where. But with whatever employer, his heart was in the highlands. It was in the books he bound, in the hours after work, that he found the beginning of his philosophy. There were two that especially helped him: the Encyclopædia Britannica, from which he gained his first notions of electricity, and Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry, which gave him his foundation in that science. Introduced to Sir Humphry Davy's last lectures at the Royal Institution, he took notes of them, wrote them fairly out, and sent them to Davy, entreating him to enable him to quit trade, which he detested, and to pursue science, which he loved. Davy (be it never forgotten) wrote to Faraday at once, and afterwards, when an opportunity occurred, made him his assistant. Showing to an influential friend this application from "a youth of twenty-two years of age," he said, Pepys, what am I to do? Here is a letter from a young man named Faraday. He has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution. What can I do?"

"Do?" replied Pepys; "put him to wash bottles; if he is good for anything, he will do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing."

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No, no," replied Davy, "we must try him with something better than that." The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the laboratory at weekly wages.

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1821, he married, and obtained leave to bring his young wife into his rooms at the Royal Institution, Mrs. Faraday then being twenty-one and he nearly thirty years of age. There for forty-six years they lived together, occupying the suite of apartments which had been previously in the successive occupancy of Young, Davy, and Brande. Regarding this marriage, Dr. Tyndall quotes an entry written in Faraday's own hand in his book of diplomas. "25th January, 1847. - Amongst these records and events, I here insert the date of one which, as a source of honour and happiness, far exceeds all the rest. We were married on June 12, 1821." This is one proof, amongst many others, of an honourable feature of Faraday's charac ter. In his relations to his wife, he added chivalry to affection.

Further illustrations of character are given in a concluding heartfelt and affectionate chapter, from which we will cite only two leading points-his independent spirit, and his preference of knowledge to worldly gain. The first was especially manifested when Sir Robert Peel, in 1835, wished to offer Faraday a pension. That great statesman, however, quitted office before he was able to realise his intention. The minister who founded those pensions intended them to be marks of honour, which even proud men might accept without compromise of independence. Nevertheless, when the intimation first reached Faraday in an unofficial way, he wrote a letter announcing his determination to decline the pension, and stating that he was quite competent to earn his livelihood himself. That letter still exists, but it was never sent; Faraday's repugnance having been overruled by his friends.

Subsequently, Faraday accompanied Sir Humphry to Rome, in the capacity of philosophical assistant. On returning, he was reengaged by the managers of the Royal Institution on the 15th of May, 1815. Here he made rapid progress in chemistry, and after a time was entrusted by Davy with easy analyses. When Lord Melbourne came into office, he In those days the Royal Institution published desired to see Faraday. Probably, in utter The Quarterly Journal of Science. In that ignorance of the man-for, unhappily for both journal, in 1816, Faraday's first contribution to parties, ministers of state in England are only science appeared. It was an analysis of some too often ignorant of great Englishmen-his caustic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent lordship said something that must have deeply to Davy by the Duchess of Montrose. In 1818, displeased his visitor. The term "humbug," he experimented upon sounding flames." it appears, was incautiously employed, and Professor Auguste de la Rive, father of our other expressions were used of a similar kind. present excellent De la Rive, had investigated Faraday quitted the minister with his own rethose sounding flames, and had applied to them solves, and that evening he left his card with a an explanation which completely accounted for short and decisive note at Lord Melbourne's a class of sounds discovered by De la Rive residence, stating that he had manifestly mishimself. By a few simple and conclusive ex- taken his lordship's intention of honouring periments, Faraday proved that the explanation science in his person, and declining to have was insufficient. It is an epoch in a young anything whatever to do with the proposed man's life-Dr. Tyndall shrewdly observes-pension. when he finds himself correcting a person of eminence; and in Faraday's case, where its effect was to develop a modest self-trust, such an event could not fail to act profitably.

In 1820, Faraday published a chemical paper "On two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and on a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen," which was read before the Royal Society on the 21st of December, 1820. This was the first of his productions that was honoured with a place in the Philosophical Transactions. On the 12th of June,

The good-humoured nobleman at first considered the matter a capital joke; but he was afterwards led to look at it more seriously. An excellent lady, who was a friend both to Faraday and the minister, tried to arrange matters between them; but she found Faraday very difficult to move from the position he had assumed. After many fruitless efforts, she at length begged of him to state what he would require of Lord Melbourne to induce him to change his mind. He replied, "I should require from his lordship what I have no right or reason

to expect that he would grant-a written apo-ear can accomplish this-namely, the resolution logy for the words he permitted himself to use of the clang of an instrument into its conto me." The required apology came, frank and stituent tones-particularly if the mind be infull, creditable alike to the prime minister and formed beforehand what the ear has to bend the philosopher. itself to find.

