science or logic opened no approach, and, right or wrong, this faith, held in perfect tolerance of the faiths of others, strengthened and beautified his life.
From the letters just referred to, I will select three for publication here. I choose the first, because it
contains a passage revealing the feelings with which Faraday regarded his vocation, and also because it
contains an allusion which will give pleasure to a friend.
'Royal Institution.
'Ventnor, Isle of Wight, June 28, 1854.
'My Dear Tyndall,--You see by the top of this letter how much habit prevails over me; I have just read yours from thence, and yet I think myself there. However, I have left its science in very good keeping, and I am glad to learn that you are at experiment once more. But how is the health? Not well, I fear. I wish you would get yourself strong first and work afterwards. As for the fruits, I am sure they will be good, for though I sometimes despond as regards myself, I do not as regards you. You are young, I am old.... But then our subjects are so glorious, that to work at them rejoices and encourages the feeblest; delights and enchants the strongest.
'I have not yet seen anything from Magnus. Thoughts of him always delight me. We shall look at his black sulphur together. I heard from Schonbein the other day. He tells me that Liebig is full of ozone, i.e., of allotropic oxygen.
'Good-bye for the present.
'Ever, my dear Tyndall,
'Yours truly,
'M. Faraday.'
The contemplation of Nature, and his own relation to her, produced in Faraday a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself manifest here. His religious feeling and his philosophy could not be kept apart; there was an habitual overflow of the one into the other.
Whether he or another was its exponent, he appeared to take equal delight in science. A good experiment would make him almost dance with delight. In November, 1850, he wrote to me thus: --'I hope some day to take up the point respecting the magnetism of associated particles. In the meantime I rejoice at every addition to the facts and reasoning connected with the subject. When science is a republic, then it gains: and though I am no republican in other matters, I am in that.' All his letters illustrate this catholicity of feeling. Ten years ago, when going down to Brighton, he carried with him a little paper I had just completed, and afterwards wrote to me. His letter is a mere sample of the sympathy which he always showed to me and my work.
'Brighton, December 9, 1857.
'My Dear Tyndall,--I cannot resist the pleasure of saying how very much I have enjoyed your paper. Every part has given me delight. It goes on from point to point beautifully. You will find many pencil marks, for I made them as I read. I let them stand, for though many of them receive their answer as the story proceeds, yet they show how the wording impresses a mind fresh to the subject, and perhaps here and there you may like to alter it slightly, if you wish the full idea, i.e., not an inaccurate one, to be suggested at first; and yet after all I believe it is not your exposition, but the natural jumping to a conclusion that affects or has affected my pencil.
'We return on Friday, when I will return you the paper.
'Ever truly yours,
'M. Faraday.'
The third letter will come in its proper place towards the end.
While once conversing with Faraday on science, in its relations to commerce and litigation, he said to me, that at a certain period of his career, he was forced definitely to ask himself, and finally to decide whether he should make wealth or science the pursuit of his life. He could not serve both masters, and he was therefore compelled to choose between them. After the discovery of magneto-electricity his fame was so noised abroad, that the commercial world would hardly have considered any remuneration too high for the aid of abilities like his. Even before he became so famous, he had done a little 'professional business.' This was the phrase he applied to his purely commercial work. His friend, Richard
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