It is perhaps idle to speculate on such a matter, but it is more than likely that had Davy been free from the cares and restraints of office, and from the innumerable distractions inseparable from his position in the social and scientific world of London, he might have revealed the possibilities in electro-magnetism with the same brilliant success as he had done those of voltaic electricity. He was now at the maturity of his mental power, and had still much of the enthusiasm and ardour which characterised his earliest work, and under serener conditions he might have achieved triumphs not less striking than those reserved for Faraday. His few short papers on the subject indicate that he fully realised the great wealth of the new territory thus opened out to science, and into which he was one of the first to penetrate. But it is sad to think that he might have extended a more generous hand to one who, equally with himself, was striving to enter the new land, and who eventually did enter and for a time possessed it. In the concluding words of Davy’s last paper on electro-magnetism, we discern in the allusion to Wollaston’s idea of the possibility of the rotation of the electro-magnetic wire round its axis “the rift within the lute” in his relations towards his assistant, which widened in the matter of the condensation of chlorine, and which threatened to become an open breach when Faraday was elected into the Royal Society. The jealousy thus manifested by Davy is one of the most pitiful facts in his history. It was a sign of that moral weakness which was at the bottom of much of his unpopularity, and which revealed itself in various ways as his physical strength decayed. Greedy as he was of fame--that infirmity of noble minds--many incidents in his life up to this period prove that he was not wanting on occasion in a generous appreciation of the work of his contemporaries, even in fields he might reasonably claim as his own. But, although in his intellectual combats he could show at times a certain knightly courtesy, it must be confessed that he was lacking in the magnanimity which springs from the charity that envieth not.