spar.

These and numerous other results bearing upon the question were
published at the time in the 'Philosophical Magazine' and in
'Poggendorff's Annalen'; and the investigation of diamagnetism and
magne-crystallic action was subsequently continued by me in the
laboratory of Professor Magnus of Berlin. In December, 1851, after I had
quitted Germany, Dr. Bence Jones went to the Prussian capital to see
the celebrated experiments of Du Bois Reymond. Influenced, I suppose, by
what he there heard, he afterwards invited me to give a Friday evening
discourse at the Royal Institution. I consented, not without fear and
trembling. For the Royal Institution was to me a kind of dragon's den,
where tact and strength would be necessary to save me from destruction.
On February 11, 1853, the discourse was given, and it ended happily.
I allude to these things, that I may mention that, though my aim and
object in that lecture was to subvert the notions both of Faraday and
Plucker, and to establish in opposition to their views what I regarded
as the truth, it was very far from producing in Faraday either enmity or
anger. At the conclusion of the lecture, he quitted his accustomed seat,
crossed the theatre to the corner into which I had shrunk, shook me by
the hand, and brought me back to the table. Once more, subsequently,
and in connection with a related question, I ventured to differ from him
still more emphatically. It was done out of trust in the greatness of
his character; nor was the trust misplaced. He felt my public dissent
from him; and it pained me afterwards to the quick to think that I had
given him even momentary annoyance. It was, however, only momentary. His
soul was above all littleness and proof to all egotism. He was the same
to me afterwards that he had been before; the very chance expression
which led me to conclude that he felt my dissent being one of kindness
and affection.

It required long subsequent effort to subdue the complications of
magne-crystallic action, and to bring under the dominion of elementary
principles the vast mass of facts which the experiments of Faraday and
Plucker had brought to light. It was proved by Reich, Edmond Becquerel,
and myself, that the condition of diamagnetic bodies, in virtue of which
they were repelled by the poles of a magnet, was excited in them by
those poles; that the strength of this condition rose and fell with, and
was proportional to, the strength of the acting magnet.