Next, as to his utter want of greed: Faraday once confided to Dr. Tyndall 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. It was a second Choice of Hercules. He could not serve both masters; 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 Phillips, for example, had induced him to undertake a number of analyses, which produced, in the year 1830, an addition to his income of more than a thousand pounds; and in 1831 a still larger sum. He had only to will it, in 1832, to raise his professional business income to five thousand a year. This indeed is a wholly insufficient estimate of what he might, with ease, have realised annually during the last thirty years of his life.

"And this brings to my mind an occurrence which took place in this room (at the Royal Institution) at the beginning of my acquaintance with Mr. Faraday. I wished to show him a peculiar action of an electro-magnet upon a crystal. I had everything arranged, when, just before I excited the magnet, he laid his hand upon my arm and asked What am I to look for?' Amid the assemblage of impressions connected with an experiment, even this prince of experimenters felt the advantage of having his attention directed to the special point in question.'

The account of Faraday's discoveries here given is succinct-more so than many readers would have wished it. Some most interesting investigations-that, for instance, on the electricity of the gymnotus-have been left untouched in the present memoir. Those who know his charming History of a Candle would eagerly read his description of the electric eel. The former has had the honours of translation; and the translator, M. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, justly says, "Michel Faraday" (he was then still living) "est la plus grande figure scientifique du temps présent."

Most interesting to the general reader are the researches into the liquefaction of gases. We are familiar with solids, as tallow and tin, which become liquid by the application of no great amount of heat; others, as ice, pass readily through the liquid into the vaporous or gaseous state; but the reverse operation-the reduction of an ordinary gas to a liquid first, and then to a solid-is anything but familiar to the mass of observers. Few dream that a gas can be rendered even liquid. Faraday accomplished the feat.

Instead of this, Dr. Tyndall states on his own responsibility, and after the inspection of Faraday's accounts, that in 1832 his professional business income dwindled down to one hundred and fifty-five pounds, nine shillings. From this it fell, with slight oscillations, to zero in 1838. Between 1839 and 1845, it never, except in one instance, exceeded twenty-two pounds, being for the most part much below that sum. The exceptional year referred to was that in which he and Sir Charles Lyell were engaged by Government to write a report on the Haswell Colliery explosion; and then his business in- During his hours of liberty from other duties, come rose to one hundred and twelve pounds. he took up subjects of inquiry for himself. In From the end of 1845 to the day of his death, the spring of 1823, thus self-prompted, he Faraday's annual professional business income began the examination of a substance which had was exactly zero. Taking the duration of his long been regarded as a chemical elementlife into account, the son of a blacksmith and chlorine in a solid form- but which Sir apprentice to a bookbinder had to decide be- Humphry Davy, in 1810, had proved to be tween a fortune of a hundred and fifty thousand a hydrate of chlorine; that is, a compound of pounds on the one side, and his undowered chlorine and water. Faraday first analysed this science on the other. He chose the latter, and hydrate, and wrote out an account of its comdied a poor man. But his was the glory of hold-position. This account was looked over by ing aloft among the nations the scientific name of England during a period of forty years. Faraday disliked "doubtful knowledge." He was possessed of a lively imagination, and could have believed in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the Encyclopædia; but facts were important to him, and saved him. He could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion. Hence his habit of testing everything by experiment and of fixing his attention on the essential points of the subject under investigation, which is recorded in Dr. Tyndall's work on Sound. "By attention," he says, "6 even the unaided

Davy, who suggested the heating of the hydrate under pressure in a sealed glass tube. This was done. The hydrate fused at a blood-heat, the tube became filled with a yellow atmosphere, and was found to contain two liquid substances. Dr. Paris happened to enter the laboratory while Faraday was at work. Seeing the oily liquid in his tube, he rallied the young chemist for his carelessness in employing soiled vessels. On filing off the end of the tube its contents exploded, and the oily matter vanished. Early next morning, Dr. Paris received the following note:

"Dear Sir,-The oil you noticed yesterday turns out to be liquid chlorine.

"Yours faithfully,

"M. FARADAY."

troop of ghosts were at her heels. It is the time to enjoy a story, a true story, the story of a real life; and here it is as our dear old lady is telling it to us.

