While he never forced a peroration, nor dragged in a quotation from the poets, his own scientific inspiration, as he outlined some wide-sweeping speculation or suggestion for future discoveries, amply supplied the fitting finale. If the rush of his ideas might sometimes be compared to tearing through a jungle, it at least never degenerated into sermonising; and never, save when he was physically ill, failed to arouse an enthusiastic glow of response in his hearers. ‘No attentive listener,’ says Mrs. Crosse, ‘ever came away from one of Faraday’s lectures without having the limits of his spiritual vision enlarged, or without feeling that his imagination had been stimulated to something beyond the mere expression of physical facts.’” He was not one who let himself dwell in illusions. When he did well he was perfectly conscious of the fact, and enjoyed a modest satisfaction. If he had failed of his best, he was conscious too of that. His deliberate act in giving up all other lectures at the time when his brain-troubles were gaining upon him, while retaining the Christmas lectures to juveniles, was thoroughly characteristic. Of one of his earlier courses of lectures he himself made--about 1832--the following note:-- The eight lectures on the operations of the laboratory at the Royal Institution, April, 1828, were not to my mind. There does not appear to be that opportunity of fixing the attention of the audience by a single clear, consistent, and connected chain of reasoning which occurs when a principle (_sic_) or one particular application is made.... I do not think the operations of the laboratory can be rendered useful and popular in lectures.... The matter of these same lectures was, however, the basis of his book on Chemical Manipulation published in 1827. It went through three editions, and was reprinted in America. But in 1838 he declined to let a new edition be issued, as he considered the work out of date. Besides the note quoted above from the Faraday MS. occurs the following:-- The six juvenile lectures given Christmas, 1827, were just what they ought to have been, both in matter and manner; but it would not answer to give an extended course in the same spirit. Nineteen times did Faraday give the Christmas lectures. Those on the Chemistry of a Candle were given more than once; and were the last he gave, in 1860. They have been published, as were those on the Forces of Nature. The lectures on Metals he was urged to publish, but declined in the following terms:-- Royal Institution, January 3, 1859.