"I have received your note and read your pamphlet. There is nothing in either which makes it at all desirable to me to see your apparatus, for I have not time to spare to look at a matter two or three times over. In referring to ----, I suppose you refer also to his application to the Trinity House. In that case I shall hear from him _through the Trinity House_. He has, however, certain inquiries (which I have no doubt have gone to him long ago through the Trinity House) to answer before I shall think it necessary to take any further steps in the matter. With these, however, I suppose you have nothing to do. "Are you aware that many years ago our Institution was lighted up for months, if not for years together, by oil-gas (or, as you call it, olefiant gas), compressed into cylinders to the extent of thirty atmospheres, and brought to us from a distance? I have no idea that the patent referred to at the bottom of page 9 could stand for an hour in a court of law. I think, too, you are wrong in misapplying the word _olefiant_. It already belongs to a particular gas, and cannot, without confusion, be used as you use it. "I am Sir, "Your obedient Servant, "M. FARADAY." "SIR, "Thanks for your letter. At the close of it you ask me _privately_ and confidingly for the encouragement my opinion might give you if _this power_ gas-light is fit for lighthouses. I am unable to assent to your request, as my position at the Trinity House requires that I should be able to take up any subject, applications, or documents they may bring before me in a perfectly unbiassed condition of mind. "I am, Sir, "Yours very truly, "M. FARADAY." The kindliness which shed its genial radiance on every worthy object around, glowed most warmly on the domestic hearth. Little expressions in his writings often reveal it, as when we read in his Swiss journal about Interlaken: "Clout-nail making goes on here rather considerably, and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's shop, and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith." When he was sitting to Noble for his bust, it happened one day that the sculptor, in giving the finishing touches to the marble, made a clattering with his chisels: noticing that his sitter appeared _distrait_, he said that he feared the jingling of the tools had annoyed him, and that he was weary. "No, my dear Mr. Noble," said Faraday, putting his hand on his shoulder, "but the noise reminded me of my father's anvil, and took me back to my boyhood."