If he wasn't a twins, sure our history will
show

That at least he's worth any two saints that
we know!'

Then they all got blind dhrunk, which
completed their bliss,
And we keep up the practice from that day

to this."

written without a conscious effort to suit
them for the voice. Many of the verses in
this book have an ease and natural melody
from which we suspect that Mr. Lover has
a gift superior to art, though he modestly
ascribes his successes to cultivation and
Whatever be the plan upon
practice.
which he has worked, we are glad to thank
him for the result, and to wish that this, the
fifth edition of his book may be soon followed
by a sixth, in which he will have a further
opportunity of enforcing his theory by writ-
ing clever and pleasant ballads.

From The London Review. FARADAY.*

THIS sketch of the professional career of a great man who has recently gone from amongst us is in no sense biographical; and yet it is extremely personal. The narrative of Faraday's discoveries has been so cunningly interwoven by Professor Tyndall The ballads and verses of occasion inter- with suggestions of the idiosyncrasy of which spersed throughout this book do not strike they were the outward result, that instead us as being much above the average of such of a merely scientific treatise we have a compositions, although this must be said for story which has all the charms of a romance. them, that Mr. Lover, in every instance, dis- Materials for a life of Faraday, Professor plays the accomplishment of a thoroughly Tyndall tells us, were not in his hands; musical ear, and a nice sense of the best and the present volume, while laying before words for singing. The love-verses belong us many illustrations of Faraday's character to a school which has now passed away. and habits, will be chiefly valuable as an The lyrics of Bayley and his friends had attempt, by one of the very few men commuch of the finical sentiment of Mr. petent to make it, to trace the line at which Lover's, which seem cold when placed be- Faraday's researches and investigations side the hot-and-strong declarations of pas- passed into the domain of independent dission which young ladies and gentlemen are covery. The main facts of Faraday's life now enabled to shout or murmur from the are probably familiar to most of our readpianoforte. Occasionally, however, we come ers. They know that he was born at Newacross some which are certainly pretty, with ington Butts in 1791; that, at the age of a peculiar old-fashioned daintiness and deli- thirteen, he was apprenticed to a bookbindcacy about them. Mr. Lover, in his preface, er, a trade at which he worked for several says that his first object was to write years; that his ambition having been stirred "songs," i. e., songs which could be sung. by hearing Sir Humphrey Davy lecture, he This he has certainly succeeded in doing, as wrote to the lecturer, explaining how sick some of his ballads, "The Angel's Whisper" he was of trade, and how desirous of deand "Molly Bawn," for instance, have be- voting himself to science; that Sir Humcome household pieces in Irish and in many phrey engaged him as his assistant in the English drawing-rooms. But he is wrong Royal Institution, where he was paid so in selecting Milton as an example of a great much a week; and that during the course genius failing to write a good song. The lines in "Comus," which he contends would not easily lend themselves to vocalization, possess a music of their own which appears at once to the mind without passing through the sense of hearing. The best songs, even for singing, we suspect were

of a long life he worked indefatigably and gloriously in the fields of science, reaping such harvests there as are now known to all men. We know, too, that this man, whom Professor Tyndall holds to be “the greatest

*Faraday as a Discoverer, By John Tyndall. London: Longmans.

experimental philosopher the world has ever seen," died poor; but few of us were aware of the resolute self-denial by which that poverty was wilfully incurred. Faraday, Professor Tyndall tells us, was at one period of his life forced definitely to decide whether wealth or science should be the pursuit of his life. For a man to devote his life to art, science, or literature, in the face of being compelled to sacrifice money and comfort, is a form of sacrifice which is common around us - which takes place constantly without the fact ever becoming known; but the present instance is so marked, and redounds so highly to the credit of one whom we have every other reason to honour, that we quote Professor Tyndall's words at length. Having shown that Faraday had "only to will it to raise in 1832 his professional business income to £5,000 a year," he proceeds to say :

FARADAY.

6.

day's mind as Professor Tyndall has done; an effort in analysis only possible to a strong sympathy and a cool judgment. he says, in one place, “is the backward guess Theory," from fact to principle; the conjecture or divination regarding something which lies behind the facts, and from which they flow in necessary consequence." Elsewhere, he remarks that much nonsense is talked about induction and deduction, and thus explains Faraday's use of pure hypotheses:-"He incessantly employed them to gain experimental ends, but he incessantly took them down, as an architect removes the scaffolding when the edifice is complete. Faraday himself, in fact, was always guessing by hypothesis,' and making theoretic divination the stepping-stone to his experimental results." Nor was he averse at times to merely theoretic disputation. The ordinarily accepted atomic theory, Professor unanswerable blow. Tyndall shows, received from his hand an theory is that matter consists of atoms comDalton's celebrated bined according to certain unalterable proportions- a position which no one is likely to dispute. But, matter being capable of expansion and compression, these ultimate atoms must be surrounded by space-they must not touch each other; so that the interatomic spaces constitute a continuous mesh running through every body. Now, in the mitted to electric action, this inter-atomic case of a bar of conducting metal, when subspace acts as a conductor; whereas, in the case of a non-conducting substance. it becomes an insulator. Here, according to Faraday, is a subversion of the atomic theory; for if space be an insulator it cannot exist in conducting bodies, and if it be a conductor it cannot exist bodies." It would be beyond our present in insulating object to attempt to give here any sketch of Faraday's own should commend it to the consideration of idea of matter; but we such metaphysicians as may be disposed to namical and Immaterial." side with the author of "The World, Dy

