This reference to getting home on Saturday evening is especially interesting, for Faraday always took his wife home to her father's house every Saturday evening, that she might see her family; they all went to church together on the Sunday. This was an unvarying rule of Faraday's for very many years, as long, indeed, as it was possible. Faraday's mother, after having lived to see "her Michael" come to be one of the great men of his time, died at Islington in March, 1838. The loss must have been keenly felt by Faraday, for between mother and son the tenderest affection had always subsisted. She was justly proud of the position which her boy had won for himself; and he ever retained that beautiful chivalrous kindness and deference to his mother that had characterised him all along. The passages from his earlier letters to his mother which have been given in previous pages are evidence of this, and his kindly consideration was ever the same. Much as the death of his mother, and, a few years later, of his brother Robert, affected him, Faraday had in his beautiful clear-sighted faith in his religion a source of inextinguishable solace, and looking forward to a reunion hereafter could see a "beautiful and consoling influence in the midst of all these troubles." Severe and long-continued mental work, as I have said, began to tell upon Faraday in 1839, and he was ordered by his doctor to take an absolute rest. He suffered from loss of memory and similar symptoms of an overworked brain. His wife, as her niece tells us, used to carry him off to Brighton, or somewhere down into the country for a few days when he became dull and low-spirited, and the rest soon restored him. During such a sojourn at Brighton, towards the close of 1839, Professor Brande wrote to him, saying that the doctor said Faraday was to remain thoroughly idle for a time; and he (Brande) kindly offered at the same time to do anything he could to relieve Faraday of any routine work. He had indeed read some of Faraday's electricity lectures at the Institution, although, as he terms it in his letter to Faraday, "he began to fear the fate of Phæton in the chariot of Phoebus." As yet, however, Faraday would not take a very long-continued rest, and he was before long back in Albemarle Street working, although less than he had been doing.