In November, 1845, he announced his discovery of the 'Magnetization of Light and the Illumination of the Lines of Magnetic Force.' This title provoked comment at the time, and caused misapprehension. He therefore added an explanatory note; but the note left his meaning as entangled as before. In fact Faraday had notions regarding the magnetization of light which were peculiar to himself, and untranslatable into the scientific language of the time. Probably no other philosopher of his day would have employed the phrases just quoted as appropriate to the discovery announced in 1845. But Faraday was more than a philosopher; he was a prophet, and often wrought by an inspiration to be understood by sympathy alone. The prophetic element in his character occasionally coloured, and even injured, the utterance of the man of science; but subtracting that element, though you might have conferred on him intellectual symmetry, you would have destroyed his motive force. But let us pass from the label of this casket to the jewel it contains. 'I have long,' he says, 'held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common, I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.... This strong persuasion,' he adds, 'extended to the powers of light.' And then he examines the action of magnets upon light. From conversation with him and Anderson, I should infer that the labour preceding this discovery was very great. The world knows little of the toil of the discoverer. It sees the climber jubilant on the mountain top, but does not know the labour expended in reaching it. Probably hundreds of experiments had been made on transparent crystals before he thought of testing his heavy glass. Here is his own clear and simple description of the result of his first experiment with this substance:--'A piece of this glass, about two inches square, and 0.5 of an inch thick, having flat and polished edges, was placed as a diamagnetic[1] between the poles (not as yet magnetized by the electric current), so that the polarized ray should pass through its length; the glass acted as air, water, or any other transparent substance would do; and if the eye-piece were previously turned into such a position that the polarized ray was extinguished, or rather the image produced by it rendered invisible, then the introduction of the glass made no alteration in this respect. In this state of circumstances, the force of the electro-magnet was developed by sending an electric current through its coils, and immediately the image of the lamp-flame became visible and continued so as long as the arrangement continued magnetic. On stopping the electric current, and so causing the magnetic force to cease, the light instantly