London in 1801 as a raw youth, of immense
ability but very uncouth exterior, had developed into a fashionable
person, had become the idol of the hour, had married a very wealthy
widow, had been knighted, and had given himself up very largely to the
pursuits of fashionable society and to the company of the aristocratic
_beau monde_. Lady Davy accompanied Sir Humphry in this Continental
tour; and though Faraday had been taken with them as secretary and
scientific assistant, it would seem that he had not always been
treated with the respect due to one in that position. The above letter
evidently disquieted Abbott, for he wrote back to Faraday to inquire
more closely into his personal affairs, telling him he was sure he
was not happy, and asking him to share his difficulties. Faraday, who
was now back in Rome, replied in January in a long letter of twelve
pages,[9] which he says he had intended to fill with an account of
the waterfalls he had seen, but which gives instead a detailed account
of his vexations. He had, he said, written his former letter when
in a ruffled state of mind. He now gives the explanation. Before,
however, this letter could reach Abbott, the latter had written yet
more urgently to know what was the matter. To this Faraday replied
on February 23rd. As this shorter letter summarises the previous one
it may be given here. Both are printed in Bence Jones’s “Life and
Letters”:--
Rome, February 23, 1815.
DEAR B----,--In a letter of above twelve pages I gave answers
to your question respecting my situation. It was a subject
not worth talking about, but I consider your inquiries as so
many proofs of your kindness and the interest you take in my
welfare, and I thought the most agreeable thanks I could make
you would be to answer them. The same letter also contained a
short account of a paper written by Sir Humphry Davy on ancient
colours, and some other miscellaneous matters.
[Sidenote: SECRET OF MORTIFICATION.]
I am quite ashamed of dwelling so often on my own affairs,
but as I know you wish it, I shall briefly inform you of my
situation. I do not mean to employ much of this sheet of paper
on the subject, but refer you to the before-mentioned long
letter for clear information. It happened a few days before we
left England, that Sir H.’s valet declined going with him, and
in the short space of time allowed by circumstances another
could not be got. Sir H. told me he was very sorry, but that,
if I would do such things as were absolutely necessary for him
until he got to Paris, he should there get another. I murmured,
but agreed. At Paris he could not get one. No Englishmen were
there, and no Frenchman fit for the place could talk English
to me. At Lyons he could not get one; at Montpellier he could
not get one; nor at Genoa, nor at Florence, nor at Rome, nor
in all Italy; and I believe at last he did not wish to get one:
and we are just the same now as we were when he left England.
This of course throws things into my duty which it was not
my agreement, and is not my wish, to perform, but which are,
if I remain with Sir H., unavoidable. These, it is true, are
very few; for having been accustomed in early years to do for
himself, he continues to do so at present, and he leaves very
little for a valet to perform; and as he knows that it is not
pleasing to me, and that I do not consider myself as obliged
to do them, he is always as careful as possible to keep those
things from me which he knows would be disagreeable. But Lady
Davy is of another humour. She likes to show her authority,
and at first I found her extremely earnest in mortifying me.
This occasioned quarrels between us, at each of which I gained
ground, and she lost it; for the frequency made me care nothing
about them, and weakened her authority, and after each she
behaved in a milder manner. Sir H. has also taken care to get
servants of the country, ycleped _lacquais de place_, to do
everything she can want, and now I am somewhat comfortable;
indeed, at this moment I am perfectly at liberty, for Sir H.
has gone to Naples to search for a house or lodging to which we
may follow him, and I have nothing to do but see Rome, write my
journal, and learn Italian.
But I will leave such an unprofitable subject, and tell you
what I know of our intended route. For the last few weeks
it has been very undecided, and at this moment there is no
knowing which way we shall turn. Sir H. intended to see Greece
and Turkey this summer, and arrangements were half made for
the voyage; but he has just learned that a quarantine must be
performed on the road there, and to do this he has an utter
aversion, and that alone will perhaps break up the journey.
* * * * *
Since the long letter I wrote you, Sir H. has written two short
papers for the Royal Society--the first on a new solid compound
of iodine and oxygen, and the second a new gaseous compound of
chlorine and oxygen, which contains four times as much oxygen
as euchlorine.
The discovery of these bodies contradicts many parts of
Gay-Lussac’s paper on iodine, which has been very much vaunted
in these parts. The French chemists were not aware of the
importance of the subject until it was shown to them, and now
they are in haste to reap all the honours attached to it; but
their haste opposes their aim. They reason theoretically,
without demonstrating experimentally, and errors are the result.
* * * * *
I am, my dear Friend, yours ever and faithfully,
M. FARADAY.
The equivocal position thus forced upon Faraday by the _hauteur_ of
Lady Davy nearly caused a _contretemps_ during the stay at Geneva,
which lasted from the end of June, 1814, to about the middle of
September. Bence Jones’s account, derived from Faraday himself, is
as follows:--Professor G. de la Rive, undazzled by the brilliancy of
Davy’s reputation, was able to see the true worth of his assistant.
Davy was fond of shooting, and Faraday, who accompanied them, used to
load Davy’s gun for him, while De la Rive loaded his own. Entering
into conversation with Faraday, De la Rive was astonished to find that
the intelligent and charming young man whom he had taken hitherto
for a domestic was really _préparateur de laboratoire_ in the Royal
Institution. This led him to place Faraday, in one respect, on an
equality with Davy. Whilst they were staying in his house, he wished
them to dine together at his table. Davy, it is said, declined, because
Faraday acted in some things as his servant. De la Rive expressed his
feelings strongly, and ordered dinner in a separate room for Faraday.
A rumour spread years after that De la Rive gave a dinner in Faraday’s
honour: this is not so, however.
[Sidenote: VISIT TO GENEVA.]
Of that Geneva visit Faraday says, in 1858, to M. A. de la Rive:--
I have some such thoughts (of gratitude) even as regards your
own father, who was, I may say, the first who personally at
Geneva, and afterwards by correspondence, encouraged and by
that sustained me.
This correspondence, which began with the father and was continued with
the son, lasted altogether nearly fifty years.
From Geneva the travellers went northward, by Lausanne, Vevay, Bern,
Zürich, and Schaffhausen, across Baden and Würtemburg to Munich. After
visiting this and other German towns, they crossed Tyrol southwards to
Vicenza, halting in the neighbourhood of the Pietra Mala to collect the
inflammable gas which there rises from the soil. They spent a day in
Padua, and three days in Venice; and on by Bologna to Florence, where
Davy completed his analysis of the gas collected at Pietra Mala. Early
in November they were again in Rome. He writes once and again to his
mother, while his anxiety about the Royal Institution makes him send
inquiries to Abbott as to what is going to happen there, and to charge
him, “if any change should occur in Albemarle Street,” not to forget
his books which are lying there. “I prize them now more than ever.”
To his former master, Riebau, he wrote from Rome as follows:--
Rome, Jan. 5th, 1815.
HONOURED SIR,
It is with very peculiar but very pleasing and indeed
flattering sentiments that I commence a letter intended for
you, for I esteem it as a high honour that you should not only
allow but even wish me to write to you. During the whole of
the short eight years that I was with you, Sir, and during
the year or two that passed afterwards before I left England,
I continually enjoyed your goodness and the effects of it;
and it is gratifying to me in the highest degree to find that
even absence has not impaired it, and that you are willing to
give me the highest proof of (allow me to say) friendship that
distance will admit. I have received both the letters that you
have wrote to me, Sir, and consider them as far from being the
least proofs of your goodwill and remembrance of me. Allow
me to thank you humbly but sincerely for these and all other
kindness, and I hope that at some future day an opportunity
will occur when I can express more strongly my gratitude.
I beg leave to return a thousand thanks to my kind Mistress,
to Mr. and Mrs. Paine and George for their remembrances, and
venture to give mine with respect in return. I am very glad to
hear that all are well. I am very much afraid you say too much
of me to Mr. Dance, Mr. Cosway, Mrs. Udney, etc., for I feel
unworthy of what you have said of me formerly, and what you
may say now. Since I have left England, the experience I have
gained in more diversified and extended life, and the knowledge
I have gained of what is to be learned and what others know,
have sufficiently shown me my own ignorance, the degree in
which I am surpassed by all the world, and my want of powers;
but I hope that at least I shall return home with an addition
to my self-knowledge. When speaking of those who are so much
my superiors, as Mr. Dance, Mr. Cosway, and Mrs. Udney, etc.,
I feel a continual fear that I should appear to want respect,
but the manner in which you mention their names in your letter
emboldens me to beg that you will give my humblest respects
to those honored persons, if, and only if (I am afraid of
intruding) they should again speak of me to you. Mr. Dance’s
kindness claims my gratitude, and I trust that my thanks, the
only mark that I can give, will be accepted.
[Sidenote: BOOKS AND BOOKSELLERS.]
Since I have been abroad, my old profession of books has
oftentimes occurred to my mind and been productive of much
pleasure. It was my wish at first to purchase some useful book
at every large town we came to, but I found my stock increase
so fast that I was obliged to alter my plan and purchase only
at Capital Cities. The first books that I wanted were grammars
and dictionaries, but I found few places like London where I
could get whatever I wanted. In France (at the time we were
there) English books were very scarce, and also English and
French books; and a French grammar for an Englishman was a
thing difficult to find. Nevertheless the shops appeared well
stocked with books in their own language, and the encouragement
Napoleon gave to Arts and Sciences extended its influence even
to the printing and binding of books. I saw some beautiful
specimens in both these branches at the Bibliothèque Impériale
at Paris, but I still think they did not exceed or even equal
those I had seen in London before. We have as yet seen very
little of Germany, having passed rapidly through Switzerland
and stopping but a few days at Munich, but that little gave
me a very favorable idea of the Booksellers’ shops. I got an
excellent English and German dictionary immediately I asked for
it, and other books I asked for I found were to be had, but E.
and G. Grammars were scarce, owing to the little communication
between the two Empires, and the former power of the French
in Germany. Italy I have found the country furnished with
the fewest means--if books are the means of disseminating
knowledge, and even Venice which is renowned for Printing
appeared to me bare and little worthy of its character. It is
natural to suppose that the great and most estimable use of
printing is to produce those books which are in most general
use and which are required by the world at large; it is those
books which form this branch of trade, and consequently every
shop in it gives an account of the more valuable state of the
art (_i.e._) the use made of it. In Italy there are many
books, and the shelves of the shops there appear full, but the
books are old, or what is new have come from France; they seem
latterly to have resigned printing and to have become satisfied
with the libraries their forefathers left them. I found at
Florence an E. and I. Grammar (Veneroni’s), which does a little
credit to Leghorn; but I have searched unsuccessfully at Rome,
Naples, Milan, Bologna, Venice, Florence, and in every part of
Italy for and E. and I. Dictionary, and the only one I could
get was Rollasetti in 8vo. E. F. and I. A circumstance still
more singular is the want of bibles; even at Rome, the seat of
the Roman Catholic faith, a bible of moderate size is not to
be found, either Protestant or Catholic. Those which exist are
large folios or 4tos and in several volumes, interspersed with
the various readings and commentaries of the fathers, and they
are in the possession of the Priests and religious professors.
In all shops at Rome where I ask for a small pocket bible the
man seemed afraid to answer me, and some Priest in the shop
looked at me in a very inquisitive way.
I must now, Kind Sir, put an end to this letter, which I fear
you will think already too long. I beg you will have the
goodness to send to my Mother and say I am well, and give my
duty to her and my love to my brother and sisters. I have
wrote four or five times lately from Rome to various friends.
Remember me, if you please, to Mr. Kitchen, and others who may
enquire after me. I thank you for your concluding wishes and
am, Sir,
Your most dutifully,
FARADAY.
To his sisters he wrote also. To the elder, on the Church festivals,
the Carnival, and the ruins of the Colosseum. To the younger, on the
best way of learning French. His diary is full of the Carnival, the
foolishness of which afforded him much amusement. He witnessed the
horse-races in the Corso, went four times to masked balls, where his
boyish love of uproarious fun broke out beyond restraint, for to the
last one he went disguised in a night-gown and night-cap. Between
gaieties in the evenings and chemical experiments with Davy in the
day, his time must have been pretty fully occupied. They had had the
intention of going on to Greece and Turkey, but owing to dread of
quarantine these projects were abandoned, and at the end of February,
1815, they moved southwards to Naples. Here is a characteristic entry:--
Tuesday, March 7th.--I heard for news that Bonaparte was again
at liberty. Being no politician, I did not trouble myself much
about it, though I suppose it will have a strong influence on
the affairs of Europe.
He went with Sir Humphry to explore Monte Somma, and ventured to make
another ascent of the cone of Vesuvius, with the gratification of
finding the crater in much greater activity than during the visits of
the preceding year.
[Sidenote: THE END OF THE TOUR.]
Then, for reasons not altogether clear, the tour was suddenly cut
short. Naples was left on March 21st, Rome on 24th, Mantua was passed
on 30th. Tyrol was recrossed, Germany traversed by Stuttgardt,
Heidelberg, and Cologne. Brussels was reached on 16th April, whence
London was regained _viâ_ Ostend and Deal. A letter written from
Brussels to his mother positively overflows with the joy of expected
return. He does not want his mother to be inquiring at Albemarle Street
as to when he is expected:--
You may be sure that my first moments will be in your company.
