"With kindest remembrances and thoughts to all with you and her at Hastings,
The following is written to Mr. Frank Barnard, then an Art student in Paris:--
"Though I am not a letter-writer and shall not profess to send you any news, yet I intend to waste your time with one sheet of paper: first to thank you for your letter to me, and then to thank you for what I hear of your letters to others. You were very kind to take the trouble of executing my commissions, when I know your heart was bent upon the entrance to your studies. Your account of M. Arago was most interesting to me, though I should have been glad if in the matter of health you could have made it better. He has a wonderful mind and spirit. And so you are hard at work, and somewhat embarrassed by your position: but no man can do just as he likes, and in many things he has to give way, and may do so honourably, provided he preserve his self-respect. Never, my dear Frank, lose that, whatever may be the alternative. Let no one tempt you to it; for nothing can be expedient that is not right; and though some of your companions may tease you at first, they will respect you for your consistency in the end; and if they pretend not to do so, it is of no consequence. However, I trust the hardest part of your probation is over, for the earliest is usually the hardest; and that you know how to take all things quietly. Happily for you, there is nothing in your pursuit which need embarrass you in Paris. I think you never cared for home politics, so that those of another country are not likely to occupy your attention, and a stranger can be but a very poor judge of a new people and their requisites.
"I think all your family are pretty well, but I know you will hear all the news from your appointed correspondent Jane, and, as I said, I am unable to chronicle anything. Still, I am always very glad to hear how you are going on, and have a sight of all that I may see of the correspondence.
His scientific researches were very numerous. The Royal Society Catalogue gives under the name of Faraday a list of 158 papers, published in various scientific magazines or learned Transactions. Many of these communications are doubtless short, but a short philosophical paper often represents a large amount of brain work; a score of them are the substance of his Friday evening discourses; while others are lengthy treatises, the records of long and careful investigations; and the list includes the thirty series of his "Experimental Researches in Electricity." These extended over a period of twenty-seven years, and were afterwards reprinted from the "Philosophical Transactions," and form three goodly volumes, with 3,430 numbered paragraphs--one of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work, one of the rarest treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has ever been enriched. Faraday never published but one book in the common acceptation of the term--it was on "Chemical Manipulation,"--but there appeared another large volume of reprinted papers: and three of his courses of lectures were also published as separate small books, though not by himself. It is very tempting to linger among these 158 papers; but this is not intended as a scientific biography, and those readers who wish to make themselves better acquainted with his work will find an admirable summary of it in Professor Tyndall's "Faraday as a Discoverer." In Sections IV. and V., however, I have endeavoured to give an idea of his manner of working, and of the practical benefits that have flowed to mankind from some of his discoveries.