I consider your letter to me as a great compliment, and should view the appointment at the Trinity House, which you propose, in the same light; but I may not accept even honours without due consideration. In the first place, my time is of great value to me; and if the appointment you speak of involved anything like periodical routine attendances, I do not think I could accept it. But if it meant that in consultation, in the examination of proposed plans and experiments, in trials, etc., made as my convenience would allow, and with an honest sense of a duty to be performed, then I think it would consist with my present engagements. You have left the title and the sum in pencil. These I look at mainly as regards the character of the appointment; you will believe me to be sincere in this when you remember my indifference to your proposition as a matter of interest, though _not as a matter of kindness_. In consequence of the goodwill and confidence of all around me, I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes. The sum, therefore, of £200 is quite enough in itself, but not if it is to be the indicator of the character of the appointment; but I think you do not view it so, and that you and I understand each other in that respect; and your letter confirms me in that opinion. The position which I presume you would wish me to hold is analogous to that of a standing counsel. As to the title, it might be what you pleased almost. Chemical adviser is too narrow, for you would find me venturing into parts of the philosophy of light not chemical. Scientific adviser you may think too broad (or in me too presumptuous); and so it would be, if by it was understood all science. He held the post of scientific adviser for nearly thirty years. The records of his work are to be found in nineteen large portfolios full of manuscripts, all indexed with that minute and scrupulous attention to order and method which characterised all his work. He also held nominally the post of scientific adviser to the Admiralty, at a salary of £200 a year. But this salary he never drew. Once the officials of the Admiralty requested his opinion upon a printed advertising pamphlet of somebody’s patent disinfecting powder and anti-miasma lamp. Faraday returned it, with a quietly indignant protest that it was not such a document as he could be expected to give an opinion upon.