At the end of his papers, when he takes a last look along the line of research, and then turns his eyes to the future, utterances quite as much emotional as scientific escape from Faraday. 'I cannot,' he says, at the end of his first paper on magne-crystallic action, 'conclude this series of researches without remarking how rapidly the knowledge of molecular forces grows upon us, and how strikingly every investigation tends to develop more and more their importance, and their extreme attraction as an object of study. A few years ago magnetism was to us an occult power, affecting only a few bodies, now it is found to influence all bodies, and to possess the most intimate relations with electricity, heat, chemical action, light, crystallization, and through it, with the forces concerned in cohesion; and we may, in the present state of things, well feel urged to continue in our labours, encouraged by the hope of bringing it into a bond of union with gravity itself.'

A brief space will, perhaps, be granted me here to state the further progress of an investigation which interested Faraday so much. Drawn by the fame of Bunsen as a teacher, in the year 1848 I became a student in the University of Marburg, in Hesse Cassel. Bunsen's behaviour to me was that of a brother as well as that of a teacher, and it was also my happiness to make the acquaintance and gain the friendship of Professor Knoblauch, so highly distinguished by his researches on Radiant Heat. Plücker's and Faraday's investigations filled all minds at the time, and towards the end of 1849, Professor Knoblauch and myself commenced a joint investigation of the entire question. Long discipline was necessary to give us due mastery over it. Employing a method proposed by Dove, we examined the optical properties of our crystals ourselves; and these optical observations went hand in hand with our magnetic experiments. The number of these experiments was very great, but for a considerable time no fact of importance was added to those already published. At length, however, it was our fortune to meet with various crystals whose deportment could not be brought under the laws of magne-crystallic action enunciated by Plücker. We also discovered instances which led us to suppose that the magne-crystallic force was by no means independent, as alleged, of the magnetism or diamagnetism of the mass of the crystal. Indeed, the more we worked at the subject, the more clearly did it appear to us that the deportment of crystals in the magnetic field was due, not to a force previously unknown, but to the modification of the known forces of magnetism and diamagnetism by crystalline aggregation.

An eminent example of magne-crystallic action adduced by Plücker, and experimented on by Faraday, was Iceland spar. It is what in optics is called a negative crystal, and according to the law of Plücker, the axis of such a crystal was always repelled by a magnet. But we showed that it was only necessary to substitute, in whole or in part, carbonate of iron for carbonate of lime, thus changing the magnetic but not the optical character of the crystal, to cause the axis to be attracted. That the deportment of magnetic crystals is exactly antithetical to that of diamagnetic crystals isomorphous with the magnetic ones, was proved to be a general law of action. In all cases, the line which in a diamagnetic crystal set equatorially, always set itself in an isomorphous magnetic crystal axially. By mechanical compression other bodies were also made to imitate the Iceland spar.

These and numerous other results bearing upon the question were published at the time in the 'Philosophical Magazine' and in 'Poggendorff's Annalen'; and the investigation of diamagnetism and magne- crystallic action was subsequently continued by me in the laboratory of Professor Magnus of Berlin. In December, 1851, after I had quitted Germany, Dr. Bence Jones went to the Prussian capital to see the celebrated experiments of Du Bois Reymond. Influenced, I suppose, by what he there heard, he afterwards invited me to give a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution. I consented, not without fear and trembling. For the Royal Institution was to me a kind of dragon's den, where tact and strength would be necessary to save me from destruction. On February 11, 1853, the discourse was given, and it ended happily. I allude to these things, that I may mention that, though my aim and object in that lecture was to subvert the notions both of Faraday and Plücker, and to establish in opposition to their views what I regarded as the truth, it was very far from producing in Faraday either enmity or anger. At the conclusion of the lecture, he quitted his accustomed seat, crossed the theatre to the corner into which I had shrunk, shook me by the hand, and brought me back to the table. Once more, subsequently, and in connection