re caution than philosophical deduction, nor
is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixity of
opinion.' Not that he was wafted about by every wind of doctrine; but
that he united flexibility with his strength. In striking contrast
with this intellectual expansiveness was his fixity in religion, but
this is a subject which cannot be discussed here.

Of all the letters published in these volumes none possess a greater
charm than those of Faraday to his wife. Here, as Dr. Bence Jones
truly remarks, 'he laid open all his mind and the whole of his
character, and what can be made known can scarcely fail to charm every
one by its loveliness, its truthfulness, and its earnestness.' Abbott
and he sometimes swerved into wordplay about love; but up to 1820, or
thereabouts, the passion was potential merely. Faraday's journal
indeed contains entries which show that he took pleasure in the
assertion of his contempt for love; but these very entries became
links in his destiny. It was through them that he became acquainted
with one who inspired him with a feeling which only ended with his
life. His biographer has given us the means of tracing the varying
moods which preceded his acceptance. They reveal more than the common
alternations of light and gloom; at one moment he wishes that his
flesh might melt and that he might become nothing; at another he is
intoxicated with hope. The impetuosity of his character was then
unchastened by the discipline to which it was subjected in after
years. The very strength of his passion proved for a time a bar to
its advance, suggesting, as it did, to the conscientious mind of Miss
Barnard, doubts of her capability to return it with adequate force.
But they met again and again, and at each successive meeting he found
his heaven clearer, until at length he was able to say, 'Not a
moment's alloy of this evening's happiness occurred. Everything was
delightful to the last moment of my stay with my companion, because
she was so.' The turbulence of doubt subsided, and a calm and
elevating confidence took its place. 'What can I call myself,' he
writes to her in a subsequent letter, 'to convey most perfectly my
affection and love for you? Can I or can truth say more than that for
this world I am yours? Assuredly he made his profession good, and no
fairer light falls upon his character than that which reveals his
relations to his wife. Never, I believe, existed a manlier, purer,
stea