His laboratory assistant, long before he had won his great celebrity by his works, had by his modesty, his amiability, and his intelligence, gained most devoted friends at Paris, at Geneva, at Montpellier. Amongst these may be named in the front rank M. de la Rive, the distinguished chemist, father of the illustrious physicist whom we count amongst our foreign associates. The kindnesses with which he covered my youth contributed not a little to unite us--Faraday and myself. With pleasure we used to recall that we made one another’s acquaintance under the auspices of that affectionate and helpful philosopher whose example so truly witnessed that science does not dry up the heart’s blood. At Montpellier, beside the hospitable hearth of Bérard, the associate of Chaptal, doyen of our corresponding members, Faraday has left memories equally charged with an undying sympathy which his master could never have inspired. We admired Davy, we loved Faraday. It is December 29 when the travellers leave Paris and cross the forest of Fontainebleau. Faraday thinks he never saw a more beautiful scene than the forest dressed in an airy garment of crystalline hoar frost. They pass through Lyons, Montpellier, Aix, Nice, searching on the way for iodine in the sea-plants of the Mediterranean. At the end of January, 1814, they cross the Col de Tende over the snow at an elevation of 6,000 feet into Italy, and find themselves in the midst of the Carnival at Turin. They reach Genoa, and go to the house of a chemist to make experiments on the _raia torpedo_, the electric skate, trying to ascertain whether water could be decomposed by the electrical discharges of these singular fishes. From Genoa they go by sea to Lerici in an open boat, with much discomfort and fear of ship-wreck; and thence by land to Florence. [Sidenote: WITH DAVY IN ITALY.] At Florence he goes with Davy to the Accademia del Cimento. He sees the library, the gardens, the museum. Here is Galileo’s own telescope--a simple tube of paper and wood, with lenses at each end--with which he discovered Jupiter’s satellites. Here is the great burning glass of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. And here is a numerous collection of magnets, including one enormous loadstone supporting a weight of 150 pounds. They make “the grand experiment of burning the diamond” in oxygen by the sun’s heat concentrated through the Grand Duke’s burning glass. They find the diamond to be pure carbon. Then early in April they depart for Rome. From Rome Faraday wrote to his mother a long chatty letter summarising his travels, and sending messages of kindly remembrance to his old master Riebau and others. He tells how, in spite of political troubles, Sir Humphry Davy’s high name has procured them free admission everywhere, and how they have just heard that Paris has been taken by the Allied troops.