His niece, Miss Reid, told how fond he was of seeing acrobats, tumblers, dwarfs and giants; even a Punch and Judy show was an unfailing source of delight. When travelling in Switzerland, as he did on several occasions, accompanied by Mrs. Faraday and her brother, George Barnard, the artist, he kept a journal, which reveals his simple pleasures and enthusiasms. He is delighted with waterfalls and avalanches, watches the cowherd collecting his cows and the shepherd calling the sheep, which followed him, leaving the goats to straggle. On one such visit (in 1841), in order that he might not be absent on Sunday from his wife, he walked the whole distance from Leukerbad to Thun, over the Gemmi--a distance of 45 miles--in one day. At Interlaken, observing that clout-nail-making was practised as a local industry, he wrote: “I love a smith’s shop and everything relating to smithery. My father was a smith.” [Sidenote: IMPRESSIONS OF LIEBIG.] In 1844 he was well enough to attend the British Association meeting at York. Liebig, who had also been there, wrote to him three months later with some reminiscences. What had struck him most was the tendency in England to ignore the more purely scientific works and to value only those with a “practical” bearing. “In Germany it is quite the contrary. Here, in the eyes of scientific men, no value, or at least but a trifling one, is placed on the practical results. The enrichment of science is alone considered worthy of attention.” Liebig further expressed himself dissatisfied with the meeting at York. He had been interested to make the acquaintance of so many celebrated men, but it was, strictly, “a feast given to the geologists, the other sciences serving only to decorate the table.” Then came a more personal note:-- Often do my thoughts wander back to the period which I spent in England, among the many pleasant hours of which the remembrance of those passed with you and your amiable wife is to me always the dearest and most agreeable. With the purest pleasure I bring to mind my walk with her, in the botanical garden at York, when I was afforded a glance of the richness of her mind; what a rare treasure you possess in her! The breakfast in the little house with Snow Harris, and Graham, and our being together at Bishopthorpe, are still fresh in my memory.