We scarcely know whether the present volume is more valuable as a record of the definite achievements of Faraday or as index to his method. No one but a man of an large intellectual grasp could so clearly and vividly have laid down the habit of Fara

6

"While restudying the Experimental Researches with reference to the present memoir, th: conversation with Faraday here alluded to came to my recollection, and I sought to ascertain the period when the questionwealth or science,' had presented itself with such emphasis to his mind. I fixed upon the year 1831 or 1832, for it seemed beyond the range of human power to pursue science as he had done during the subsequent years, and to pursue commer cial work at the same time. To test this conclusion I asked permission to see his accounts, and on my own responsibility I will state the result. In 1832, his professional business-income, instead of rising to £5,000, or more, fell f om £1,090. 4s. to £155. 9s. From this it fell, with slight oscillations, to £92 in 1837, and to zero in 1838. Between 1839 and 1845, it never, except in one instance, exceeded £22; being, for the most part, much under this. The exceptional year referred to was that in which he and Sir Charles Lyell were engaged by Government to write a report on the Haswell Colliery explosion, and then his business-income rose to £112. From the end of 1845 to the day of his death, Faraday's annual professional business-income was exactly zero. duration of his life into account, this son of a Taking the blacksmith, and apprentice to a bookbinder, had to decide between a fortune of £150,000 on the one side, and his undowered science on the other. He chose the latter, and died a poor man. But his was the glory of holding aloft among the nations the scientific name of Eng-were unknown, and in tracing, with Proland for a period of forty years." fessor Tyndall, the progressive steps by seems to have been more distrustful of a which Faraday arrived at them. No man theory; and no man seems to have been so orizing. The flashes of inspiration by which perpetually, and perhaps unconsciously, thehe anticipated certain truths bear continual testimony to the presence of that inscrutable

discoveries have so long been familiar to us The practical consequences of Faraday's that there is a quaint pleasure in trying to recall the time in which these discoveries

"dis

we are far from considering Walt Whitman
the merely blatant egotist which many
English critics would have him to be; and
we are glad that an opportunity presents
itself to the ordinary English reader of
estimating for himself the value of a writer
Nor should we
who is almost new to us.
be surprised if the publication of this vol-
ume procure for its author a complete re-
versal of that vague opinion of him
founded almost entirely on hearsay
which has hitherto been current in this
country. Walt Whitman is not an inflate l
Tupper. He is nebulous, mystical, some-
times incoherent, often laboriously
tinct" without being "clear" - according
to Leibnitz's fine definition but at no
time does he fail to impress his reader with
the sense that here is a man of power, a
man capable of producing a definite impres-
sion on the mind. This is a result which
never accrues from commonplace. Walt
Whitman is, indeed, the Turner of poets.
Sometimes you find a mere blurred mass of
colour; then an incomprehensible blaze of
light; then a piece of apparent common-
place; and then a picture which overawes
the beholder. You may come to these
studies with any mood of mind, and find it
gratified. They will afford material for
jokes; they will offer proof of the author's
entire ignorance of or contempt for system
and precedent; they will justify the wild-
est praise and the bitterest abuse. These
are possibilities one does not find in com-
monplace; whatever the work is, it cannot
be that. We have more than once seen
the rather curious objection preferred
against Walt Whitman, that the impression
be produced on his admirers is simply owing
to his talking largely and being incompre-

WALT WHITMAN.*

THIS edition of Walt Whitman's poems has been specially prepared for the British

From The London Review. hensible. That, however, is a form of literature with which so many modern writers have made us familiar, that every reader can at once deny the fact of any impression being produced by such easy public, is weeded of those pieces the occa-weariness. The ordinary graces of poetry authorship beyond that of insufferable sional phraseology of which was found, in former instances, to shock many people, and contains specimens of every thing that is characteristic in the American poet's writings. Of pruned editions we have, generally speaking, an abhorrence; but in this case several chance expressions which Walt Whitman permitted himself were so very rude that his poems, as a whole, were deprived of that fair judgment which by right belongs to every artistic work. Now

are not to be found in these poems. They are, as we have said, without system or precedent; the utterances of a man with individual, but in himself as a spokesman of an amazing belief, not in himself as an a new country and a new time.

power we call genius. They who consider imagination a reconstructed memory, and invention a new combination of old experiences, will here find plenty to puzzle over; nor will they want every scientific aid to the nvestigation in the singularly clear and able memoir which Professor Tyndall has compiled. The ordinary reader, also, who takes up this volume will find much to interest him will find, amid the chronicles of scientific discovery, the tender reminiscences of a true friendship, worthy alike of the man who inspired it and of him who now commemorates it. With one expression of this kindly appreciation we must close our notice of a little volume which is sure to have many

readers.

"We have heard much," says Professor Tyndall," of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives 'gentle' and 'tender' would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. He that is slow to anger,' saith the sage, is greater than the mighty; and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city.' Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated

all hearts."

* Poems by Walt Whitman. Selected and Edited by W. M. Rossetti. London: John Camden Hotten.

"And I too of the Manahatta, singing thereof

- and no less in myself than the whole of the Manahatta in itself."

Neither the dreams of Novalis nor the later speculations of Faraday are to be

From The Spectator, March 14. | legislate for British America, and not for

THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE FROM