If you have opportunities, tell some of my dearest friends,
but do not tell everybody--that is, do not trouble yourself to
do it. I am of no consequence except to a few, and there are
but a few that are of consequence to me, and there are some
whom I should like to be the first to tell myself--Mr. Riebau
for one. However, let A. know, if you can...
Adieu till I see you, dearest Mother; and believe me ever your
affectionate and dutiful son,
M. FARADAY.
[P.S.] ’Tis the shortest and (to me) the sweetest letter I ever
wrote you.
A fortnight after his return to London, Faraday was re-engaged, at
a salary of thirty shillings a week, at the Royal Institution as
assistant in the laboratory and mineralogical collection. He returned
to the scene of his former labours; but with what widened ideas! He
had had eighteen months of daily intercourse with the most brilliant
chemist of the age. He had seen and conversed with Ampère, Arago,
Gay-Lussac, Chevreul, Dumas, Volta, De la Rive, Biot, Pictet, De
Saussure, and De Stael. He had formed a lasting friendship with more
than one of these. He had dined with Count Rumford, the founder of
the Royal Institution. He had gained a certain mastery over foreign
tongues, and had seen the ways of foreign society. Though it was many
years before he again quitted England for a foreign tour, he cherished
the most lively recollection of many of the incidents that had befallen
him.
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
Amongst the scientific societies of Great Britain, the Royal
Institution of London occupies a conspicuous place. It has had many
imitators in its time, yet it remains unique. A “learned society”
it may claim to be, in the sense that it publishes scientific
transactions, and endeavours to concentrate within itself and promote
the highest science, within a certain range of subjects. In some
respects it resembles a college; for it appoints professors, and
provides them with space, appliances, and materials for research, and a
theatre wherein to lecture. For its members it provides a comfortable,
well-stocked library, and a reading-room where daily and periodic
journals may be consulted. But it has achieved a reputation far in
excess of any it would have held, had that reputation depended solely
on its publications, or on the numerical strength of its membership.
Founded in the year 1799 by that erratic genius Count Rumford, as a
sort of technical school,[10] it would speedily have come to an end
had not others stepped in to develop it in new ways. From the certain
ruin which seemed impending in 1801, it was saved by the appearance
upon the scene of the brilliant youth Humphry Davy, whose lectures
made it for ten years the resort of fashion. In 1814 it was again in
such low water that Faraday, travelling on the Continent at that time
as amanuensis to Sir Humphry, was every month expecting to hear of its
collapse. Until about 1833, when the two Fullerian Professorships were
founded, it was continually in financial difficulties. The persistent
and extraordinary efforts made by Faraday from 1826 to 1839, and
the reputation of the place which accrued by his discoveries, were
beyond all question its salvation from ruin. When it was founded it
was located in two private houses in Albemarle Street, then regarded
as quite out of town, if not almost suburban; the premises being
altered and an entrance hall with staircase added. A little later the
lecture-theatre, much as it still exists, was constructed. The exterior
at first remained unchanged. The stucco pilasters of Grecian style,
which give it its air of distinction, were not erected until 1838.
The fine rooms of the Davy-Faraday laboratory at the south end were
only added in 1896 by the liberality of Mr. Ludwig Mond. Besides the
laboratories for research in physical chemistry, which have thus been
associated with the older part of the Institution, additional rooms for
the library have been provided in this munificent gift to science. The
older laboratories of the Institution, though they retain some features
from Rumford’s time, have been considerably remodelled. The old rooms
where Davy, Young, Brande, Faraday, Frankland, and Tyndall conducted
their researches are still in existence; but the chief laboratory was
reconstructed in 1872 in Tyndall’s time; and it has been quite recently
enlarged and reconstructed to accommodate the heavy machinery required
in Professor Dewar’s researches on liquid air and the properties of
bodies at low temperatures.
The spirit of the place may be summed up very briefly. It has existed
for a century as the home of the highest kind of scientific research,
and of the best and most specialised kind of scientific lectures.
It was here that Davy first showed the electric arc lamp; that he
astonished the world by decomposing potash and producing potassium;
that he invented the safety lamp. It was here that Faraday worked and
laboured for nearly fifty years. Here that Tyndall’s investigations
on radiant heat and diamagnetism were carried on. Here that Brande,
Frankland, Odling, Gladstone, and Dewar have handed on the torch
of chemistry from the time of Davy. Professorships, of which the
educational duties are restricted to a few lectures in the year,
giving leisure and scope for research as the main duty, are not to
be found anywhere else in the British Islands; those at colleges
and universities being invariably hampered with educational and
administrative duties.
[Sidenote: ROYAL INSTITUTION LABORATORIES.]
As for the lectures at the Royal Institution, they may be divided under
three heads: the afternoon courses; the juvenile lectures at Christmas;
the Friday night discourses. The afternoon lectures are thrice a week
at three o’clock, and consist usually of short courses, from three
lectures to as many as twelve, by eminent scientific and literary men.
Invariably one of these courses during the season, either before or
after Easter, is given by one of the regular Professors; the remaining
lecturers are paid professional fees in proportion to the duration of
their course. The Christmas lectures, always six in number, are given,
sometimes by one of the Professors, sometimes by outside lecturers
of scientific reputation. But the Friday night discourses, given at
nine o’clock, during the season from January till June, are unique.
No fee is paid to the lecturer, save a contribution toward expenses
if applied for, and it is considered to be a distinct honour to be
invited to give such a discourse. There is no scientific man of any
original claim to distinction; no chemist, engineer, or electrician; no
physiologist, geologist, or mineralogist, during the last fifty years,
who has not been invited thus to give an account of his investigations.
Occasionally a wider range is taken, and the eminent writer of books,
dramatist, metaphysician, or musician has taken his place at the
lecture-table. The Friday night gathering is always a brilliant one.
From the _salons_ of society, from the world of politics and diplomacy,
as well as from the ranks of the learned professions and of the fine
arts, men and women assemble to listen to the exposition of the latest
discoveries or the newest advances in philosophy by the men who have
made them. Every discourse must, so far as the subject admits, be
illustrated in the best possible way by experiments, by diagrams, by
the exhibition of specimens. Not infrequently, the person invited to
give a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution will begin
his preparations five or six months beforehand. At least one instance
is known--the occasion being a discourse by the late Mr. Warren De la
Rue--where the preparations were begun more than a year beforehand, and
cost several hundreds of pounds. And this was to illustrate a research
already made and completed, of which the bare scientific results had
already been communicated in a memoir to the Royal Society. A mere
enumeration of the eminent men who have thus given their time and
labours to the Royal Institution would fill many pages. It is little
cause for wonder then that the lecture-theatre at Albemarle Street is
crowded week after week in the pursuit of science under conditions like
these; or that every lecturer is spurred on by the spirit of the place
to do his subject the utmost justice by the manner in which he handles
it. There are no lectures so famous, in the best sense of the word so
popular, certainly none sustained at so high a level, as the lectures
of the Royal Institution.
[Sidenote: THE FAMOUS LECTURES.]
But it was not always thus. Davy’s brilliant but ill-balanced genius
had drawn fashionable crowds to the morning lectures which he gave.
Brande proved to be a much more humdrum lecturer; and though with young
Faraday at his elbow he found his work of lecturing a task “on velvet,”
he was not exactly an inspiring person. During Davy’s protracted tour
abroad things had not altogether prospered, and his return was none
too soon. Faraday threw himself whole-heartedly into the work of the
Institution, not only helping as lecture assistant, but giving a hand
also in the preparation of the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, which
had been established as a kind of journal of proceedings.
But now Faraday was to take a quiet step forward. He appears at the
City Philosophical Society in the character of lecturer. He gave
seven lectures there, in 1816, on chemistry, the fourth of them being
“On Radiant Matter.” Extracts are given from most of these lectures
in Bence Jones’s “Life and Letters of Faraday”; they show all that
love of accuracy, that philosophic suspense of judgment in matters of
hypothesis, which in after years were so characteristic of the man.
He also kept a commonplace book filled with notes of scientific
matters, with literary excerpts, anagrams, epitaphs, algebraic puzzles,
varieties of spelling of his own name, and personal experiences,
including a poetical diatribe against falling in love, together with
the following more prosaic aphorism:--
What is Love?--A nuisance to everybody but the parties
concerned. A private affair which every one but those concerned
wishes to make public.
It also includes a piece in verse, by a member of the City
Philosophical Society--a Mr. Dryden--called “Quarterly Night,” which
is interesting as embalming a portrait of the youthful Faraday as he
appeared to his comrades:--
Neat was the youth in dress, in person plain;
His eye read thus, _Philosopher in grain_;
Of understanding clear, reflection deep;
Expert to apprehend, and strong to keep.
His watchful mind no subject can elude,
Nor specious arts of sophists ere delude;
His powers, unshackled, range from pole to pole;
His mind from error free, from guilt his soul.
Warmth in his heart, good humour in his face,
A friend to mirth, but foe to vile grimace;
A temper candid, manners unassuming,
Always correct, yet always unpresuming.
Such was the youth, the chief of all the band;
His name well known, Sir Humphry’s right hand.
At this date there were no evening duties at the Royal Institution, but
Faraday found his evenings well occupied, as he explains to Abbott when
rallied about his having deserted his old friend. Monday and Thursday
evenings he spent in self-improvement according to a regular plan.
Wednesdays he gave to “the Society” (_i.e._ the City Philosophical).
Saturdays he spent with his mother at Weymouth Street; leaving only
Tuesdays and Fridays for his own business and friends.
[Sidenote: CITY PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.]
And so the busy months pass, and he gives more lectures in the privacy
of the City Society, one of them, “On some Observations on the Means
of obtaining Knowledge,” attaining the dignity of print at the hands
of Effingham Wilson, the enterprising City publisher, who a few
years later printed Browning’s “Paracelsus” and Alfred Tennyson’s
first volume, “Poems: Chiefly Lyrical.” By the time he has given
nine lectures he has gained confidence. The discourses had all been
written out beforehand, though never literally “read.” For the tenth
lecture--on Carbon--he wrote notes only. This is in July, 1817, and in
these notes he touches on a matter in which he had been very busily
aiding Sir Humphry Davy, the invention of the safety lamp. Many
of the early forms of experimental apparatus constructed, and some
of the early lamps, are still preserved in the museum of the Royal
Institution. Dr. Clanny had, in 1813, proposed an entirely closed lamp,
supplied with air from the mine, through water, by bellows. After many
experiments on explosive mixtures of gas and air, and on the properties
of flame, Davy adopted an iron-wire gauze protector for his lamp, which
was introduced into coal mining early in 1816. In Davy’s preface to
his work describing it, he says: “I am myself indebted to Mr. Michael
Faraday for much able assistance in the prosecution of my experiments.”
[Sidenote: A RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE.]
And well might Davy be grateful. With all his immense ability, he
was a man almost destitute of the faculties of order and method. He
had little self-control, and the fashionable dissipations which he
permitted himself lessened that little. Faraday not only kept his
experiments going, but made himself responsible for their records. He
preserved every note and manuscript of Davy’s with religious care.
He copied out Davy’s scrawled researches in a neat clear delicate
handwriting, begging only for his pains to be allowed to keep the
originals, which he bound in two quarto volumes. Faraday has been known
to remark to an intimate friend that amongst his advantages he had had
before him a model to teach him what he should avoid. But he was ever
loyal to Davy, earnest in his praise, and frank in his acknowledgment
of his debt to his master in science. Still there arose the little rift
within the lute. The safety lamp, great as was the practical advantage
it brought to the miner, is not safe in all circumstances. Davy did
not like to admit this, and would never acknowledge it. Examined before
a Parliamentary Committee as to whether under a certain condition
the safety lamp would become unsafe, Faraday admitted that this was
the case. Not even his devotion to his master would induce him to
hide the truth. He was true to himself in making the acknowledgment,
though it angered his master. One Friday evening at the Royal
Institution--probably about 1826--there was exhibited an improved Davy
lamp with a eulogistic inscription; Faraday added in pencil the words:
“The opinion of the inventor.”
At this time he began to give private lessons in chemistry to a pupil
to whom he had been recommended by Davy. His lectures at the City
Society in Dorset Street were continued in 1818, and at the conclusion
of those on chemistry he delivered one on “Mental Inertia,” which has
been recorded at some length by Bence Jones.
In 1818 he attended a course of lessons on oratory by the elocutionist
Mr. B. H. Smart, paying out of his slender resources half a guinea a
lesson, so anxious was he to improve himself, even in his manner of
lecturing. His notes on these lessons fill 133 manuscript pages.
His other notes now begin to partake less of the character of
quotations and excerpts, and more of the nature of queries or problems
for solution. Here are some examples:--
“Do the pith balls diverge by the disturbance of electricity in
consequence of mutual induction or not?”
“Distil oxalate of ammonia. Query, results?”
“Query, the nature of the body Phillips burns in his spirit
lamp?”
