In the year 1834 a boy living in a distant part of England wrote to Professor Faraday, saying that he was desirous of taking up a scientific career. Doubtless remembering his own beginning, Faraday sent "by return of post a kind and courteous reply," which that boy, grown to man's estate, and known as Doctor J. Scoffern, gratefully referred to in a graceful tribute which he wrote after Faraday's death. It was during this early part of Faraday's success that he once gave evidence in a judicial case, when the scientific testimony was so diverse that the judge, in summing up, levelled something very like a reproach at the scientific witnesses, saying, "Science has not shone this day." Faraday would never again appear as a witness in a court of law. This is, perhaps, the most fitting place in which we can refer to some slight account of Faraday's home-life in the Institution, which is given by his brother-in-law George (Mrs. Faraday's youngest brother) and Miss Reid (her niece). George Barnard was much with the Faradays in these earlier times. "All the years I was with Harding I dined at the Royal Institution," he says. "After dinner we nearly always had our games just like boys--sometimes at ball, or with horse-chestnuts instead of marbles--Faraday appearing to enjoy them as much as I did, and generally excelling us all. Sometimes we rode round the theatre on a velocipede, which was then a new thing." It is said "that sometimes of an early summer morning the philosopher was to be seen going up Hampstead Hill on this velocipede." Barnard tells, too, of Faraday's unflagging good spirits and his faculty for entering with keen enjoyment into any fun that was going forward--pic-nics up the river, with rustic cookery, charades, or anything else the party seemed bent upon, Faraday would join in with delight; how he used to attend Hullmandel's conversaziones, where he met many of the leading singers and artists of the day--Garcia and Malibran, Sir Edwin Landseer, Clarkson Stanfield, J. M. W. Turner, and indeed most of the members of the Royal Academy. The last-named artist often applied to Faraday for chemical information about his pigments; upon Turner, and all artists who made similar requests, Faraday would always impress the importance there was in their prosecuting experiments with regard to their colours themselves, giving them a hint to put some of their colour and colour-washes in a bright sunlight, covering up one half and leaving the other exposed, and then observing the effect of light and gases on the latter. Mr. Barnard says that during their various country trips Faraday was in the habit of just "rambling about geologising or botanising."