those who engage me." This letter is, as I have said, characteristic of the writer; it is characteristic of his sensitiveness to any honour done to him, and of his unworldliness, of his conscientiousness in making sure that he will be able to perform anything that he may undertake, and of a half-diffidence with regard to himself as to whether he was able to do all that was anticipated of him. For nearly thirty years, with credit to himself and to the Brethren of the Trinity House, did Michael Faraday continue as their scientific adviser. Frequently do we find him experimenting on lights and lighting--visiting the various lighthouses round the coast, trying the electric light for them, comparing the various lights, and reporting to the Brethren--such work as this is, as has been said, to be frequently noted in looking over a record of the mass of work which during these years Faraday was doing. It is pleasing to notice here that on her husband's death Mrs. Faraday presented such of his portfolios, of well-ordered and indexed manuscripts, as referred to this part of his work to the Trinity House. So carefully were these notes made and kept that it is possible now to refer quite easily to any particular piece of work on which Faraday was engaged during these thirty years. In this same year (1836) there appeared the _Life of Sir Humphry Davy_, by his brother, Dr. John Davy. In this work statements were made with relation to Faraday and his patron which were not true; and painful indeed though it must have been to the former, he felt compelled to deny them. This he did in a long letter to his friend R. Phillips, editor of the _Philosophical Magazine_, in which periodical the letter was published. "I regret," Faraday wrote, "that Dr. Davy has made that necessary which I did not think before so; but I feel that I cannot, after his observation, indulge my earnest desire to be silent on the matter, without incurring the risk of being charged with something opposed to an _honest_ character. This I dare not risk; but in answering for myself I trust that it will be understood that I have been driven unwillingly into utterance." The subject must indeed have been a painful one; to have to assert his own right to be the discoverer of certain chemical results which were being credited to Davy. In one or two cases, when he found that he had been preceded in the discovery of anything he was the first to acknowledge that all honour was due to his predecessor, and that strict regard for true honesty in all things very properly would not allow him to be silent now. He concludes his letter to Phillips in these words, "Believing that I have now said enough to preserve my own 'honest fame' from any injury it might have risked from the mistakes of Dr. Davy, I willingly bring this letter to a close, and trust that I shall never again have to address you on the subject."