Faraday was far from being a mere laboratory student; he was much more even than a great teacher of physics. He was a magnificent popular lecturer, and did an incalculable amount to bring physics to the attention and the serious interest of his generation. A contemporary has described one of his lectures at the Royal Institution in such a way as to give us some idea, even at this distant date, of Faraday's power over his audience, of his own wonderful interest in the subject and his marvelous ability to communicate that interest to others. It was of the very nature of the man that he should not be cold and formal, for he was not a man of the head alone, but, above all, a man whose heart and affections were greatly developed, and he had powers of enthusiasm that placed him high among the artistic spirits of mankind. Our American poet, Stedman, once declared that the intellectual quality of the poet, the creator in the realm of thought, and of the scientist, the original worker in the domain of science, differed but little from one another, and must be considered as collateral expressions of the same form of intellectual genius. With this in mind, his contemporary's enthusiastic description of his lectures will not seem overdrawn. "It was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and insisted upon sympathy. It waked the young from their visions, and the old from their dreams. There was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. Their radiance seemed to send a strange light into the very heart of his congregation; and when he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the fervor of his words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. His thought was rapid, and made itself a way in new phrases, if it found none ready made, as the mountaineer cuts steps in the most hazardous ascent with his own axe. His enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of ecstasy."