I was never able to make a fact my own without seeing it; and the descriptions of the best works altogether failed to convey to my mind such a knowledge of things as to allow myself to form a judgment upon them. It was so with _new_ things. If Grove, or Wheatstone, or Gassiot, or any other told me a new fact, and wanted my opinion either of its value, or the cause, or the evidence it could give on any subject, I never could say anything until I had seen the fact. For the same reason I never could work, as some Professors do most extensively, by students or pupils. All the work had to be my own. [Sidenote: INCOME AND EXPENDITURE.] Of Faraday’s social life and surroundings during his meridional and later period much might be written. After his great researches of 1831 to 1836 scientific honours flowed in freely upon him, especially from foreign academies and universities; and the fame he won at home would have brought him, had he been so minded, an ample professional fortune and all the artificial amenities of Society which follow the successful money-maker. From all such mundane “success” he cut himself off when in 1831 he decided to abandon professional fee-earning, and to devote himself to the advancement of science. Probably the tenets of the religious body to which he belonged were a leading factor in compelling this decision. Not having laid upon him the necessity of providing for a family, and accustomed to live in an unostentatious style, he could contemplate the future without anxiety. With his pension, his Woolwich lectures, and his Trinity House appointment, Faraday was in no sense poor, though his Royal Institution professorship never brought him so much as £300 a year until after he was over sixty years of age; but on the other hand, his private charities were very numerous. How much of his income was spent in that way can never be known; for the very privacy of his deeds of kindness prevented any record from being kept. Certain it is that his gifts to the aged poor and sick must have amounted to several hundreds of pounds a year; for while his income for many years must have averaged at least £1,000 or £1,100, and his domestic expenditure could not have much exceeded half that sum, he does not seem to have attempted to save anything. Nor did he grudge time or strength to do kindly charitable acts in visiting the sick.