The Phillips here mentioned was the chemist Richard Phillips
(afterwards President of the Chemical Society), one of his City
friends, whose name so frequently occurs in the correspondence of
Faraday’s middle life. Phillips busied himself to promote the material
interests of his friend who--to use his own language--was “constantly
engaged in observing the works of Nature, and tracing the manner in
which she directs the arrangement and order of the world,” on the
splendid salary of £100 per annum. The following note in a letter to
Abbott, dated February 27, 1818, reveals new professional labours:--
I have been more than enough employed. We have been obliged
even to put aside lectures at the Institution; and now I am so
tired with a long attendance at Guildhall yesterday and to-day,
being subpœnaed, with Sir H. Davy, Mr. Brande, Phillips, Aikin,
and others, to give chemical information on a trial (which,
however, did not come off), that I scarcely know what I say.
Shortly afterwards Davy again went abroad, but Faraday remained in
England. From Rome Davy wrote a note, the concluding sentence of which
shows how Faraday was advancing in his esteem:--
Rome: October, 1818.
Mr. Hatchett’s letter contained praises of you which were
very gratifying to me; for, believe me, there is no one more
interested in your success and welfare than your sincere
well-wisher and friend,
H. DAVY.
In the next year Davy wrote again, suggesting to Faraday that he might
possibly be asked to come to Naples as a skilled chemist to assist in
the unrolling of the Herculaneum manuscripts. In May he wrote again,
from Florence:--
It gives me great pleasure to hear that you are comfortable at
the Royal Institution, and I trust that you will not only do
something good and honourable for yourself, but likewise for
science.
I am, dear Mr. Faraday, always your sincere friend and
well-wisher,
H. DAVY.
The wish that Davy expressed that Faraday might “do something”
for himself and likewise for science was destined soon to come to
fulfilment. But in the case of one who had worked so closely and had
been so intimately associated as an assistant, it must necessarily be
no easy matter always to draw a distinction between the work of the
master and that of the assistant. Ideas suggested by one might easily
have occurred to the other, when their thoughts had so long been
directed to the same ends. And so it proved.
[Sidenote: BEGINS ORIGINAL RESEARCHES.]
Reference to Chapter III. will show that already, beginning in 1816
with a simple analysis of caustic lime for Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday
had become an active worker in the domain of original research.
The fascination of the quest of the unknown was already upon him.
While working with and for Davy on the properties of flame and its
non-transmission through iron gauze, in the investigation of the
safety lamp, other problems of a kindred nature had arisen. One of
these, relating to the flow of gases through capillary tubes, Faraday
had attacked by himself in 1817. The subject formed one of the six
original papers which he published that year. In the next two years
he contributed in all no fewer than thirty-seven papers or notes to
the _Quarterly Journal of Science_. In 1819 began a long research on
steel which lasted over the year 1820. He had already given evidence
of that dislike of half-truths, that aversion for “doubtful knowledge”
which marked him so strongly. He had exposed, with quiet but unsparing
success, the emptiness of the claim made by an Austrian chemist to have
discovered a new metal, “Sirium,” by the simple device of analysing
out from the mass all the constituents of known sorts, leaving
behind--nothing.
[Sidenote: HE FALLS IN LOVE.]
And now, Faraday being twenty-nine years of age, a new and
all-important episode in his life occurred. Amongst the members of the
little congregation which met on Sundays at Paul’s Alley, Red Cross
Street, was a Mr. Barnard, a working silversmith of Paternoster Row,
an elder in the Sandemanian body. He had two sons, Edward Barnard, a
friend of Faraday’s, and George, who became a well-known water-colour
artist; and three daughters; one who was already at this time married;
Sarah, now twenty-one years of age; and Jane, who was still younger.
Edward had seen in Faraday’s note-book those boyish tirades against
falling in love, and had told his sister Sarah of them. Nevertheless,
in spite of all such misogynistic fancies, Faraday woke up one day to
find that the large-eyed, clear-browed girl had grown to a place in his
heart that he had thought barred against the assaults of love. She
asked him on one occasion to show her the rhymes against love in his
note-book. In reply he sent her the hitherto unpublished poem:--
R. I.
Oct. 11th, 1819.
You ask’d me last night for the lines which I penn’d,
When, exulting in ignorance, tempted by pride,
I dared torpid hearts and cold breasts to commend,
And affection’s kind pow’r and soft joys to deride.
If you urge it I cannot refuse your request:
Though to grant it will punish severely my crime:
But my fault I repent, and my errors detest;
And I hoped to have shown my conversion in time.
Remember, our laws in their mercy decide
That no culprit be forced to give proof of his deed:
They protect him though fall’n, his failings they hide,
And enable the wretch from his crimes to receed (_sic_).
The principle’s noble! I need not urge long
Its adoption; then turn from a judge to a friend.
Do not ask for the proof that I once acted wrong,
But direct me and guide me the way to amend.
M. F.
What other previous passages between them are hinted at in the letter
which he sent her, is unknown; but on July 5, 1820, he wrote:--
Royal Institution.
You know me as well or better than I do myself. You know
my former prejudices, and my present thoughts--you know my
weaknesses, my vanity, my whole mind; you have converted me
from one erroneous way, let me hope you will attempt to correct
what others are wrong.
* * * * *
Again and again I attempt to say what I feel, but I cannot.
Let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes
to bend your affections for his own sake only. In whatever way
I can best minister to your happiness either by assiduity or by
absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by withdrawing your
friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by
making me less; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what
I possess, but hear me.
Sarah Barnard showed the letter to her father. She was young, and
feared to accept her lover. All her father would say by way of counsel
was that love made philosophers say many foolish things. The intensity
of Faraday’s passion proved for the time a bar to his advance. Fearing
lest she should be unable to return it with equal force, Miss Barnard
shrank from replying. To postpone an immediate decision, she went away
with her sister, Mrs. Reid, to Ramsgate. Faraday followed to press his
suit, and after several happy days in her company, varied with country
walks and a run over to Dover, he was able to say: “Not a moment’s
alloy of this evening’s happiness occurred. Everything was delightful
to the last moment of my stay with my companion, because she was so.”
Of the many letters that Faraday wrote to his future wife a number have
been preserved. They are manly, simple, full of quiet affection, but
absolutely free from gush or forced sentiment of any kind. Extracts
from several of them are printed by Bence Jones. One of these, written
early in 1821, runs as follows:--
I tied up the enclosed key with my books last night, and make
haste to return it lest its absence should occasion confusion.
If it has, it will perhaps remind you of the disorder I must be
in here also for the want of a key--I mean the one to my heart.
However, I know where my key is, and hope soon to have it here,
and then the Institution will be all right again. Let no one
oppose my gaining possession of it when unavoidable obstacles
are removed.
Ever, my dear girl, one who is perfectly yours,
M. FARADAY.
Faraday obtained leave of the managers to bring his wife to live in his
rooms at the Institution; and in May, 1821, his position was changed
from that of lecture assistant to that of superintendent of the house
and laboratory. In these changes Sir Humphry Davy gave him willing
assistance. But his salary remained £100 a year.
Obstacles being now removed, Faraday and Miss Barnard were married on
June 12. Few persons were asked to the wedding, for Faraday wished it
to be “just like any other day.” “There will,” he wrote, “be no bustle,
no noise, no hurry ... it is in the heart that we expect and look for
pleasure.”
[Sidenote: A HAPPY MARRIAGE.]
His marriage, though childless, was extremely happy. Mrs. Faraday
proved to be exactly the true helpmeet for his need; and he loved her
to the end of his life with a chivalrous devotion which has become
almost a proverb. Little indications of his attachment crop up in
unexpected places in his subsequent career; but as with his religious
views so with his domestic affairs, he never obtruded them upon others,
nor yet shrank from mentioning them when there was cause. Tyndall,
in after years, made the intensity of Faraday’s attachment to his
wife the subject of a striking simile: “Never, I believe, existed a
manlier, purer, steadier love. Like a burning diamond, it continued to
shed, for six and forty years, its white and smokeless glow.”
In his diploma-book, now in possession of the Royal Society, in which
he carefully preserved all the certificates, awards, and honours
bestowed upon him by academies and universities, there may be found on
a slip inserted in the volume this entry:--
25th January, 1847.
Amongst these records and events, I here insert the date of one
which, as a source of honour and happiness, far exceeds the
rest. We were _married_ on June 12, 1821.
M. FARADAY.
And two years later, in the autobiographical notes he wrote:--
On June 12, 1821, he married--an event which more than any
other contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful state
of mind. The union has continued for twenty-eight years, and
has nowise changed, except in the depth and strength of its
character.
When near the close of his life, he presented to the Royal Institution
the bookcase with the volumes of notes of Davy’s lectures and of books
bound by himself, the inscription recorded that they were the gift of
“Michael _and_ Sarah Faraday.”
Every Saturday evening he used to take his wife to her father’s
house at Paternoster Row, so that on Sunday they should be nearer to
the chapel at Paul’s Alley. And in after years, when he was away on
scientific work, visiting lighthouses, or attending meetings of the
British Association, he always tried to return for the Sunday.
A letter from Liebig in 1844 (see p. 225) gives one of the very few
glimpses of contemporary date of the impression made by Mrs. Faraday
upon others.
One month after his marriage Faraday made his profession of faith
before the Sandemanian church, to which his wife already belonged, and
was admitted a member. To his religious views, and his relations to the
body he thus formally joined, reference will be found later.
[Sidenote: FIRST ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.]
Faraday now settled down to a routine life of scientific work. His
professional reputation was rising, and his services as analyst
were being sought after. But in the midst of this he was pursuing
investigations on his own account. In the late summer of this year
he made the discovery of the electro-magnetic rotations described in
Chapter III.--his first important piece of original research--and
had in consequence a serious misunderstanding with Dr. Wollaston. On
September 3rd, working with George Barnard in the laboratory, he saw
the electric wire for the first time revolve around the pole of the
magnet. Rubbing his hands as he danced around the table with beaming
face, he exclaimed: “There they go! there they go! we have succeeded
at last.” Then he gleefully proposed that they should wind up the day
by going to one of the theatres. Which should it be? “Oh, to Astley’s,
to see the horses.” And to Astley’s they went. On Christmas Day he
called his young wife to see something new: an electric conducting-wire
revolving under the influence of the magnetism of the earth alone.
He also read two chemical papers at the Royal Society, announcing new
discoveries; one of them in conjunction with his friend Phillips. In
July, 1822, he took his wife and her mother to Ramsgate, whilst he went
off with Phillips to Swansea to try a new process in Vivian’s copper
works. During this enforced parting, Faraday wrote his wife three
letters from which the following are extracts:---
[Sidenote: “A MERE LOVE-LETTER.”]
(July 21, 1822).
I perceive that if I give way to my thoughts, I shall write you
a mere love-letter, just as usual, with not a particle of news
in it: to prevent which I will constrain myself to a narrative
of what has happened since I left you up to the present time,
and then indulge my affection.
Yesterday was a day of events--little, but pleasant. I went in
the morning to the Institution, and in the course of the day
analysed the water, and sent an account of it to Mr. Hatchett.
Mr. Fisher I did not see. Mr. Lawrence called in, and behaved
with his usual generosity. He had called in the early part of
the week, and, finding that I should be at the Institution on
Saturday only, came up, as I have already said, and insisted
on my accepting two ten-pound bank-notes for the information
he professed to have obtained from me at various times. Is not
this handsome? The money, as you know, could not have been at
any time more acceptable; and I cannot see any reason, my dear
love, why you and I should not regard it as another proof,
among many, that our trust should without a moment’s reserve be
freely reposed on Him who provideth all things for His people.
Have we not many times been reproached, by such mercies as
these, for our caring after food and raiment and the things
of this world? On coming home in the evening, _i.e._, coming
to Paternoster Row home, I learned that Mr. Phillips had seen
C., and had told her we should not leave London until Monday
evening. So I shall have to-morrow to get things ready in,
and I shall have enough to do. I fancy we are going to a large
mansion and into high company, so I must take more clothes.
Having the £20, I am become bold....
And now, how do my dear wife and mother do? Are you
comfortable? are you happy? are the lodgings convenient, and
Mrs. O. obliging? Has the place done you good? Is the weather
fine? Tell me all things as soon as you can. I think if you
write directly you get this it will be best, but let it be a
long letter. I do not know when I wished so much for a long
letter as I do from you now. You will get this on Tuesday, and
any letter from you to me cannot reach Swansea before Thursday
or Friday--a sad long time to wait. Direct to me, Post Office,
Swansea; or perhaps better, to me at -- Vivian Esq., Marino,
near Swansea, South Wales....
And now, my dear girl, I must set business aside. I am tired
of the dull detail of things, and want to talk of love to you;
and surely there can be no circumstances under which I can have
more right. The theme was a cheerful and delightful one before
we were married, but it is doubly so now. I now can speak, not
of my own heart only, but of both our hearts. I now speak, not
with any doubt of the state of your thoughts, but with the
fullest conviction that they answer to my own. All that I can
now say warm and animated to you, I know that you would say to
me again. The excess of pleasure which I feel in knowing you
mine is doubled by the consciousness that you feel equal joy in
knowing me yours.
