Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 46763-h.htm or 46763-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46763/46763-h/46763-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46763/46763-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/michaelfaradayma00jerr Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). [Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY.] MICHAEL FARADAY: Man of Science. by WALTER JERROLD. "Whose work was wrought for love, and not for gain." "One rule his life was fashioned to fulfil; That he who tends Truth's shrine and does the hest Of Science, with a humble, faithful will, The God of Truth and Knowledge serveth best." Fleming H. Revell Company, New York Chicago Toronto Publishers of Evangelical Literature. [Illustration] PREFACE. "Tyndall, I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last." In these words, with which he replied to Professor Tyndall's urgent appeal to him to accept the Presidency of the Royal Society, we have a key-note to the character of the illustrious yet modest scientist, the good and great man, whose life-story I have attempted to tell in the following pages. A life-story such as that of Michael Faraday is both easy and difficult to tell--it is easy in that he passed a simple and unadventurous life; it is difficult, partly, perhaps, for the same reason, and partly because the story of his life-work is a story of the wonderful advance made in natural science during the first half of the present century. Any detailed account of that scientific work would be out of place in a biography such as the present, which aims at showing by the testimony of those who knew him and by an account of his relations with his fellow-men, how nobly unselfish, how simple, yet how grand and useful, was the long life of Michael Faraday. Besides this, we are shown--how many an illustrious name in the bede-roll of our great men brings it to mind--that with an enthusiastic love for a particular study, and unflagging perseverance in pursuance of it, the most adverse circumstance of birth and fortune may be overcome, and he who has striven take rank among the great and good whose names adorn the annals of their country. Such lives are useful, not alone for the work which is done, but for the example which they afford us, that we also--to use Longfellow's well-known, yet beautifully true lines-- "May make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time."