Michael Faraday. Gladstone John Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ go many times in a day to watch the parent birds feeding their young. I remember, too, how much he was interested in the young lambs, after they were sheared at our door, vainly trying to find their own mothers. The ewes, not knowing their shorn lambs, did not make the customary signal. In those days I was eager to see the sun rise, and my uncle desired me always to call him when I was awake. So, as soon as the glow brightened over Pegwell Bay, I stole downstairs and tapped at his door, and he would rise, and a great treat it was to watch the glorious sight with him. How delightful, too, to be his companion at sunset! Once I remember well how we watched the fading light from a hill clothed with wild flowers, and how, as twilight stole on, the sounds of bells from Upper Deal broke upon our ears, and how he watched till all was grey. At such times he would be well pleased if we could repeat a few lines descriptive of his feelings." And then she tells us about their examining the flowers in the fields by the aid of "Galpin's Botany," and how with a candle he showed her a spectre on the white mist outside the window; of reading lessons that ended in laughter, and of sea-anemones and hermit crabs, with the merriment caused by their odd movements as they dragged about the unwieldy shells they tenanted. "But of all things I used to like to hear him read 'Childe Harold;' and never shall I forget the way in which he read the description of the storm on Lake Leman. He took great pleasure in Byron, and Coleridge's 'Hymn to Mont Blanc' delighted him. When anything touched his feelings as he read – and it happened not unfrequently – he would show it not only in his voice, but by tears in his eyes also."

      A few days at Brighton refreshed him for his work. He was in the habit of running down there before his juvenile lectures at Christmas, and at Easter he frequently sought the same sea-breezes.

      But it was not always that Faraday could run away from London when the mental tension became excessive. A shorter relaxation was procured by his taking up a novel such as "Ivanhoe," or "Jane Eyre," or "Monte Christo." He liked the stirring ones best, "a story with a thread to it." Or he would go with his wife to see Kean act, or hear Jenny Lind sing, or perhaps to witness the performance of some "Wizard of the North."

      Now and then he would pay a visit to some scene of early days. One of his near relatives tells me: "It is said that Mr. Faraday once went to the shop where his father had formerly been employed as a blacksmith, and asked to be allowed to look over the place. When he got to a part of the premises at which there was an opening into the lower workshop, he stopped and said: 'I very nearly lost my life there once. I was playing in the upper room at pitching halfpence into a pint pot close by this hole, and having succeeded at a certain distance, I stepped back to try my fortune further off, forgetting the aperture, and down I fell; and if it had not been that my father was working over an anvil fixed just below, I should have fallen on it, broken my back, and probably killed myself. As it was, my father's back just saved mine.'"

      Business, as well as pleasure, sometimes took him away from home. He often joined the British Association, returning usually on Saturday, that he might be among his own people on the Lord's Day. During the meeting he would generally accept the hospitality of some friend; and it was one of these occasions that gave rise to the following jeu d'esprit: —

      "'That P will change to F in the British tongue is true

      (Quoth Professor Phillips), though the instances are few;'

      An entry in my journal then I ventured thus to parody,

      'I this day dined with Fillips, where I hobbed and nobbed with Pharaday.'

"T. T."Oxford, June 27, 1860."

      At the Liverpool meeting, in 1837, he was president of the Chemical Section, and on two other occasions he was selected to deliver the evening lecture, but though repeatedly pressed to undertake the presidency of the whole body, he could not be prevailed upon to accept the office.

      My first personal intercourse with him, of any extent, was at the Ipswich meeting in 1851. I watched him with all the interest of an admiring disciple, and there is deeply engraven on my memory the vivacity of his conversation, the eagerness with which he entered into some mathematico-chemical speculations of Dumas, and the playfulness with which, when we were dining together, he cut boomerangs out of card, and shot them across the table at his friends.

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      1

      These books, with others bound by Faraday, are preserved in a special cabinet at the Royal Institution, together with more valuable documents, – the laboratory notes of Davy and those of Faraday, his notes of Tatum's and Davy's lectures, copies of his published papers with annotations and indices, notes for lectures and Friday evening di

1

These books, with others bound by Faraday, are preserved in a special cabinet at the Royal Institution, together with more valuable documents, – the laboratory notes of Davy and those of Faraday, his notes of Tatum's and Davy's lectures, copies of his published papers with annotations and indices, notes for lectures and Friday evening discourses, account books, and various memoranda, together with letters from Wollaston, Young, Herschel, Whewell, Mitscherlich, and many others of his fellow-workers in science. These were the gift of his widow, in accordance with his own desire.

2

This idea was suggested by some remarks of Faraday to the Baroness Burdett Coutts.

3

Sir Roderick Murchison used to tell how he was attending Brande's lectures, when one day, the Professor being absent, his assistant took his place, and lectured with so much ease that he won the complete approval of the audience. This, he said, was Faraday's first lecture at the Royal Institution.

4

The laboratory note-book shows that at this very time he was making a long series of commercial analyses of saltpetre for Mr. Brande.

5

The following anecdote has been sent me on the authority of Mr. Benjamin Abbott: – "Sergeant Anderson was engaged to attend to the furnaces in Mr. Faraday's researches on optical glass in 1828, and 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." A more probable and better authenticated version of this story is that after nightfall Anderson went upstairs to Faraday, who was already in bed, to inquire if he was to remain still on duty.

6

One evening, when the Rev. A. J. D'Orsey was lecturing "On the Study of the English Language," he mentioned as a common vulgarism that of using "don't" in the third person singular, as "He don't pay his debts." Faraday exclaimed aloud, "That's very wrong."

7

The St. Paul's Magazine, June 1870.

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