[Sidenote: FROM HUSBAND TO WIFE.]
Marino: Sunday, July 28, 1822.
MY DEARLY BELOVED WIFE,--I have just read your letter again,
preparatory to my writing to you, that my thoughts might be
still more elevated and quickened than before. I could almost
rejoice at my absence from you, if it were only that it has
produced such an earnest and warm mark of affection from you
as that letter. Tears of joy and delight fell from my eyes on
its perusal. I think it was last Sunday evening, about this
time, that I wrote to you from London; and I again resort to
this affectionate conversation with you, to tell you what has
happened since the letter which I got franked from this place
to you on Thursday I believe.
* * * * *
We have been working very hard here at the copper works, and
with some success. Our days have gone on just as before. A walk
before breakfast; then breakfast; then to the works till four
or five o’clock, and then home to dress, and dinner. After
dinner, tea and conversation. I have felt doubly at a loss
to-day, being absent from both the meeting and you. When away
from London before, I have had you with me, and we could read
and talk and walk; to-day I have had no one to fill your place,
so I will tell you how I have done. There are so many here, and
their dinner so late and long, that I made up my mind to avoid
it, though, if possible, without appearing singular. So, having
remained in my room till breakfast time, we all breakfasted
together, and soon after Mr. Phillips and myself took a walk
out to the Mumbles Point, at the extremity of this side of
the bay. There we sat down to admire the beautiful scenery
around us, and, after we had viewed it long enough, returned
slowly home. We stopped at a little village in our way, called
Oystermouth, and dined at a small, neat, homely house about
one o’clock. We then came back to Marino, and after a little
while again went out--Mr. Phillips to a relation in the town,
and myself for a walk on the sands and the edge of the bay. I
took tea in a little cottage, and, returning home about seven
o’clock, found them engaged at dinner, so came up to my own
room, and shall not see them again to-night. I went down for a
light just now, and heard them playing some sacred music in the
drawing-room; they have all been to church to-day, and are what
are called regular people.
The trial at Hereford is put off for the present, but yet we
shall not be able to be in town before the end of this week.
Though I long to see you, I do not know when it will be;
but this I know, that I am getting daily more anxious about
you. Mr. Phillips wrote home to Mrs. Phillips from here even
before I did--_i.e._ last Wednesday. This morning he received
a letter from Mrs. Phillips (who is very well) desiring him
to ask me for a copy of one of my letters to you, that he may
learn to write love-letters of sufficient length. He laughs at
the scolding, and says that it does not hurt at a distance....
It seems to me so long since I left you that there must have
been time for a great many things to have happened. I expect to
see you with such joy when I come home that I shall hardly know
what to do with myself. I hope you will be well and blooming,
and animated and happy, when you see me. I do not know how we
shall contrive to get away from here. We certainly shall not
have concluded before Thursday evening, but I think we shall
endeavour earnestly to leave this place on Friday night, in
which case we shall get home late on Saturday night. If we
cannot do that, as I should not like to be travelling all day
on Sunday, we shall probably not leave until Sunday night; but
I think the first plan will be adopted, and that you will not
have time to answer this letter. I expect, nevertheless, an
answer to my last letter--_i.e._ I expect that my dear wife
will think of me again. Expect here means nothing more than
I trust and have a full confidence that it will be so. My
kind girl is so affectionate that she would not think a dozen
letters too much for me if there were time to send them, which
I am glad there is not.
Give my love to our mothers as earnestly as you would your own,
and also to Charlotte or John, or any such one that you may
have with you. I have not written to Paternoster Row yet, but
I am going to write now, so that I may be permitted to finish
this letter here. I do not feel quite sure, indeed, that the
permission to leave off is not as necessary from my own heart
as from yours.
With the utmost affection--with perhaps too much--I am, my dear
wife, my Sarah, your devoted husband,
M. FARADAY.
Faraday’s next scientific success was the liquefaction of chlorine
(see Chapter III., p. 93). This discovery, which created much interest
in the scientific world, was the occasion of a serious trouble with
Sir Humphry Davy; for doubtless Davy was annoyed that he had left such
a simple experiment to a mere assistant. Writing on the matter years
after, Faraday said:--
When my paper was written, it was, according to a custom
consequent upon our relative positions, submitted to Sir
H. Davy (as were all my papers for the “Philosophical
Transactions” up to a much later period), and he altered it as
he thought fit. This practice was one of great kindness to me,
for various grammatical mistakes and awkward expressions were
from time to time thus removed, which might else have remained.
In point of fact, Davy on this occasion added a note (which was duly
printed) saying precisely how far he had any share in suggesting the
experiment, but in no wise traversing any of Faraday’s claims. Although
he thus acted generously to the latter, there can be no question
that he began to be seriously jealous of Faraday’s rising fame. The
matter was the more serious because some who did not have a nice
appreciation of the circumstances chose to rake up a charge which had
been raised two years before against Faraday by some of Dr. Wollaston’s
friends--in particular by Dr. Warburton--about the discovery of the
electro-magnetic rotations, a charge which Faraday’s straightforward
action and Wollaston’s frank satisfaction ought to have dissipated
for ever. And all this was doubly aggravating because Faraday was now
expecting to be proposed as a candidate for the Fellowship of the Royal
Society, of which Sir Humphry was President.
[Sidenote: PROPOSED FOR THE FELLOWSHIP.]
At that time, as now, the proposal paper or “certificate” of a
candidate for election must be presented, signed by a number of
influential Fellows. Faraday’s friend Phillips took in hand the
pleasant task of drawing up this certificate and of collecting
the necessary signatures. The rule then was that the certificate
so presented must be read out at ten successive meetings of the
Society; after which a ballot took place. Faraday’s certificate bears
twenty-nine names. The very first is that of Wollaston, and it is
followed by those of Children, Babington, Sir John Herschel, Babbage,
Phillips, Roget, and Sir James South.
On the 5th of May, 1823, Faraday wrote to Phillips:--
A thousand thanks to you for your kindness--I am delighted with
the names--Mr. Brande had told me of it before I got your note
and thought it impossible to be better. I suppose you will not
be in Grosvenor Street this Evening, so I will put this in the
post.
Our Best remembrances to Mrs. Phillips.
Yours Ever,
M. FARADAY.
The certificate was read for the first time on May 1st. The absence
of the names of Davy and Brande is accounted for by the one being
President and the other Secretary. Bence Jones gives the following
account of what followed:--
That Sir H. Davy actively opposed Faraday’s election is no less
certain than it is sad.
Many years ago, Faraday gave a friend the following facts,
which were written down immediately:--“Sir H. Davy told me I
must take down my certificate. I replied that I had not put
it up; that I could not take it down, as it was put up by my
proposers. He then said I must get my proposers to take it
down. I answered that I knew they would not do so. Then he
said, I as President will take it down. I replied that I was
sure Sir H. Davy would do what he thought was for the good of
the Royal Society.”
Faraday also said that one of his proposers told him that Sir
H. Davy had walked for an hour round the courtyard of Somerset
House, arguing that Faraday ought not to be elected. This was
probably about May 30.
Faraday also made the following notes on the circumstance of the charge
made by Wollaston’s friends:--
1823. _In relation to Davy’s opposition to my election at the
Royal Society._
Sir H. Davy angry, May 30.
Phillips’ report through Mr. Children, June 5.
Mr. Warburton called first time, June 5 (evening).
I called on Dr. Wollaston, and he not in town, June 9.
I called on Dr. Wollaston, and saw him, June 14.
I called at Sir H. Davy’s, and he called on me, June 17.
On July 8 Dr. Warburton wrote that he was satisfied with Faraday’s
explanation, and added that he would tell his friends that “my
objections to you as a Fellow are and ought to be withdrawn, and that I
now wish to forward your election.”
Bence Jones adds:--
On June 29, Sir H. Davy ends a note, “I am, dear Faraday, very
sincerely your well wisher and friend.” So that outwardly the
storm rapidly passed away; and when the ballot was taken, after
the certificate had been read at ten meetings, there was only
one black ball.
[Sidenote: FELLOWSHIP AND MAGNANIMITY.]
The election took place January 8, 1824.
Of this unfortunate misunderstanding,[11] Davy’s biographer, Dr.
Thorpe, writes:--
The jealousy thus manifested by Davy is one of the most pitiful
facts in his history. It was a sign of that moral weakness
which was at the bottom of much of his unpopularity, and which
revealed itself in various ways as his physical strength
decayed....
Faraday allowed himself in after days no shade of resentment against
Davy; though he confessed rather sadly that after his election as
F.R.S. his relations with his former master were never the same as
before. If anyone recurred to the old scandal, he would fire with
indignation. Dumas in his “Éloge Historique” has given the following
anecdote:--
Faraday never forgot what he owed to Davy. Visiting him at the
family lunch, twenty years after the death of the latter, he
noticed evidently that I responded with some coolness to the
praises which the recollection of Davy’s great discoveries had
evoked from him. He made no comment. But, after the meal, he
simply took me down to the library of the Royal Institution,
and stopping before the portrait of Davy he said: “He was a
great man, wasn’t he?” Then, turning round, he added, “It was
here[12] that he spoke to me for the first time.” I bowed. We
went down to the laboratory. Faraday took out a note-book,
opened it and pointed out with his finger the words written
by Davy, at the very moment when by means of the battery he
had just decomposed potash, and had seen the first globule of
potassium ever isolated by the hand of man. Davy had traced
with a feverish hand a circle which separates them from the
rest of the page: the words, “Capital Experiment,” which
he wrote below, cannot be read without emotion by any true
chemist. I confessed myself conquered, and this time, without
hesitating longer, I joined in the admiration of my good friend.
Dr. Thorpe in his life of Davy adds:--
... To the end of his days he [Faraday] regarded Davy as his
true master, preserving to the last, in spite of his knowledge
of the moral frailties of Davy’s nature, the respect and even
reverence which is to be seen in his early lecture notes and in
his letters to his friend Abbott.
In 1823 the Athenæum Club was started by J. Wilson Croker, Sir H. Davy,
Sir T. Lawrence, Sir F. Chantrey, and others, as a resort for literary
and scientific men. Faraday was made Club Secretary; but he found the
duties totally uncongenial, and in 1824 resigned the post to his friend
Magrath.
Faraday was advanced in 1825 to the position of Director of the
Laboratory of the Royal Institution, Brande remaining Professor of
Chemistry. One of the first acts of the new Director was to hold
evening meetings of the members in the laboratory, when experiments
were shown and some demonstration was given. There were three or four
of these informal gatherings that year. In the next year these Friday
evening meetings were held more systematically. There were seventeen
during the season, at six of which Faraday gave discourses (see p.
100). In 1827 there were nineteen, of which he delivered three. By this
time the gatherings were held in the theatre as at present, save that
ladies were only admitted at that date, and for many years, to the
upper gallery. He also originated the Christmas lectures to juveniles,
while continuing to give regular courses of morning lectures, as his
predecessors Young and Davy had done. His activity for the Royal
Institution was incessant.
[Sidenote: FEES FOR PROFESSIONAL WORK.]
Down to the year 1830 Faraday continued to undertake, at professional
fees, chemical analyses and expert work in the law-courts, and thereby
added considerably to the very slender emolument of his position;
but, finding this work to make increasing demands on his time, which
he could ill spare from the absorbing pursuit of original researches,
he decided to abandon a practice which would have made him rich, and
withdrew from expert practice. The following letter to Phillips was
written only a few weeks before this determination:--
[_M. Faraday to Richard Phillips._]
Royal Institution,
June 21, 1831.
MY DEAR PHILLIPS,--I have been trying hard to get time enough
to write to you by post to-night, but without success; the
bell has rung, and I am too late. However, I am resolved to
be ready to-morrow. We have been very anxious and rather
embarrassed in our minds about your anxiety to know how things
were proceeding, and uncertain whether reference to them
would be pleasant, and that has been the cause why I have
not written to you, for I did not know what character your
connexion with Badams had. I was a little the more embarrassed
because of my acquaintance with Mr. Rickard and his family,
and, of course with his brother-in-law, Dr. Urchell, of whom I
have made numerous enquiries to know what Mr. Rickard intended
doing at Birmingham. He (expressed a) hope it would be nothing
unpleasant to you, but was not sure. Our only bit of comfort in
the matter was on hearing from Daniell about you a little; he
was here to-day, and glad to hear of you through me. But now
that I may write, let me say that Mrs. Faraday has been very
anxious with myself, and begs me earnestly to remember her to
Mrs. Phillips. We have often wished we could have had you here
for an hour or two, to break off what we supposed might be the
train of thoughts at home.
With regard to the five guineas, do not think of it for a
moment. Whilst I supposed a mercantile concern wanted my
opinion for its own interested uses, I saw no reason why it
should not pay me; but it is altogether another matter when it
becomes _your affair_. I do not think you would have wished
_me_ to pay _you_ five guineas for anything you might have done
personally for me. “Dog don’t eat dog,” as Sir E. Home said to
me in a similar case. The affair is settled.
