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[Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY.]


MICHAEL FARADAY:

Man of Science.

by

WALTER JERROLD.


   "Whose work was wrought for love, and not for gain."

   "One rule his life was fashioned to fulfil;
      That he who tends Truth's shrine and does the hest
    Of Science, with a humble, faithful will,
      The God of Truth and Knowledge serveth best."







Fleming H. Revell Company,
New York      Chicago      Toronto
Publishers of Evangelical Literature.




                            [Illustration]

                               PREFACE.


"Tyndall, I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last." In these
words, with which he replied to Professor Tyndall's urgent appeal to
him to accept the Presidency of the Royal Society, we have a key-note
to the character of the illustrious yet modest scientist, the good and
great man, whose life-story I have attempted to tell in the following
pages.

A life-story such as that of Michael Faraday is both easy and difficult
to tell--it is easy in that he passed a simple and unadventurous life;
it is difficult, partly, perhaps, for the same reason, and partly
because the story of his life-work is a story of the wonderful advance
made in natural science during the first half of the present century.
Any detailed account of that scientific work would be out of place in a
biography such as the present, which aims at showing by the testimony
of those who knew him and by an account of his relations with his
fellow-men, how nobly unselfish, how simple, yet how grand and useful,
was the long life of Michael Faraday.

Besides this, we are shown--how many an illustrious name in the
bede-roll of our great men brings it to mind--that with an enthusiastic
love for a particular study, and unflagging perseverance in pursuance
of it, the most adverse circumstance of birth and fortune may be
overcome, and he who has striven take rank among the great and good
whose names adorn the annals of their country. Such lives are useful,
not alone for the work which is done, but for the example which
they afford us, that we also--to use Longfellow's well-known, yet
beautifully true lines--

                "May make our lives sublime,
               And departing, leave behind us
                 Footprints on the sands of time."

"The true scientist," says Mr. Robert Buchanan in a recent work,
"should be patient like Darwin and reverent like Faraday." The latter,
indeed, seems to me to have been a truly typical scientist. Never
have we seen an instance of a less selfish devotion to a man's chosen
work. Born the son of a journeyman blacksmith, brought up amidst the
most unpromising surroundings, with but the scantiest schooling, we
find Michael Faraday educating himself during his spare time, and
gradually acquiring, by indomitable perseverance, that scientific
knowledge for which he thirsted. We find him seeking employment, even
in the humblest capacity, in a place that must have appeared to his
youthful mind as the very home of science. Once there, we find him
advancing with marvellous rapidity not only in the acquirement of
knowledge which had been gained by others, but, yet prouder position,
we find him ever adding to that store of knowledge the discovery of
new facts. The patience of the true scientist was assuredly his. We
find him acknowledged by his great contemporaries not only as an equal
but as a leader among them. We find him with wealth and high social
position within his reach. All this do we find--and not this alone;
for we find him at the same time unspoiled in the slightest degree
by his success; caring not in the least for the wealth that might be
his, and declining honours which most men would have considered as
but the fair reward of work which they had done. We find him also the
object of love and admiration, not of his family and intimate friends
alone, but of all persons with whom he came into contact. We find him
exploring all the hidden workings of nature--making known discovery
after discovery in the same modest and enthusiastic manner; and despite
all these inquiries into the secrets of nature, we find him retaining
unshaken that firm faith with which he had started--that beautiful and
unquestioning trust in

                   "A far off divine event
               To which the whole creation moves."

Much of Faraday's kindliness and good nature, his considerateness and
his simple earnest faith could be revealed only by his letters and by
the records of those who had known him personally--on this account I
have found it necessary somewhat freely to make use of illustrative
quotations. After studying his life, however, the kindliness, nay more,
the true brotherhood of the man with all men is the feeling which most
firmly clings to us; we do not alone remember the great electrician,
experimentalist, and lecturer, but we have an ever-present idea of the
sterling goodness of the man.

"A purer, less selfish, more stainless existence, has rarely been
witnessed. At last came the voice which the dying alone can hear, and
the hand which the living may not see, beckoned him away; and then that
noble intellect, awakening from its lethargy, like some sleeper roused
from a heavy dream, rose up and passed through the gates of light into
the better land, where, doubtless, it is now immersed in the study of
grander mysteries than it ever attempted to explore on earth."

In closing this preface I have much pleasure in recording my deep
indebtedness to Miss Jane Barnard, a niece of the great Professor, and
for some two and twenty years a member of his household, for several
reminiscences of her uncle; and also for her kindness in allowing me to
look through the many interesting manuscripts of Faraday's which are in
her possession.

                                                  WALTER JERROLD.




              [Illustration: LIBRARY, ROYAL INSTITUTION]

                               CONTENTS.


                              CHAPTER I.          PAGE
                 AS CHILD--NEWSBOY AND BOOKBINDER   11

                              CHAPTER II.
                 THE TURNING POINT