The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born 1794. Still living.] This illustrious scientific man is the son of a poor blacksmith, and was in early life apprenticed to a bookbinder, at which craft he worked until his twenty-second year. His great delight in electrical researches brought him into acquaintance with Sir Humphrey Davy, whose assistant he became in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where Faraday himself in time rose to the dignity of Fullerian Professor. The discoveries of Faraday in several branches of science have placed him in the very highest rank amongst European philosophers. The most difficult and abstruse points in connexion with light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and the laws of matter, have been simplified to an extraordinary degree by the force of his sagacity and singular acuteness. As remarkable as his genius for discovery, and for the detection of the hidden operations of nature, is his admirable faculty of exposition. No living man approaches Faraday in the easy power of communicating the results of the most subtle investigation to a miscellaneous audience. Passing through his lucid understanding, every subject, however abstruse or abstract, becomes simple, clear, and attractive. [By E. H. Baily, R.A. Executed in 1823.] 436*. MARY SOMERVILLE. _Mathematician and Astronomer._ [Still living.] One of the few women who step out from the limits which seem naturally assigned to their intellectual avocations, to compete with men in theirs. One of the fewer who do so, deserting none of their proper tasks, forfeiting nothing of their proper character. A profound mathematician and astronomer; a delicate inquirer into natural phenomena. Her work on “The Connexion of the Physical Sciences” spreads out, in a form designed for the uninitiated reader, but not for the inattentive, a large variety of impressive knowledge, on some of the most interesting laws of the natural world. Her manner of writing is remarkably simple, descriptive, clear and exact. [By Macdonald. Executed in Rome, 1848.]