I have no doubt I shall be amused and, as you speak of new
facts, instructed by your letter to Dr. Reid, as I am by all
your letters. Daniell says he thinks you are breaking a fly
upon the wheel. You know I consider you as the Prince of
Chemical critics.
Pearsall has been working, as you know, on red manganese
solutions. He has not proved, but he makes out a strong
case for the opinion, that they owe their colour and other
properties to manganesic acid. This paper will be in the next
number of the Journal.
With regard to the gramme, wine-pint, etc., etc., in the
manipulation I had great trouble about them, for I could find
no agreement, and at last resolved to take certain conclusions
from Capt. Kater’s paper and the Act of Parliament, and
calculate the rest. I think I took the data at page 67,
paragraph 119, as the data, but am not sure, and cannot go over
them again.
My memory gets worse and worse daily. I will not, therefore,
say I have not received your Pharmacopœia--that of 1824 is what
I have at hand and use. I am not aware of any other. I have
sent a paper to the R. S., but not chemical. It is on sound,
etc., etc. If they print it, of course you will have a copy in
due time.
I am, my dear Phillips,
Most faithfully and sincerely yours,
M. FARADAY.
Is it right to ask what has become of Badams? I suppose he is,
of course, a defaulter at the R. S.
[Sidenote: SACRIFICES FOR SCIENCE.]
This sacrifice for science was not small. He had made £1,000 in 1830
out of these professional occupations, and in 1831 would have made
more but for his own decision. In 1832 some Excise work that he had
retained brought him in £155 9s.; but in no subsequent year did it
bring in so much. He might easily have made £5,000 a year had he
chosen to cultivate the professional connection thus formed; and as he
continued, with little intermission, in activity till 1860, he might
have died a wealthy man. But he chose otherwise; and his first reward
came in the autumn of 1831, in the great discovery of magneto-electric
currents--the principle upon which all our modern dynamos and
transformers are based, the foundation of all the electric lighting and
electric transmission of power. From this work he went on to a research
on the identity of all the kinds of electricity, until then supposed
to be of separate sorts, and from this to electro-chemical work of the
very highest value. Of all these investigations some account will be
found in the chapters which follow.
But the immense body of patient scientific work thus done for the love
of science was not accomplished without sacrifices of a more than
pecuniary kind. He withdrew more and more from society, declined to
dine in company, ceased to give dinners, withdrew from all social and
philanthropic organisations; even withdrew from taking any part in the
management of any of the learned societies. The British Association for
the Advancement of Science was started in 1831. Faraday took no part
in that movement, and did not attend the inaugural meeting at York.
The next year, however, he attended the second meeting of that body at
Oxford. Here he “had the pleasure”--it is his own phrase--of making
an experiment on the great magnet in the University museum, drawing a
spark by induction in a coil of wire. This was a coil 220 feet long,
wound on a hollow cylinder of pasteboard, which had been used in the
classical experiments of the preceding year. He also showed that the
induced currents could heat a thin wire connected to the terminals
of this coil. These experiments, which were made in conjunction with
Mr. (afterwards Sir William Snow) Harris, Professor Daniell, and
Mr. Duncan, seem to have excited great attention at the time. The
theologians of Oxford appear to have been mightily distressed both by
the success of the spark experiment and by the welcome shown by the
University to the representatives of science. The following passage
from Pusey’s life[13] reveals the rampant clericalism which then and
for a score of years sought to put back the clock of civilisation.
During the Long Vacation of 1832 Pusey had plenty of work on
hand. The British Association had held its first meeting in
Oxford during the month of June, and on the 21st the honorary
degree of D.C.L. was bestowed on four of its distinguished
members: Brewster, Faraday, Brown, and Dalton. Keble, who was
now Professor of Poetry, was angry at the “temper and tone of
the Oxford doctors”; they had “truckled sadly to the spirit of
the times” in receiving “the hodge-podge of philosophers” as
they did. Dr. L. Carpenter had assured Dr. Macbride that “the
University had prolonged her existence for a hundred years by
the kind reception he and his fellows had received.”
[Sidenote: THE HODGE-PODGE OF PHILOSOPHERS.]
It is not without significance, perhaps, that all the four men thus
contemptuously labelled by Keble as the “hodge-podge of philosophers”
were Dissenters. Brewster and Brown (the great botanist and discoverer
of the “Brownian” motion of particles) belonged to the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland, Dalton was a Member of the Society of Friends, and
Faraday a Sandemanian. Newman appears to have been equally discomposed
by the circumstance, for he got his friend Mr. Rose to write an
article--a long and weary diatribe--against the British Association,
which he inserted in the _British Critic_ for 1839. Its slanders,
assumptions, suppressions, and suggestions are in a very unworthy
temper.
Faraday’s devotion to the Royal Institution and its operations was
marvellous. He had already abandoned outside professional work. From
1838 he refused to see any callers except three times a week. His
extreme desire was to give himself uninterruptedly to research. His
friend A. de la Rive says:--
Every morning Faraday went into his laboratory as the man of
business goes to his office, and then tried by experiment the
truth of the ideas which he had conceived overnight, as ready
to give them up if experiment said _no_ as to follow out the
consequences with rigorous logic if experiment answered _yes_.
He had in 1827 declined the appointment of Professor of Chemistry in
the University (afterwards called University College) of London, giving
as his reason the interests of the Royal Institution. He wrote:--
I think it a matter of duty and gratitude on my part to do
what I can for the good of the Royal Institution in the
present attempt to establish it firmly. The Institution has
been a source of knowledge and pleasure to me for the last
fourteen years; and though it does not pay me in salary what
I _now_ strive to do for it, yet I possess the kind feelings
and goodwill of its authorities and members, and all the
privileges it can grant or I require; and, moreover, I remember
the protection it has afforded me during the past years of
my scientific life. These circumstances, with the thorough
conviction that it is a useful and valuable establishment, and
the strong hopes that exertions will be followed with success,
have decided me in giving at least two years more to it, in the
belief that after that time it will proceed well, into whatever
hands it may pass.
In 1829, however, he was asked to become lecturer on chemistry at the
Royal Academy at Woolwich. As this involved only twenty lectures a year
he agreed, the salary being fixed at £200 a year. These lectures were
continued until 1849.
[Sidenote: TRINITY HOUSE APPOINTMENT.]
In 1836 the whole course of his scientific work was changed by his
appointment as scientific adviser to Trinity House, the body which has
official charge of the lighthouse service in Great Britain. To the
Deputy-master he wrote:--
I consider your letter to me as a great compliment, and should
view the appointment at the Trinity House, which you propose,
in the same light; but I may not accept even honours without
due consideration.
In the first place, my time is of great value to me; and if
the appointment you speak of involved anything like periodical
routine attendances, I do not think I could accept it. But
if it meant that in consultation, in the examination of
proposed plans and experiments, in trials, etc., made as
my convenience would allow, and with an honest sense of a
duty to be performed, then I think it would consist with my
present engagements. You have left the title and the sum in
pencil. These I look at mainly as regards the character of the
appointment; you will believe me to be sincere in this when you
remember my indifference to your proposition as a matter of
interest, though _not as a matter of kindness_.
In consequence of the goodwill and confidence of all around me,
I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not
require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary
purposes. The sum, therefore, of £200 is quite enough in
itself, but not if it is to be the indicator of the character
of the appointment; but I think you do not view it so, and
that you and I understand each other in that respect; and
your letter confirms me in that opinion. The position which I
presume you would wish me to hold is analogous to that of a
standing counsel.
As to the title, it might be what you pleased almost. Chemical
adviser is too narrow, for you would find me venturing into
parts of the philosophy of light not chemical. Scientific
adviser you may think too broad (or in me too presumptuous);
and so it would be, if by it was understood all science.
He held the post of scientific adviser for nearly thirty years. The
records of his work are to be found in nineteen large portfolios full
of manuscripts, all indexed with that minute and scrupulous attention
to order and method which characterised all his work.
He also held nominally the post of scientific adviser to the Admiralty,
at a salary of £200 a year. But this salary he never drew. Once the
officials of the Admiralty requested his opinion upon a printed
advertising pamphlet of somebody’s patent disinfecting powder and
anti-miasma lamp. Faraday returned it, with a quietly indignant protest
that it was not such a document as he could be expected to give an
opinion upon.
Faraday’s hope, expressed in 1827, that in two years the Royal
Institution might be restored to a financially sound position, was
not realised. He worked with the most scrupulous economy, noting down
every detail of expenditure even in farthings. “We were living on
the parings of our own skin,” he once told the managers. In 1832 the
financial question became acute. At the end of that year a committee of
investigation reported as follows:--
The Committee are certainly of opinion that no reduction can be
made in Mr. Faraday’s salary--£100 per annum, house, coals, and
candles; and beg to express their regret that the circumstances
of the Institution are not such as to justify their proposing
such an increase of it as the variety of duties which Mr.
Faraday has to perform, and the zeal and ability with which he
performs them, appear to merit.
[Sidenote: A HUNDRED A YEAR, AND TWO ROOMS.]
A hundred a year, the use of two rooms, and coals! Such was the stipend
of the man who had just before been made D.C.L. of Oxford, and had
received from the Royal Society the highest award it can bestow--the
Copley Medal! True, he made £200 by the Woolwich lectures; but he had a
wife to maintain, his aged mother was entirely dependent upon him, and
there were many calls upon his private exercise of charity.
About the year 1835 it was the intention of Sir Robert Peel to
confer upon him a pension from the Civil List, but he went out of
office before this could be arranged, and Lord Melbourne became
Prime Minister. Sir James South had in March written to Lord Ashley,
afterwards the well-known Earl of Shaftesbury, asking him to place a
little historiette of Faraday in Sir Robert Peel’s hands. The said
historiette[14] contained an account of Faraday’s early career and
a description of the electrical machine which he had constructed as
a lad. “Now that his pecuniary circumstances,” it went on, “were
improved, he sent his younger sister to boarding-school, but to enable
him to defray the expense, to deprive himself of dinner every other day
was absolutely indispensable.” Peel expressed to Ashley lively regret
at not having received the historiette earlier when he was still in
office. To Ashley, later, he wrote the following hitherto unpublished
letter:--
Drayton Manor,
May 3, 1835.
MY DEAR ASHLEY,--You do me but justice in entertaining the
belief that had I remained in office one of my earliest
recommendations to his Majesty would have been to grant a
pension to Mr. Faraday, on the same principles precisely upon
which one was granted to Mr. Airy. If there had been the means,
I would have made the offer before I left office.
I was quite aware of Mr. Faraday’s high eminence as a man of
science, and the valuable practical service he has rendered
to the public in that capacity; but I was to blame in not
having ascertained whether his pecuniary circumstances made an
addition to his income an object to him.
I am sure no man living has a better claim to such a
consideration from the State than he has, and I trust the
principle I acted on with regard to the award of civil
pensions will not only remove away impediments of delicacy
and independent feeling from the acceptance of them, but will
add a higher value to the grant of a pension as an honourable
distinction than any that it could derive from its pecuniary
amount.
Ever, my dear Ashley,
Most faithfully yours,
ROBERT PEEL.
[Sidenote: LORD MELBOURNE’S PARTICIPLE.]
Sir James South still endeavoured to bring about the grant thus
deferred, and wrote to the Hon. Caroline Fox, asking her to put the
historiette of Faraday in the hands of Lord Holland, for him to lay
before Melbourne. Faraday at first demurred to Sir James South’s
action, but on the advice of his father-in-law, Barnard, withdrew his
demurrer. Later in the year he was asked to wait on Lord Melbourne at
the Treasury. He has left a diary of the events of the day, October
26th. According to these notes it appears that Faraday first had
a long talk with Melbourne’s secretary, Mr. Young, about his first
demurring on religious grounds to accept the pension, about his
objection to savings’ banks, and the laying-up of wealth. Later in
the day he had a short interview with the First Lord of the Treasury,
when Lord Melbourne, utterly mistaking the nature of the man before
him, inveighed roundly upon the whole system of giving pensions to
scientific and literary persons, which he described as a piece of
humbug. He prefixed the word “humbug” with a participle which Faraday’s
notes describe as “theological.” Faraday, with an instant flash of
indignation, bowed and withdrew. The same evening he left his card and
the following note at the Treasury:--
_To the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Melbourne, First Lord of the
Treasury._
October 26.
MY LORD,--The conversation with which your Lordship honoured
me this afternoon, including, as it did, your Lordship’s
opinion of the general character of the pensions given of late
to scientific persons, induces me respectfully to decline the
favour which I believe your Lordship intends for me; for I
feel that I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at
your Lordship’s hands that which, though it has the form of
approbation, is of the character which your Lordship so pithily
applied to it.
Faraday’s diary says:--
Did not like it much, and, on the whole, regret that friends
should have placed me in the situation in which I found myself.
Lord Melbourne said that “he thought there had been a great
deal of humbug in the whole affair. He did not mean my affair,
of course, but that of the pensions altogether.”... I begged
him to understand that I had known nothing of the matter until
far advanced, and, though grateful to those friends who had
urged it forward, wished him to feel at perfect liberty in the
affair as far as I was concerned.... In the evening I wrote and
left a letter. I left it myself at ten o’clock at night, being
anxious that Lord Melbourne should have it before anything
further was done in the affair.
