[Boston—Friday, 20 April 1866]
Friday. Prof’s Hunt of Montreal & Youmans of New York breakfasted. Prof. Hunt is one of the most fluent and graceful speakers as well as most learned men of our time. His chief labor in science at present is to prove the atmosphere of the earth at a very early period to be quite different from the present,—this is proved by the deposits. He believes the rays of the sun to have been held by that former atmosphere much as the rays of light are attracted and held by the windows of a glass hot house. He told us lovely things of Faraday whom he has known well. Faraday is now nearly 80 years old and when very young was an assistant of Sir Humphry Davy. Sir Humphry was a man of fashion and society and despised his assistant. He invited Faraday to make a tour in Europe with him using the young man rather as a valet than a companion. When they stopped in Geneva one of the learned men there who wished to entertain Sir H. Davy at his house and who had already seen some of Faraday’s beautiful theories asked him to accompany Sir Humphry to dinner. Sir H. came however without him and when the host inquired for the young man, replied he was not accustomed to convey his servant when he went to dine.
Faraday however is too fine a character to remember these things. On the contrary when Prof. Hunt visited him in London Faraday showed him over his house & into the laboratory where also Sir H. Davy had worked.
Here, he would say, is where Sir Humphry kept his frogs. Here he performed his experiments with the safety lamp—at length the young man becoming a little thoughtful ventured to say, “But where has Prof. Faraday studied out his beautiful theories?” “He blushed like a girl when I said this” said Prof. Hunt.
Faraday has a little chapel of his own where he performs a service for the poor, after his own heart every Sunday. One day some strangers going thither who had brought letters of introduction, Faraday spoke to them as they entered and said, he would welcome the strangers if they came to worship but if they came to hear Mr Faraday the chemist speak, he thought they would do better not to remain.
He spoke very highly of Robert Collyer & of his sermon Helpfulness is Holiness as he well might.
We have scarcely seen a fuller man than Prof. Hunt. He defined Tyndall’s method in science with clearness—also Murchison’s positiveness spoke of the jaw imbedded in the drift near Geneva and the incrustations over it proving the age to be as great as that of the implements previously discovered there.
Prof. Youmans is a fresh enthousiastic nature firing up speedily and running his engine to short stations with immense force. He was eager to tell us of Herbert Spencer. So noble is his enthousiasm that he is willing to beg for Spencer in order that his book on philosophy may be continued. Spencer is poor, never having more than 7 dollars a week for his board in London, and cannot continue his book without aid. His nature is strongly resistant against evil, he cannot see a woman made to pay double fare in an omnibus without spending hours if need be to redress the wrong. He must sometimes exclaim with Hamlet against the world
“O cursed sprite
That ever I was born to set it right.”
