These beauties of character were not marred by serious defects or opposing faults. "He could not be too closely approached. There were no shabby places or ugly comers in his mind." Yet he was very far from being one of those passionless men who resemble a cold statue rather than throbbing flesh and blood. He was no "model of all the virtues," dreadfully uninteresting, and discouraging to those who feel such calm perfection out of their reach. His inner life was a battle, with its wounds as well as its victory. Proud by nature, and quick-tempered, he must have found the curb often necessary; but notwithstanding the rapidity of his actions and thoughts, he knew how to keep a tight rein on that fiery spirit. I have listened attentively to every remark in disparagement of Faraday's character, but the only serious ones have appeared to me to arise from a misunderstanding of the man, a misunderstanding the more easy because his standard of right and wrong, and of his own duty, often differed from the notions current around him. Still, it may be true that his extreme sensitiveness led him sometimes to do scant justice to those who, he imagined, were treading too closely in his own footsteps; as, for instance, when Nobili brought out some beautiful experiments on magnetism, just after the short notice of his own discoveries in 1831 which Faraday had sent to M. Hachette, and which was communicated to the Académie des Sciences. It is true also that, with his great caution and his repugnance to moral evil, he was more disposed to turn away in disgust from an erring companion than to endeavour to reclaim him. It has also been imputed to him as a fault that he founded no school, and took no young man by the hand as Davy had taken him. That this was rather his misfortune than his fault, would appear from words he once wrote to Miss Moore: "I have often endeavoured to discover a genius, but have not been very successful, though many cases seemed promising at first." The world would doubtless have been the gainer if he had stamped his own image on the minds of a group of disciples: but a man cannot do everything; and had Faraday been more of a teacher, he would perhaps have been less of an investigator. Of course Faraday was subject, like other men, to errors of judgment, and it was impossible, even if desirable, always to avoid giving offence. Thus he was constantly pestered for his autograph; and instead of throwing the applications into his waste-paper basket, he had a formal circular lithographed excusing himself from complying. This offended more than one recipient; and he was roughly made aware of it by once having the circular returned from St. Louis with a scurrilous comment, and the postage from America not prepaid. He never again used the printed form, Miss Barnard undertaking to answer all such requests.