[Sidenote: MICHAEL’S PENSION.]
However, the matter did not end here. Faraday’s friends were indignant.
A caustic, and probably exaggerated, account--for which Faraday
disclaimed all responsibility--of the interview appeared in _Fraser’s
Magazine_, and was copied into _The Times_ of November 28th, with the
result that, had it not been for the personal intervention of the King,
the pension might have been refused. The storm, however, passed away,
and the pension of £300 per annum was granted on December 24th. Years
afterwards, writing to Mr. B. Bell, Faraday said, “Lord Melbourne
behaved very handsomely in the matter.”
In _Fraser’s Magazine_ for February, 1836 (vol. xiii., p. 224), is
a portrait of Faraday by Maclise, accompanied by a very amusing
biographical notice by Dr. Maginn. The picture represents Faraday
lecturing, and surrounded by his apparatus. The article begins thus:--
Here you have him in his glory--not that his position was
_inglorious_ when he stood before Melbourne, then decorated
with a blue velvet travelling cap, and lounging with one
leg over the chair of Canning!--and distinctly gave that
illustrious despiser of “humbug” to understand that he had
mistaken his lad. No! but here you have him as he first
flashed upon the intelligence of mankind the condensation of
the gases, or the identity of the five electricities.
After a lively summary of his career, and the jocular suggestion that,
as the successor of Sir Humphry Davy, Far-a-day must be near-a-knight
the article continues:--
The future Baronet is a very good little fellow ... playing a
fair fork over a leg of mutton, and devoid of any reluctance
to partake an old friend’s third bottle. We know of few things
more agreeable than a cigar and a bowl of punch (which he mixes
admirably) in the society of the unpretending ex-bookbinder....
Well, although Young got Broderip to write a sort of defence of
his master, and “Justice B----”--_mirabile dictu!_--got Hook
to print it in the _John Bull_, the current of public feeling
could not be stopped: REGINA spoke out--WILLIAM REX, as in duty
bound, followed--Melbourne apologised--and “Michael’s pension,
Michael’s pension” is all right.
In one of his note-books of this period is found the following entry:--
15 January, 1834.
Within the last week have observed twice that a slight
obscurity of the sight of my left eye has happened. It occurred
on reading the letters of a book held about fourteen inches
from the eye, being obscured as by a fog over a space about
half an inch in diameter. This space was a little to the right
and below the axes of the eye. Looking for the effect now and
other times, I cannot perceive it. I note this down that I may
hereafter trace the progress of the effect if it increases or
becomes more common.
Happily, the trouble did not recur; but the entry is characteristic
of the habits of accuracy of the man. Loss of memory, unfortunately,
early set in. There is actually a hint of this in the first of
his letters to Abbott (p. 7), and references to the trouble and to
dizziness in the head recur perpetually in his correspondence. Whenever
these brain-troubles threatened, he was compelled to drop all work
and seek rest and change of scene. He often ran down to Brighton,
which he thought, however, a poor place. He constructed for himself a
velocipede[15] on which to take exercise. Two or three times he went to
Switzerland for a longer holiday, usually accompanied by his wife and
her brother, George Barnard.
“Physically,” says Tyndall, “Faraday was below the middle size, well
set, active, and with extraordinary animation of countenance. His head
from forehead to back was so long that he had usually to bespeak his
hats.” In youth his hair was brown, curling naturally; later in life it
approached to white, and he always parted it down the middle. His voice
was pleasant, his laugh was hearty, his manners when with young people,
or when excited by success in the laboratory, were gay to boyishness.
Indeed, until the end of the active period of his life he never lost
the capacity for boyish delight, or for unbending in fun after the
stress of severe labour.
CHAPTER III.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES: FIRST PERIOD.
From first to last the original scientific researches of Faraday extend
over a period of forty-four years, beginning with an analysis of
caustic lime, published in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_ in 1816,
and ending with his last unfinished researches of 1860 to 1862, on
the possible existence of new relations between magnetism and gravity
and between magnetism and light. The mere list of their titles fills
several pages in the catalogue of scientific papers published by the
Royal Society.
For convenience of description, these forty-four years may be divided
into three periods: the first lasting from 1816 to 1830, a period of
miscellaneous and in some respects preliminary activity; the second
from 1831 to the end of 1839, the period of the classical experimental
researches in electricity down to the time when they were temporarily
suspended by the serious state of his health; the third from 1844, when
he was able to resume work, down to 1860, a period which includes the
completion of the experimental researches on electricity, the discovery
of the relations between light and magnetism, and that of diamagnetism.
[Sidenote: RESEARCHES BEGINNING.]
Faraday’s first research was an analysis for Sir Humphry Davy of a
specimen of caustic lime which had been sent to him by the Duchess
of Montrose from Tuscany. The _Quarterly Journal of Science_, in
which it appeared, was a precursor of the _Proceedings of the Royal
Institution_, and was indeed edited by Professor W. F. Brande. Faraday
frequently wrote for it during these years, and took editorial
charge of it on more than one occasion during Brande’s holidays. The
paper on caustic lime was reprinted by Faraday in the volume of his
“Experimental Researches on Chemistry and Physics,” prefaced by the
following note:--
I reprint this paper at full length; it was the beginning
of my communications to the public, and in its results very
important to me. Sir Humphry Davy gave me the analysis to
make as a first attempt in chemistry, at a time when my fear
was greater than my confidence, and both far greater than
my knowledge; at a time also when I had no thought of ever
writing an original paper on science. The addition of his own
comments, and the publication of the paper, encouraged me to
go on making, from time to time, other slight communications,
some of which appear in this volume. Their transference from
the _Quarterly_ into other journals increased my boldness,
and now that forty years have elapsed, and I can look back on
what successive communications have led to, I still hope, much
as their character has changed, that I have not either now or
forty years ago been too bold.
For the next two or three years Faraday was very closely occupied in
the duties of assisting Sir Humphry Davy in his researches, and in
helping to prepare the lectures for both Davy and Brande. Yet he
found time still to work on his own account. In 1817 he had six papers
and notes in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, including one on the
escape of gases through capillary tubes, and others on wire-gauze
safety lamps and Davy’s experiments on flame. In 1818 he had eleven
papers in the _Journal_; the most important being on the production of
sound in tubes by flames, while another was on the combustion of the
diamond. In 1819 he had nineteen papers in the _Quarterly Journal_,
chiefly of a chemical nature. These related to boracic acid, the
composition of steels, the separation of manganese from iron, and on
the supposed new metal, “Sirium” or “Vestium,” which he showed to be
only a mixture of iron and sulphur with nickel, cobalt, and other
metals.
[Sidenote: OERSTED’S DISCOVERY.]
The year 1820 was marked in the annals of science by the discovery,
by Oersted of Copenhagen, of the prime fact of electromagnetism, the
deflexion which is produced upon a magnetic needle by an electric
current that passes either under or over the needle. Often had it been
suspected that there must be some connection between the phenomena
of electricity and those of magnetism. The similarities between the
attractions and repulsions caused by electrified bodies, and those
due to the magnet when acting on iron, had constantly suggested the
possibility that there was some real connection. But, as had been
pointed out centuries before by St. Augustine, while the rubbed
amber will attract any substance if only small or light enough,
being indifferent to its material, the magnet will only attract iron
or compounds of iron, and is totally inoperative[16] on all other
substances. Again, while it had been noticed that in houses which had
been struck by lightning knives, needles, and other steel objects near
the path of the electric flash had become magnetised, no one had been
able, by using the most powerful electric machines, to repeat with
certainty the magnetisation of needles. In vain they had tried to
magnetise knives and wires by sending sparks through them. Sometimes
they showed a trace of magnetism, sometimes none. And in the cases
where some slight magnetisation resulted, the polarity could not be
depended upon. Van Swinden had written a whole treatise in two volumes
on the analogies between electricity and magnetism, but left the real
relation between the two more obscure than ever. After the invention,
in 1800, of the voltaic pile, which for the first time provided a
means of generating a steady flow or current of electricity, several
experimenters, including Oersted himself, had again essayed to discover
the long-suspected connection, but without success. Oersted was
notoriously a poor experimenter, though a man of great philosophical
genius. Having in 1820 a more powerful voltaic battery in operation
than previously, he repeated[17] the operation of bringing near to the
compass needle the copper wire that conveyed the current; and, laying
it parallel to the needle’s direction, and over or under it, found that
the needle tended to turn into a direction at right angles to the line
of the current, the sense of the deviation depending upon the direction
of flow of the current, and also on the position of the wire as to
whether it were above or below the needle. A current flowing from south
to north over the needle caused the north-pointing end of the needle to
be deflected westwards. If the wire were vertical, so that the current
flowed downwards, and a compass needle was brought near the wire on the
south side, therefore tending under the earth’s directive influence to
point northwards toward the wire, it was observed that the effect of
the current flowing in the wire was to cause the north-pointing end of
the needle to turn westwards. Or, reversing the flow of current, the
effect on the needle was reversed; it now tended eastwards. All these
things Oersted summed up in the phrase that “the electric conflict acts
in a revolving manner” around the wire.[18] In modern phraseology the
whole of the actions are explained if one can conceive that the effect
of the electric flow in the wire is to tend to make the north pole of
a magnet revolve in one sense around the wire, whilst it also tends
to make the south pole of the magnet revolve around the wire in the
other sense. The nett result in most cases is that the magnetic needle
tends to set itself square across the line of the current. Oersted
himself was not too clear in his explanations, and seems, in his later
papers, to have lost sight of the circular motion amidst repulsions and
attractions.
This discovery, which showed what was the geometrical relation between
the magnet and the current, also showed why the earlier attempts had
failed. It was requisite that the electricity should be in a state
of steady flow; neither at rest as in the experiments with electric
charges, nor yet in capricious or oscillatory rush as in those with
spark-discharges. Faraday, adverting a quarter of a century later to
Oersted’s discovery, said: “It burst open the gates of a domain in
science, dark till then, and filled it with a flood of light.”
The very day that Oersted’s memoir was published in England, Davy
brought a copy down into the laboratory of the Royal Institution, and
he and Faraday at once set to work to repeat the experiments and verify
the facts.
It is a matter of history how, on the publication of Oersted’s
discovery, Ampère leaped forward to generalise on electromagnetic
actions, and discovered the mutual actions that may exist between two
currents, or rather between two conducting wires that carry currents.
They are found to experience mutual mechanical forces urging them into
parallel proximity. Biot and Laplace added to these investigations,
as also did Arago. Davy discovered that the naked copper wire, while
carrying a current, could attract iron filings to itself--not end-ways
in adherent tufts, as the pole of a magnet does, but laterally, each
filing or chainlet of filings tending to set itself tangentially at
right angles to the axis of the wire.
[Sidenote: A PARADOXICAL PHENOMENON.]
This curious right-angled relation between electric flow and magnetic
force came as a complete paradox or puzzle to the scientific world.
It had taken centuries to throw off the strange unmechanical ideas of
force which had dominated the older astronomy. The epicyclic motions
of the planets postulated by the Ptolemaic system were in no way to be
accounted for upon mechanical principles. Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion were merely empirical, embodying the results of observation,
until Newton’s discovery of the laws of circular motion and of the
principle of universal gravitation placed the planetary theory on
a rational basis. Newton’s laws required that forces should act in
straight lines, and that to every action there should be an equal and
opposite reaction. If A attracted B, then B attracted A with an equal
force, and the mutual force must be in the line drawn from A to B. The
discovery by Oersted that the magnet pole was urged by the electric
wire in a direction _transverse_ to the line joining them, appeared at
first sight to contravene the ideas of force so thoroughly established
by Newton. How could this transversality be explained? Some sought to
explain the effect by considering the conducting wire to operate as if
made up of a number of short magnets set transversely across the wire,
all their north poles being set towards the right, and all their south
poles towards the left. Ampère took the alternative view that the
magnet might be regarded as equivalent to a number of electric currents
circulating transversely around the core as an axis. In neither case
was the explanation complete.
[Sidenote: TWO YEARS WASTED.]
Faraday’s scientific activities in the year 1820 were very marked. New
researches on steel had been going on for some months. It had been
hoped that by alloying iron with some other metals, such as silver,
platinum, or nickel, a non-rusting alloy might be found. This idea
took its rise from the erroneous notion that meteoric iron, which
is richly alloyed with nickel, does not rust. Faraday found nickel
steel to be more readily oxidised, not less, than ordinary steel. The
platinum steel was also a failure. Silver steel was of more interest,
though it was found impossible to incorporate in the alloy more than
a small percentage of silver. Nevertheless, silver steel was used
for some time by a Sheffield firm for manufacture of fenders. The
alloys of iron with platinum, iridium, and rhodium were also of no
great use. But the research demonstrated the surprising effects which
minute quantities of other metals may have upon the quality of steel.
