Introduction

IX

of them, James Faraday, born in 1761, being father to the
philosopher. A family tradition exists that the Faradays
came originally from Ireland. Faraday himself has more
than once expressed to me his belief that his blood was in pari:
Celtic, but how much of it was so, or when the infusion too^
place, he was unable to say. He could imitate the Irish
brogue, and his wonderful vivacity may have been in part
due to his extraction. But there were other qualities which
we should hardly think of deriving from Ireland. The most
prominent of these was his sense of order, which ran like
a luminous beam through all the transactions of his life. The
most entangled and complicated matters fell into harmony
in his hands. His mode of keeping accounts excited the
admiration of the managing board of this institution. And
his science was similarly ordered. In his experimental
researches, he numbered every paragraph, and welded their
various parts together by incessant reference. His private
notes of the experimental researches, which are happily
preserved, are similarly numbered: their last paragraph bears
the figure 16,041. His working qualities, moreover, showed
the tenacity of the Teuton. His nature was impulsive, but
there was a force behind the impulse which did not permit it
to retreat. If in his warm moments he formed a resolution,
in his cool ones he made that resolution good. Thus his fire
was that of a solid combustible, not that of a gas, which
blazes suddenly, and dies as suddenly away.
And here I must claim your tolerance for the limits by
which I am confined. "No materials for a life of Faraday are
in my hands, and what I have now to say has arisen almost
wholly out of our close personal relationship.
Letters of his, covering a period of sixteen years, are before
me, each one of which contains some characteristic utterance;
—strong, yet delicate in counsel, joyful in encouragement,
and warm in affection. References which would be pleasant
to such of them as still live are made to Humboldt, Biot,
Dumas, Chevreul, Magnus, and Arago. Accident brought
these names prominently forward; but many others would
be required to complete his list of continental friends. He
prized the love and sympathy of men—prized it almost more
than the renown which his science brought him. Nearly
a dozen years ago it fell to my lot to write a review of his
Experimental Researches for the Philosophical Magazine.
After he had read it, he took me by the hand, and said,

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