The gas had been liquefied by its own presWhen I first learned, my children, that I was sure. Faraday then tried compression with a syringe, and succeeded thus in liquefying the the ward of my mother's early friend, Mrs. gas. Davy immediately applied the method of Hollingford, and was to live under her roof self-compressing atmospheres to the liquefaction after my departure from school, I little thought of muriatic gas. Faraday continued the ex- that a place like Hillsbro' Farm was ever likely periments, and succeeded in reducing a number to be my home. I was a conceited young per of gases, till then deemed permanent, to the son, and fond of giving myself airs. My father liquid condition. These important investigawas colonel of his regiment, and I thought I tions established the fact that gases are but the had a right to look down on Lydia Brown, vapours of liquids possessing a very low boiling-whose father was in business, though she wore point, and gave a sure basis to the views at present entertained respecting molecular aggregation. Such results were not obtained without paying their price. While conducting his first experiments on the liquefaction of gases, thirteen pieces of glass were on one occasion driven by an explosion into Faraday's eye.

velvet three inches deep upon her frocks, while mine had no better trimming than worsted braid. I had spent all my life at school, from the day when my father and mother kissed me for the last time in Miss Sweetman's parlour. I remember yet my pretty mother's pale tearful face as she looked back at me through the carriage window, Equally wonderful and suggestive of conseand my own paroxysm of despairing tears on quences was his discovery of the magnetisation the mat when the door was shut. After that I of light. The same may be said of his specula-vourite at school, having a disposition to make had a pleasant enough life of it. I was a fations touching the nature of matter, for which the reader is referred to the memoir itself. Enough has been written to show that it contains, in its hundred and seventy pages, besides a memorial to departed greatness, ample materials for thought, improvement, and study.

We will take leave of Faraday in the words of M. Deville: "The grandeur and the goodness of his character, the unalterable purity of his scientific life, the sincere love of what was right and just, which he always practised with the ardour and vivacity inherent in his nature-all these high qualities, and all these virtues which are pictured on his animated and sympathetic features, have exercised over his compatriots and the numerous strangers who visit him an attraction which no one to my knowledge could resist."

THE LATE MISS HOLLINGFORD.

CHAPTER I.

A DEAR old lady tells us this story in the late autumn evenings. Now the harvest is in, huge haycocks shelter the gable, the honey is strained and put by in jars, the apples are ripened and stored; the logs begin to sputter and sing in the big parlour at evening, hot cakes to steam on the tea-table, and the pleasant lamp-lit hours to spread themselves. Indoor things begin to have meaning looks of their own, our limbs grow quiet, and our brains begin to work. The moors beyond the window take strange expressions in the twilight, and fold mysteries into their hollows with the shadows of the night. The maids in the kitchen sing wild ballads to one another round the ingle; and when one of us young folks threads the rambling passages above to fetch a stray thimble from one of the lavender-scented bedrooms, she comes back flying down the great hollow staircase as if a

as I could. I remyself and others as happy quired a good deal of snubbing, but when properly kept down I believe I was not a disagreeable girl.

My Indian letters generally contained some bit of news to amuse or interest my companions, and now and again captain, or ensign somebody, home upon sick leave, called and presented himself in Miss Sweetman's parlour, with curious presents for me, my mistresses, or favourite companions. I remember well the day when Major Guthrie arrived with the box of stuffed birds. Miss Kitty Sweetman, our youngest and best-loved mistress, was sent on before me to speak civilly to the gentleman in the parlour, and announce my coming. Miss Kitty was the drudge of the school, the sweetesttempered drudge in the world. She was not so well informed as her elder sisters, and had to make up in the quantity of her teaching what it lacked in the quality. She was fagged, and hunted, and worried from morning till night by all the small girls in the school. She would have been merry if she had had time, and she was witty whenever she could get the chance of being anything but a machine; but she was not always happy, for I slept in her room, and I sometimes heard her crying in the night. As I remember her first she was young and pretty, but as time went on she grew a little faded, and a little harassed looking; though I still thought her sweet enough for anything.

Well, Miss Kitty went down to the majer, and I, following close upon her heels, heard a little scream as I paused at the parlour door, and there when I went in was a bronzed-looking gentleman holding Miss Kitty's two hands in his, and looking in her face. And I could not care about the birds for thinking of it, and when we went up to bed Miss Kitty told me that Major Guthrie was an old friend of her

family, and that he had said he would call again. And surely enough he did call again; and then it happened that the three Miss Sweetmans were invited out to an evening party-a great event for them. I thought there was something very particular about it, and so I took care to dress Miss Kitty with my own bands. She had a plain white dress, and I insisted on lending her my blue sash and coral necklace; and when she was dressed she put her finger in her mouth, and asked, between laughing and crying, whether I could further accommodate her with a coral and bells. She looked as young as anybody, though she would make fun of herself. And when she came in that night, and saw my open eyes waiting for her, she sat down on my bed and began to cry, and told me that Major Guthrie had asked her to marry him, and she was going to India as his wife. Then I heard the whole story; how he had loved her dearly long ago; how her friends had refused him because he was too poor, and she was too young; how after he had gone off in a passion reverses had come upon them, and she and her sisters had been obliged to open a school. And so Miss Kitty went out to India, and the only thing that comforted me for her loss was the fact that she took with her the embroidered handkerchief for my mother, and the wrought cigar-case for my father, which it had taken my idleness a whole year to produce. Ah, me and my eyes never beheld either of these three again: friend, father, nor mother.

to

was a banker in the City. After my twelfth birthday I saw them no more. I missed the periodical appearance of the noble face in the parlour. Miss Sweetman, with a very long face, told me something of the breaking of a bank, ruin, and poverty. I was very sorry, but I was too young to realise it much; and I went on thinking of Mrs. Hollingford, in trouble, no doubt, and unfortunately removed from me, but still going about the world in her long velvet cloak and with her hands full of plumcake.