Occasionally in later life Faraday would present one of his friends
with a razor made from his own special steel. A paper on the use of
alloys of steel in surgical instrument making was published in the
_Quarterly Journal_ in collaboration with Mr. Stodart. Faraday also
read his first paper before the Royal Society on two new compounds
of chlorine and carbon, and on a new compound of iodine, carbon,
and hydrogen. He also succeeded in making artificial plumbago from
charcoal. In writing to his friend Professor G. de la Rive, he gives
a long and chatty abstract of his researches on the alloys of steel.
They appear to have originated in some analyses of wootz or Indian
steel, a material which, when etched with acid, shows a beautifully
damascened or reticulated surface. This effect Faraday never found with
pure steel, but imitated it successfully with a steel alloyed with “the
metal of alumine,” an element which down to that time had not been
isolated. He then describes the rhodium, silver, and nickel steels, and
mentions incidentally how he has been surprised to discover that he
can volatilise silver, and that he cannot reduce the metal titanium.
He is doubtful whether this metal “ever has been reduced at all in the
pure state.” [It can now be readily reduced either in the electric arc
or by the use of metallic aluminium.] He winds up the letter with the
words: “Pray pity us that, after two years’ experiments, we have got no
further; but I am sure, if you knew the labour of the experiments, you
would applaud us for our perseverance at least.”
In 1821, the year of his marriage, came the first of the important
scientific discoveries which brought him international fame. This
was the discovery of the electromagnetic rotations. It appears that
Oersted’s brilliant flash of insight that the “electric conflict acts
in a revolving manner” upon the pole of the neighbouring compass needle
had been lost sight of in the discussions which followed, and to
which allusion has been made above. All the world was thinking about
attractions and repulsions. Two men, however, seem to have gone a
little further in their ideas. Dr. Wollaston had suggested that there
ought to be a tendency, when a magnet pole was presented towards a
straight conducting wire carrying a current, for that conducting wire
to revolve around its own axis. This effect--though in recent years
it has been observed by Mr. George Gore--he unsuccessfully tried to
observe by experiments. He came in April, 1821, to the laboratory
of the Royal Institution to make an experiment, but without result.
Faraday, at the request of his friend Phillips, who was editor of the
_Annals of Philosophy_, wrote for that magazine in July, August, and
September a historical sketch of electromagnetism down to date. This
was one of the very few of Faraday’s writings that was anonymous. It
was simply signed “M.” This is in vol. iii. p. 107. On p. 117 the
editor says: “To the historical sketch of electromagnetism with which I
have been favoured by my anonymous correspondent, I shall add a sketch
of the discoveries that have been made by Mr. Faraday of the Royal
Institution.” In the course of this work Faraday repeated for his own
satisfaction almost all the experiments that he described. This led him
to discover that a wire, included in the circuit, but mounted so as to
hang with its lower end in a pool of quicksilver, could rotate around
the pole of a magnet; and conversely that if the wire were fixed and
the pole of the magnet free to move, the latter would rotate around the
former. “I did not realise,” he wrote, “Dr. Wollaston’s expectation
of the rotation of the electromagnetic wire around its axis.” As was
so often his custom, he had no sooner finished the research for
publication than he dashed off a brief summary of it in a letter to one
of his friends. On this occasion it was Professor G. de la Rive, of
Geneva, who was the recipient of his confidences. On September 12 he
wrote:--
[Sidenote: LETTER TO DE LA RIVE.]
I am much flattered and encouraged to go on by your good
opinion of what little things I have been able to do in
science, and especially as regards the chlorides of carbon.
* * * * *
You partly reproach us here with not sufficiently esteeming
Ampère’s experiments on electromagnetism. Allow me to extenuate
your opinion a little on this point. With regard to the
experiments, I hope and trust that due weight is allowed to
them; but these you know are few, and theory makes up the great
part of what M. Ampère has published, and theory in a great
many points unsupported by experiments when they ought to have
been adduced. At the same time, M. Ampère’s experiments are
excellent, and his theory ingenious; and, for myself, I had
thought very little about it before your letter came, simply
because, being naturally sceptical on philosophical theories, I
thought there was a great want of experimental evidence. Since
then, however, I have engaged on the subject, and have a paper
in our “Institution Journal,” which will appear in a week or
two, and that will, as it contains experiment, be immediately
applied by M. Ampère in support of his theory, much more
decidedly than it is by myself. I intend to enclose a copy of
it to you with the other, and only want the means of sending it.
I find all the usual attractions and repulsions of the magnetic
needle by the conjunctive wire are deceptions, the motions
being not attractions or repulsions, nor the result of any
attractive or repulsive forces, but the result of a force in
the wire, which instead of bringing the pole of the needle
nearer to, or further from the wire, endeavours to make it
move round it in a never ending circle and motion whilst the
battery remains in action. I have succeeded not only in showing
the existence of this motion theoretically, but experimentally,
and have been able to make the wire revolve round a magnetic
pole, or a magnetic pole round the wire, at pleasure. The law
of revolution, and to which all the other motions of the needle
and wire are reducible, is simple and beautiful.
Conceive a portion of connecting wire north and south, the
north end being attached to the positive pole of a battery, the
south to the negative. A north magnetic pole would then pass
round it continually in the apparent direction of the sun, from
east to west above, from west to east below.
Reverse the connections with the battery, and the motion of the
pole is reversed; or if the south pole be made to revolve, the
motions will be in the opposite directions, as with the north
pole.
If the wire be made to revolve round the pole, the motions are
according to those mentioned. In the apparatus I used there
were but two plates, and the directions of the motions were of
course[19] the reverse of those with a battery of several pairs
of plates, and which are given above. Now I have been able,
experimentally, to trace this motion into its various forms as
exhibited by Ampère’s, Nelice’s, &c., and in all cases to show
that the attractions and repulsions are only appearances due
to this circulation of the pole, to show that dissimilar poles
repel as well as attract, and that similar poles attract as
well as repel, and to make, I think, the analogy between the
helix and common bar magnet far stronger than before. But yet I
am by no means decided that there are currents of electricity
in the common magnet.
I have no doubt that electricity puts the circles of the
helix into the same state as those circles are in, that may
be conceived in the bar magnet, but I am not certain that
this state is directly dependant on the electricity, or that
it cannot be produced by other agencies; and therefore, until
the presence of electrical currents be proved in the magnet by
other than magnetical effects, I shall remain in doubt about
Ampère’s theory.
* * * * *
Wishing you all health and happiness, and waiting for news from
you,
I am, my dear Sir, your very obliged and grateful
M. FARADAY.
The reference at the beginning of this letter to the chlorides of
carbon has to do with his discovery communicated to the Royal Society.
Later in the year, a joint paper on another compound of carbon and
chlorine, by himself and his friend Richard Phillips, was sent in. Both
were printed together in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of 1821.
[Sidenote: LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK.]
The following is an extract from Faraday’s laboratory book relating to
the discovery. The account is incomplete, a leaf having been torn out:--
1821, Sept. 3.
The effort of the wire is always to pass off at a right angle
from the pole, indeed to go in a circle round it, so when
either pole was brought up to the wire perpendicular to it and
to the radius of the circle it described, there was neither
attraction nor repulsion, but the moment the pole varied in the
slightest manner either in or out, the wire moved one way or
the other.
The poles of the magnet act on the bent wire in all positions
and not in the direction _only_ of any axis of the magnet, so
that the current can hardly be cylindrical or arranged round
the axis of a cylinder?
From the motion above a north magnet pole in the centre of one
of the circles should make the wire continually turn round.
Arranged a magnet needle in a glass tube with mercury about it,
and by a cork, water, &c., supported a connecting wire so that
the upper end should go into the silver cup and its mercury,
and the lower move in a channel of mercury round the pole of
the needle. The battery arranged with the wire as before. In
this way got the revolution of the wire round the pole of the
magnet. The direction was as follow, looking from above down:--
[Illustration: FIG. 2. (FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL SKETCH.)]
Very satisfactory, but make more sensible apparatus.
Tuesday, Sept. 4.
Apparatus for revolution of wire and magnet. A deep basin with
bit of wax at bottom and then filled with mercury. A magnet
stuck upright in wax so that pole just above the surface of
mercury. Then piece of wire floated by cork at lower end
dipping into merc^y and above into silver cup as before:--
[Illustration: FIG. 3. (FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL SKETCH.)]
The research on the electromagnetic rotations, which was published in
the _Quarterly Journal of Science_ for October, 1821 (and reprinted in
the second volume of the “Experimental Researches in Electricity”), was
the occasion of a very serious misunderstanding with Dr. Wollaston and
his friends, which at one time threatened to cause Faraday’s exclusion
from the Royal Society. Faraday’s prompt and frank action in appealing
to Dr. Wollaston saved him in a very unpleasant crisis; and the latter
came three or four times to the laboratory to witness the experiments.
On Christmas Day of the same year, Faraday succeeded in making a wire
through which an electric current is passing move under the influence
of the earth’s magnetism alone. His brother-in-law, George Barnard, who
was in the laboratory at the time, wrote:--“All at once he exclaimed,
‘Do you see, do you see, do you see, George?’ as the wire began to
revolve. One end I recollect was in the cup of quicksilver, the other
attached above to the centre. I shall never forget the enthusiasm
expressed in his face and the sparkling in his eyes!”
[Sidenote: SCENES IN THE LABORATORY.]
In 1822 little was added to Faraday’s scientific work. He had a
joint paper with Stodart on steel before the Royal Society, and
in the _Quarterly Journal_ two short chemical papers and four on
electromagnetical motions and magnetism. He had long kept a commonplace
book in which he entered notes and queries as well as extracts from
books and journals; but this year he began a fresh manuscript volume,
into which he transferred many of the queries and suggestions of
his own originating. This volume he called “Chemical Notes, Hints,
Suggestions, and Objects of Pursuit.” It contains many of the germs of
his own future discoveries, as the following examples show:--
Convert magnetism into electricity.
Do pith balls diverge by disturbance of electricities in
consequence of induction or not?
General effects of compression, either in condensing gases,
or producing solutions, or even giving combinations at low
temperatures.
Light through gold leaf on to zine or most oxidable metals,
these being poles--or on magnetic bars.
Transparency of metals. Sun’s light through gold leaf. Two gold
leaves made poles--light passed through one to the other.
Whenever any query found an answer, he drew his pen through it and
added the date. In front of the book--probably at some later time--he
wrote these words:--
I already owe much to these notes, and think such a collection
worth the making by every scientific man. I am sure none would
think the trouble lost after a year’s experience.
A striking example had already occurred of similar suggestive notes in
the optical queries of Sir Isaac Newton.
In another manuscript notebook occur the following entries under date
of September 10, 1821:--
2 similar poles though they repell at most distances attract at
very small distances and adhere. Query why....
Could not magnetise a plate of steel so as to resemble flat
spiral. Either the magnetism would be very weak and irregular
or there would be none at all.
These are interesting as showing how Faraday was educating himself
by continual experiment. The explanation of each of these paradoxes
has long passed into the commonplace of physics; but they would still
puzzle many who have learned their science bookishly at second-hand.
It will be noted that amongst the entries cited above there are two of
absolutely capital importance, one foreshadowing the great discovery
of magneto-electric induction, the other indicating how the existence
of electro-optical relations was shaping itself as a possibility in
Faraday’s mind. An entry in his laboratory book of September 10 is of
great interest:--
Polarised a ray of lamp-light by reflection, and endeavoured to
ascertain whether any depolarising action [is] exerted on it by
water placed between the poles of a voltaic battery in a glass
cistern; one Wollaston’s trough used; the fluids decomposed
were pure water, weak solution of sulphate of soda, and strong
sulphuric acid: none of them had any effect on the polarised
light, either when out of or in the voltaic circuit, so that
no particular arrangement of particles could be ascertained in
this way.
[Sidenote: AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT.]
It may be added that no such optical effect of electrolytic conduction
as that here looked for has yet been discovered. The experiment,
unsuccessful at that day, remains still an unsuccessful one. A singular
interest attaches to it, however, and it was repeated several times by
Faraday in subsequent years, in hope of some results.
In 1823 Faraday read two papers to the Royal Society, one on Liquid
Chlorine, the other on the Condensation of several Gases into Liquids.
No sooner was the work completed than he dashed off a letter to De la
Rive to tell him what he had accomplished. Under date March 24, 1823,
he writes:--
I have been at work lately, and obtained results which I
hope you will approve of. I have been interrupted twice in
the course of experiments by explosions, both in the course
of eight days--one burnt my eyes, the other cut them; but
fortunately escaped with slight injury only in both cases, and
am now nearly well. During the winter I took the opportunity
of examining the hydrate of chlorine, and analysing it; the
results, which are not very important, will appear in the
next number of the _Quarterly Journal_, over which I have no
influence. Sir H. Davy, on seeing my paper, suggested to me to
work with it under pressure, and see what would happen by heat,
&c. Accordingly I enclosed it in a glass tube hermetically
sealed, heated it, obtained a change in the substance, and
a separation into two different fluids; and upon further
examination I found that the chlorine and water had separated
from each other, and the chlorine gas, not being able to
escape, had condensed into the liquid form. To prove that it
contained no water, I dried some chlorine gas, introduced it
into a long tube, condensed it, and then cooled the tube, and
again obtained fluid chlorine. Hence what is called chlorine
gas is the vapour of a fluid....
