"From Turin we proceeded to Genoa, which place we left afterwards in an open boat, and proceeded by sea towards Lerici. This place we reached after a very disagreeable passage, and not without apprehensions of being overset by the way. As there was nothing there very enticing, we continued our route to Florence; and, after a stay of three weeks or a month, left that fine city, and in four days arrived here at Rome." The foregoing is from Faraday's letter to his mother. At Florence a good deal of time was spent in the Academia del Cimento. Here Faraday saw the telescope with which Galileo discovered Jupiter's satellites, with its tube of wood and paper about three feet and a half long, and simple object-glass and eye-glass. A red velvet electric machine with a rubber of gold paper, Leyden jars pierced by the discharge between their armatures, the first lens constructed by Galileo, and a number of other objects, were full of interest to the recently enfranchised bookbinder's apprentice; but it was the great burning-glass of the grand-duke which was the most serviceable of all the treasures of the museum. With this glass--which consisted of two convex lenses about three feet six inches apart, the first lens having a diameter of about fourteen or fifteen inches, and the second a diameter of three inches--Davy succeeded in burning several diamonds in oxygen gas, and in proving that the diamond consists of little else than carbon. In 1818 Faraday published a paper on this subject in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_. At Genoa some experiments were made with the torpedo, but the specimens caught were very small and weak, and their shocks so feeble that no definite results were obtained. At Rome Davy attempted to repeat an experiment of Signor Morrichini, whereby a steel needle was magnetized by causing the concentrated violet and blue rays from the sun to traverse the needle from the middle to the north end several times. The experiment did not succeed in the hands of Davy and Faraday, and it was left to the latter to discover a relation between magnetism and light. From Rome they visited Naples and ascended Vesuvius, and shortly afterwards left Italy for Geneva. In the autumn of 1814 they returned from Switzerland through Germany, visiting Berne, Zurich, the Tyrol, Padua, Venice, and Bologne, to Florence, where Davy again carried out some chemical investigations in the laboratory of the academy. Thence they returned to Rome, and in the spring went on to Naples, and again visited Vesuvius, returning to England in April, _via_ Rome, the Tyrol, Stuttgart, Brussels, and Ostend. A fortnight after his return from the Continent Faraday was again assistant at the Royal Institution, but with a salary of thirty shillings a week. His character will be sufficiently evident from the quotations which have been given from his diary and letters. Henceforth we must be mainly occupied with the consideration of his scientific work.