So my youth went on till I was sixteen, pretty well grown for my years, a little pert, a little proud, a little fond of tinsels and butterflies, a little too apt to make fun of my neighbours, and to believe that the sun had got a special commission to shine upon me, but withal sympathetic and soft-hearted enough when in my right senses, and, as I said before, not a bad sort of girl when properly kept down by a judicious system of snubbing. I had already begun to count the months to the happy time, two years hence, when, my education being finished, I should at last rejoin my parents in India; and I was fond of describing all the beautiful things I would send as presents to the friends who had been kind to me in England. And then one fearful day came the black letter bearing the terrible news which bowed my head in the dust, scattered my girlish vanities, and altered all my fate for life. Every one in the house learned the news before me. I saw blank faces all around, and could only guess the cause, so careful were they to break it to me gradually. For two dreadful days they kept me on the rack of suspense, while I did not know whether it was my father or mother who was dead, or whether both were ill, or only one. But I learned all soon enough. There had been a fever, and both were dead. I was an orphan, quite alone in the world.

My first recollections of Mrs. Hollingford are associated with plum-cake, birthdays, and bonbons. I remember her an erect, dignifiedlooking lady in a long velvet cloak, and with a peculiarly venerable face, half severe, half benevolent. I used to feel a little nervous about speaking to her, but I liked to sit at a distance and look at her. I had a superstition that she was the most powerful universal agent in existence; that she had only to say "Let there be For three years after this I remained with plum-cake," and immediately it would appear the Miss Sweetmans, during which time I had on the table; or, "This little girl requires a regained much of my old cheerfulness, and also new doll," and at once a waxen cherub would some degree of my natural pride and impertirepose in my arms. The Miss Sweetmans paid nence. My father and mother had been to me her the greatest deference, and the girls used a memory and a hope; now they were a memory peep over the blinds in the schoolroom at only. After my first grief and sense of desolaher handsome carriage and powdered servants. tion had passed, I went on with the routine of I remember, when a very little girl, presenting my days much as before. I did not miss my myself before Miss Sweetman one day, and pop-father and mother every hour as though I had ping up my hand as a sign that I wanted to ask a lived under their roof and been familiar with question. "What is the reason, Miss Sweetman," their faces and caresses. But the bright exI asked, "that Mrs. Hollingford makes me think pectation of my youth was extinguished, and I of the valiant woman of whom we were reading suffered secretly a great yearning for the love in the Bible yesterday ?" But Miss Sweet- which I had now no right to claim from any one. man was busy, and only puckered up her mouth The time was fast approaching when I must and ordered me back to my seat. Mrs. Hol- take my school-books down from Miss Sweetlingford used to take me on her knee and tell mans' shelves, pack up my trunks, and go forth me of a little girl of hers who was at school in among strangers. I had some property, more France, and with whom I was one day to be than enough for my needs, and I was to dwell acquainted; and a tall lad, who was her son, under the roof of my guardian, Mrs. Hollingused to call sometimes with bouquets for Miss ford. In the mean time, I paid several visits Sweetman or sugar-plums for me; but I was to the home of a wealthy schoolfellow, who had never in her house, which I believed to be a entered upon fashionable life, and who was palace, nor did I ever see Mr. Hollingford, who eager to give me a taste of its delights before I

"Miss Dacre and Miss Leonard, I must make you acquainted," said our hostess (the meddling lady whom I have already quoted on the subject of the Hollingford misdemeanours). Agent, is he?" said I, mischievously." You intend passing the winter at Hillsbro', "Then I should think he must at least know Miss Leonard ?" how to read and write. Come, that is not so bad!"

"You will get the worst of it, Grace," said Frederick Tyrrell, who was listening. Lucky fellow, Hollingford, to have such a champion!" So here I had better explain to you, my dears, that Captain Tyrrell was, even at this time, what old-fashioned people used to call a great beau of mine; that he was fond of dangling about my skirts and picking up my fan. Nothing more on this subject is necessary here. If you desire to know what he is like, I refer you to an old water-colour sketch of a weak-worthy people, but Mr. Hill has changed his faced, washed-out looking young man, with handsome features, and a high-collared coat, which you will find in an old portfolio up-stairs, on the top shelf of the wardrobe, in the lumber