* * * * *
I expect to be able to reduce many other gases to the liquid
form, and promise myself the pleasure of writing you about
them. I hope you will honour me with a letter soon.
I am, dear Sir, very faithfully, your obedient servant,
M. FARADAY.
[Sidenote: CHLORINE LIQUEFIED.]
The work of liquefying the gases had been taken up by Faraday
during his hours of liberty from other duties. It was probably his
characteristic dislike to “doubtful knowledge” which prompted him to
re-examine a substance which had at one time been regarded as chlorine
in a solid state, but which Davy in 1810 had demonstrated to be a
hydrate of that element. The first work was, as narrated above, to make
a new analysis of the supposed substance. This analysis, duly written
out, was submitted to Sir Humphry, who, without stating precisely what
results he anticipated might follow, suggested heating the hydrate
under pressure in a hermetically sealed glass tube. This Faraday did.
When so heated, the tube filled with a yellow atmosphere, and on
cooling was found to contain two liquids, one limpid and colourless
like water, the other of an oily appearance. Concerning this research
a curious story is told in the life of Davy. Dr. Paris, Davy’s friend
and biographer, happened to visit the laboratory while Faraday was at
work on these tubes. Seeing the oily liquid, he ventured to rally the
young assistant upon his carelessness in employing greasy tubes. Later
in the day, Faraday, on filing off the end of the tube, was startled by
finding the contents suddenly to explode; the oily matter completely
disappearing. He speedily ascertained the cause. The gas, liberated
from combination with water by heat, had under the pressure of its own
evolution liquefied itself, only to re-expand with violence when the
tube was opened. Early the next day Dr. Paris received the following
laconic note:--
DEAR SIR,--
The _oil_ you noticed yesterday turns out to be liquid chlorine.
Yours faithfully,
M. FARADAY.
Later he adopted a compressing syringe to condense the gas, and again
succeeded in liquefying it. Davy, who added a characteristic note to
Faraday’s published paper, immediately applied the same method of
liquefaction by its own pressure to hydrochloric acid gas; and Faraday
reduced a number of other gases by the same means. These researches
were not without danger. In the preliminary experiments an explosion
of one of the tubes drove thirteen fragments of glass into Faraday’s
eye. At the end of the year he drew up a historical statement on the
liquefaction of gases, which was published in the _Quarterly Journal_
for January, 1824. A further statement by him was published in the
_Philosophical Magazine_ for 1836; and in 1844 his further researches
on the liquefaction of gases were published in the _Philosophical
Transactions_.
In 1824 Faraday again brought to the Royal Society a chemical discovery
of first importance. The paper was on some new compounds of carbon and
hydrogen, and on certain other products obtained during decomposition
of oil by heat. From condensed oil-gas, so obtained, Faraday succeeded
in separating the liquid known as benzin or benzol, or, as he named it
at the time, bicarburet of hydrogen. It has since its discovery formed
the basis of several great chemical industries, and is manufactured in
vast quantities. Prior to the reading of this paper he had, as we have
already related, been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, an honour
to which he had for some years aspired, and which stood alone in his
regard above the scientific honours of later years.
In this year he tried, amongst his unsuccessful experiments, two of
singular interest. One was an attempt to find whether two crystals
(such as nitre) exercised upon one another any polar attractions like
those of two lodestones. He suspended them by fibres of cocoon silk,
and, finding this material not delicate enough, by spider-lines. The
other was an attempt to discover magneto-electricity. For various
reasons he concluded that the approximation of the pole of a powerful
magnet to a conductor carrying a current would have the effect of
diminishing the amount of that current. He placed magnets within a
copper wire helix, and observed with a galvanometer whether the current
sent through the circuit of the helix by a given battery was less when
the magnet was absent. The result was negative.
[Sidenote: RESEARCH ON OPTICAL GLASS.]
In this year also began the laborious researches on optical glass,
which though in themselves leading to no immediate success of
commercial value, nevertheless furnished Faraday with the material
essential at the time for the making of the most momentous of all
his discoveries. A committee had been appointed by the President and
Council of the Royal Society for the improvement of glass for optical
purposes, and Faraday was amongst those chosen to act upon it.
In 1825 the Royal Society Committee delegated the investigation of
optical glass to a sub-committee of three, Herschel (afterwards
Sir John), Dollond (the optician), and Faraday. The chemical part,
including the experimental manufacture, was entrusted to Faraday.
Dollond was to work the glass and test its qualities from the
instrument maker’s point of view, whilst Herschel was to examine
its refraction, dispersion, and other physical properties. This
sub-committee worked for nearly five years, though by the removal of
Herschel from England its number was reduced to two. In 1827 the work
became more arduous. Faraday thus writes:--
The President and Council of the Royal Society applied to the
President and Managers of the Royal Institution for leave to
erect on their premises an experimental room with a furnace,
for the purpose of continuing the investigation on the
manufacture of optical glass. They were guided in this by the
desire which the Royal Institution has always evinced to assist
in the advancement of science; and the readiness with which the
application was granted showed that no mistaken notion had been
formed in this respect. As a member of both bodies, I felt much
anxiety that the investigation should be successful. A room
and furnaces were built at the Royal Institution in September,
1827, and an assistant was engaged, Sergeant Anderson, of the
Royal Artillery. He came on the 3rd of December.
Anderson, who was thus made assistant to Faraday, remained in that
capacity till his death in 1866. He was a most devoted servant. In a
footnote to the “Experimental Researches” (vol. iii. p. 3) Faraday in
1845 wrote of him:--
I cannot resist the occasion that is thus offered me of
mentioning the name of Mr. Anderson, who came to me as an
assistant in the glass experiments, and has remained ever since
in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. He assisted me in
all the researches into which I have entered since that time;
and to his care, steadiness, exactitude, and faithfulness in
the performance of all that has been committed to his charge, I
am much indebted.--M. F.
Tyndall, who had a great admiration for Anderson, declared that
his merits as an assistant might be summed up in one phrase--blind
obedience. The story is told of him by Benjamin Abbott:--
[Sidenote: ANDERSON’S OBEDIENCE.]
Sergeant Anderson ... was chosen simply because of the habits
of strict obedience his military training had given him. His
duty was to keep the furnaces always at the same heat, and the
water in the ashpit always at the same level. In the evening
he was released, but one night Faraday forgot to tell Anderson
he could go home, and early next morning he found his faithful
servant still stoking the glowing furnace, as he had been doing
all night long.
The research on optical glass was viewed askance by several parties.
The expenditure of money which it involved was one of the “charges”
hurled against the Council of the Royal Society by Sir James South in
1830. Nevertheless it was deemed sufficiently important to receive
powerful support, as the following letter shows:--
Admiralty, 20 Dec., 1827.
SIR,
I hereby request, on behalf of the Board of Longitude, that you
will continue, in the furnace built at the Royal Institution,
the experiments on glass, directed by the joint Committee
of the Royal Society and the Board of Longitude and already
sanctioned by the Treasury and the Board of Excise.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THOMAS YOUNG, M.D.,
Sec. Bd. Long.
Michael Faraday, Esq.,
Royal Institution.
In February, 1825, Faraday’s duties towards the Royal Institution were
somewhat modified. Hitherto he had been nominally a mere assistant
to Davy and Brande, though he had occasionally undertaken lectures
for the latter. Now, on Davy’s recommendation, he was, as we have
seen, appointed by the managers Director of the Laboratory under
the superintendence of the Professor of Chemistry. He was relieved,
“because of his occupation in research,” from his duty as chemical
assistant at the lectures.
The research on optical glass was not concluded till 1829, when
its results were communicated to the Royal Society in the Bakerian
lecture of that year--a memoir so long that it is said three sittings
were occupied in its delivery. It is printed _in extenso_ in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ of 1830. It opens as follows:--
When the philosopher desires to apply glass in the construction
of perfect instruments, and especially the achromatic
telescope, its manufacture is found liable to imperfections so
important and so difficult to avoid, that science is frequently
stopped in her progress by them--a fact fully proved by the
circumstance that Mr. Dollond, one of our first opticians, has
not been able to obtain a disc of flint glass 4½ inches in
diameter, fit for a telescope, within the last five years; or a
similar disc, of 5 inches, within the last ten years.
This led to the appointment by Sir H. Davy of the Royal Society
Committee, and the Government removed the excise restrictions,
and undertook to bear all the expenses as long as the
investigation offered a reasonable hope of success.
The experiments were begun at the Falcon Glass Works, three
miles from the Royal Institution, and continued there in
1825, 1826, and to Sept., 1827, when a room was built at the
Institution. At first the inquiry was pursued principally as
related to flint and crown glass; but in September, 1828, it
was directed exclusively to the preparation and perfection of
peculiar heavy and fusible glasses, from which time continued
progress has been made.
In 1830 the experiments on glass-making were stopped.
In 1831 the Committee for the Improvement of Glass for Optical
Purposes reported to the Royal Society Council that the telescope made
with Mr. Faraday’s glass had been examined by Captain Kater and Mr.
Pond. “It bears as great a power as can reasonably be expected, and is
very achromatic. The Committee therefore recommend that Mr. Faraday be
requested to make a perfect piece of glass of the largest size that
his present apparatus will admit, and also to teach some person to
manufacture the glass for general sale.”
[Sidenote: GLASS-MAKING LAID ASIDE.]
In answer to this Faraday sent the following letter to Dr. Roget, Sec.
R.S.:--
[_M. Faraday to P. M. Roget._]
Royal Institution, July 4, 1831.
DEAR SIR,--I send you herewith four large and two small
manuscript volumes relating to optical glass, and comprising
the journal book and sub-committee book, since the period that
experimental investigations commenced at the Royal Institution.
With reference to the request which the Council of the
Royal Society have done me the honour of making--namely,
that I should continue the investigation--I should, under
circumstances of perfect freedom, assent to it at once; but
obliged as I have been to devote the whole of my spare time
to the experiments already described, and consequently to
resign the pursuit of such philosophical inquiries as suggested
themselves to my own mind, I would wish, under the present
circumstances, to lay the glass aside for a while, that I may
enjoy the pleasure of working out my own thoughts on other
subjects.
If at a future time the investigation should be renewed, I must
beg it to be clearly understood I cannot promise full success
should I resume it: all that industry and my abilities can
effect shall be done; but to perfect a manufacture, not being a
manufacturer, is what I am not bold enough to promise.
I am, &c.,
M. FARADAY.
The optical glass was a failure, so far as concerned the original hope
that it would lead to great improvements in telescopes. Nevertheless
it furnished scientific men with a new material, the “heavy glass”
consisting essentially of boro-silicate of lead, for which sundry uses
in spectroscopy and other optical instruments have since been found.
In 1845 Faraday added this note:--
I consider our results as negative, except as regards any
good that may have resulted from my heavy glass in the hands
of Amici (who applied it to microscopes) and in my late
experiments on light.
These were the famous experiments on magneto-optics and diamagnetism.
Incidentally the research had led also to the permanent engagement of
Sergeant Anderson as assistant to Faraday.
[Sidenote: RESEARCHES AND LECTURES.]
During these years, from 1825 to 1829, which had been thus occupied in
an apparently fruitless quest, he had been far from idle. He had gone
on contributing chemical papers to the _Philosophical Transactions_
and to the _Quarterly Journal_. These dealt with sulpho-naphthalic
acid, with the limits of vaporisation, with caoutchouc, bisulphide
of copper, the fluidity of sulphur and phosphorus, the diffusion of
gases, and the relation of water to hot polished surfaces. He had also
originated at the Royal Institution the Friday evening discourses (see
p. 33), the first of which he held in 1826. For some years he himself
delivered no inconsiderable portion of these discourses every session.
In 1826 he gave six, in 1827 three, in 1828 five, in 1829 six, and
these in addition to his regular afternoon courses of six or eight
lectures on some connected subject. He had also, in 1826, begun the
Christmas lectures adapted to a juvenile audience, and had in 1827
given a course of twelve lectures at the London Institution in Finsbury
Circus. In addition to these labours he had, in 1827, brought out the
first edition of his book on “Chemical Manipulation.” In 1829 he began
his lectures at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, which continued
till 1849.
The year 1830 may be regarded as the close of the first period of
Faraday’s researches, during which time, though much of his labour
had been of a preparatory and even desultory kind, it had been a
training for the higher work to come. He had made three notable
discoveries in chemistry, the new substances benzol and butylene, and
the solubility of naphthalene in sulphuric acid forming the first of a
new class of bodies, the sulpho-acids. He had also made an important
discovery in physics, that of the electromagnetic rotations. He had
already published sixty original papers, besides many notes of lesser
importance, nine of these papers being memoirs in the _Philosophical
Transactions_. He had already begun to receive from learned societies,
academies, and universities the recognition of his scientific
attainments, and he had established firmly both his own reputation as
a lecturer, and the reputation of the Royal Institution, which was the
scene of his lectures.