Dr. Gladstone, in his Life of Faraday, which we have so often put into requisition, has given in one striking paragraph a description of the passing of Faraday, that in its simplicity is worthy of the great man whom it so well represents. It is so different from what is ordinarily supposed to be the attitude of the scientist towards death, that when by contrast we recall that Faraday is acknowledged to be the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century, the man of his generation most honored by scientific societies at home and abroad--his honorary memberships numbered nearly one hundred--it must be considered as a very curious contradiction of what is the usual impression in this matter: "When his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day, when his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that then spanned the sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-colored arch and observed, 'He hath set His testimony in the heavens.' On August 25th, 1867, quietly, almost imperceptibly, came the release. There was a philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven." When we come to the end of the life of this greatest of experimentalists, the most striking remembrance is that of the supreme original genius of this great discoverer in electricity, whose work was such a stimulus to others, whose conclusions were to prove the basis for so much of the work of his contemporaries and his successors in electrical investigation, and whose place in the world of science is assured beside such men as Newton and Kepler and Harvey and the other great pioneers in science. There is no doubt at all, however, that our heartiest feelings are aroused by the picture of the wonderfully rounded existence of the great scientist, his pervasive humanity, his largeness of soul and sympathy, his understanding of men in their ways through his own complete knowledge of himself, that is so strikingly displayed. We feel sure that Faraday himself would have cared less for his fame as a great scientist than for the summary of his life which has been given us by his friend, Bence Jones, who said: "His was a life-long strife, to seek and say that which he thought was true and to do that which he thought was kind." FOOTNOTES: [29] Some of the books bound by Faraday at this time are still preserved in the library of the Royal Institution, together with his notes on various courses of lectures, some of which are mentioned more particularly later on in this sketch, as they were also bound by him. Among the manuscripts in the collection are letters from many of the important scientific scientists of Europe. [30] Makers of Modern Medicine, Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1907. CHAPTER XI. CLERK MAXWELL.