In 1821, the year of his marriage, came the first of the important scientific discoveries which brought him international fame. This was the discovery of the electromagnetic rotations. It appears that Oersted’s brilliant flash of insight that the “electric conflict acts in a revolving manner” upon the pole of the neighbouring compass needle had been lost sight of in the discussions which followed, and to which allusion has been made above. All the world was thinking about attractions and repulsions. Two men, however, seem to have gone a little further in their ideas. Dr. Wollaston had suggested that there ought to be a tendency, when a magnet pole was presented towards a straight conducting wire carrying a current, for that conducting wire to revolve around its own axis. This effect--though in recent years it has been observed by Mr. George Gore--he unsuccessfully tried to observe by experiments. He came in April, 1821, to the laboratory of the Royal Institution to make an experiment, but without result. Faraday, at the request of his friend Phillips, who was editor of the _Annals of Philosophy_, wrote for that magazine in July, August, and September a historical sketch of electromagnetism down to date. This was one of the very few of Faraday’s writings that was anonymous. It was simply signed “M.” This is in vol. iii. p. 107. On p. 117 the editor says: “To the historical sketch of electromagnetism with which I have been favoured by my anonymous correspondent, I shall add a sketch of the discoveries that have been made by Mr. Faraday of the Royal Institution.” In the course of this work Faraday repeated for his own satisfaction almost all the experiments that he described. This led him to discover that a wire, included in the circuit, but mounted so as to hang with its lower end in a pool of quicksilver, could rotate around the pole of a magnet; and conversely that if the wire were fixed and the pole of the magnet free to move, the latter would rotate around the former. “I did not realise,” he wrote, “Dr. Wollaston’s expectation of the rotation of the electromagnetic wire around its axis.” As was so often his custom, he had no sooner finished the research for publication than he dashed off a brief summary of it in a letter to one of his friends. On this occasion it was Professor G. de la Rive, of Geneva, who was the recipient of his confidences. On September 12 he wrote:-- [Sidenote: LETTER TO DE LA RIVE.] I am much flattered and encouraged to go on by your good opinion of what little things I have been able to do in science, and especially as regards the chlorides of carbon. * * * * *