It is not without significance, perhaps, that all the four men thus contemptuously labelled by Keble as the “hodge-podge of philosophers” were Dissenters. Brewster and Brown (the great botanist and discoverer of the “Brownian” motion of particles) belonged to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Dalton was a Member of the Society of Friends, and Faraday a Sandemanian. Newman appears to have been equally discomposed by the circumstance, for he got his friend Mr. Rose to write an article--a long and weary diatribe--against the British Association, which he inserted in the _British Critic_ for 1839. Its slanders, assumptions, suppressions, and suggestions are in a very unworthy temper. Faraday’s devotion to the Royal Institution and its operations was marvellous. He had already abandoned outside professional work. From 1838 he refused to see any callers except three times a week. His extreme desire was to give himself uninterruptedly to research. His friend A. de la Rive says:-- Every morning Faraday went into his laboratory as the man of business goes to his office, and then tried by experiment the truth of the ideas which he had conceived overnight, as ready to give them up if experiment said _no_ as to follow out the consequences with rigorous logic if experiment answered _yes_. He had in 1827 declined the appointment of Professor of Chemistry in the University (afterwards called University College) of London, giving as his reason the interests of the Royal Institution. He wrote:-- I think it a matter of duty and gratitude on my part to do what I can for the good of the Royal Institution in the present attempt to establish it firmly. The Institution has been a source of knowledge and pleasure to me for the last fourteen years; and though it does not pay me in salary what I _now_ strive to do for it, yet I possess the kind feelings and goodwill of its authorities and members, and all the privileges it can grant or I require; and, moreover, I remember the protection it has afforded me during the past years of my scientific life. These circumstances, with the thorough conviction that it is a useful and valuable establishment, and the strong hopes that exertions will be followed with success, have decided me in giving at least two years more to it, in the belief that after that time it will proceed well, into whatever hands it may pass. In 1829, however, he was asked to become lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Academy at Woolwich. As this involved only twenty lectures a year he agreed, the salary being fixed at £200 a year. These lectures were continued until 1849. [Sidenote: TRINITY HOUSE APPOINTMENT.] In 1836 the whole course of his scientific work was changed by his appointment as scientific adviser to Trinity House, the body which has official charge of the lighthouse service in Great Britain. To the Deputy-master he wrote:--