living, at this time (early in 1813), at 18, Weymouth Street, and one night, not very long after his interview with Davy, just as he was undressing to go to bed, there came a loud knock at the front door. Michael went to the window to see if there was any evidence as to whom the unwonted visitor might be. A carriage was there, from which a footman had alighted and left a note for "Mr. M. Faraday." It proved to be from Sir Humphry, who had already an opportunity of serving the young enthusiast. The note requested Michael to call on Davy the next morning. This he did, and learned that an assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution was required at once, the former assistant having been dismissed the day before. Michael instantly expressed his willingness to accept the position; he was to have twenty-five shillings a week salary, and two rooms at the top of the Institution building.

It was not long before arrangements were all completed. A meeting of the managers of the Institution was held on March 1st; the following is entered in the minutes of that day's proceedings:—"Sir Humphry Davy has the honour to inform the managers that he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name is Michael Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age. As far as Sir H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain, he appears well fitted for the situation. His habits seem good, his disposition active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent. He is willing to engage himself on the same terms as those given to Mr. Payne at the time of quitting the Institution. Resolved:—That Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the situation lately occupied by Mr. Payne on the same terms."

The duties of the assistant were specified by the managers in the following manner, his work being something other than the washing of bottles, which Pepys had recommended. It is a fact, also, that Faraday, almost from the commencement of his engagement, was concerned in more important work than that herein particularised. He was "to attend and assist the lecturers and professors in preparing for, and during, lectures; when any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room or laboratory to the lecture-room, and to clean and replace them after being used, reporting to the manager such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. That, in one day in each week, he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month." As has been said, Faraday's work was almost from the first of a higher nature; he is reported to have set in order the mineralogical collection soon after his arrival.

But a very short while elapsed between Michael's appointment as assistant and his taking up the duties of his post, for, on the 8th of March, he writes to Abbott, dating his letter from his new home, the two rooms at the top of the Institution. His letter tells us that he was already concerned in the active duties of his post, as the following passages show: "It is now about nine o'clock, and the thought strikes me that the tongues are going both at Tatum's and at the lecture in Bedford Street; but I fancy myself much better employed than I should have been at the lecture at either of those places. Indeed, I have heard one lecture already to-day, and had a finger in it (I can't say a hand, for I did very little). It was by Mr. Powell on mechanics, or rather, on rotatory motion, and was a pretty good lecture, but not very fully attended.

"As I know you will feel a pleasure in hearing in what I have been or shall be occupied, I will inform you that I have been employed to-day, in part, in extracting the sugar from a portion of beetroot, and also in making a compound of sulphur and carbon—a combination which has lately occupied in a considerable degree the attention of chemists."

About a month after writing the letter of which the above forms a part, Faraday again wrote to his friend Abbott, giving him an account of some experiments, in which he had been assisting Sir Humphry Davy, on "the detonating compound of chlorine and azote, and of four different and strong explosions of the substance, explosions from which neither he nor Davy had altogether escaped unhurt." "Of these," he says, "the most terrible was when I was holding between my thumb and finger a small tube containing 7-1/2 grains of the compound. My face was within twelve inches of the tube; but I fortunately had on a glass mask. It exploded by the slight heat of a small piece of cement that touched the glass above half-an-inch from the substance, and on the outside. The explosion was so rapid as to blow my hand open, bear off a part of one nail, and has made my fingers so sore that I cannot yet use them easily. The pieces of the tube were projected with such force as to cut the glass face of the mask I had on." In the other three experiments also they each of them got more or less cut about by the explosion of the "terrible compound," as Faraday calls it, Davy, indeed, in the last one, getting somewhat seriously cut.

He writes thus frequently to Abbott during the summer of 1813, giving him in the later letters some well thought-out ideas on lectures and lecturing, which we shall have occasion to glance at when we are considering Faraday himself in the capacity of a lecturer,—one of the most popular and yet truly scientific lecturers of any time. In this year, his twenty-first, Faraday joined the City Philosophical Society, which had been founded about five years earlier by Mr. Tatum, at whose house the meetings were held. The Society consisted of some thirty or forty individuals, "perhaps all in the humble or moderate rank of life;" and certainly all of them anxious to improve themselves and add to their knowledge of scientific subjects. Once a week the members gathered together for mutual instruction; each member opening the discussion in his turn by reading a paper of a literary or philosophical nature, any member failing to do so at his proper time being fined half-a-guinea. In addition, the members had what they modestly called a "class book," but probably very like what we should now call a manuscript magazine; in this each member wrote essays, and the work was passed round from one to another.

Michael, it will be seen, was not neglecting any opportunity of educating himself; as he had said in starting his correspondence with Abbott, one of his objects was to improve himself in composition and to acquire a clear and simple method of expressing that which he had to say. Yet another method had he of furthering his self-education. In the scanty notes which he wrote about his own life he says, "During this spring (1813) Magrath and I established the mutual improvement plan, and met at my rooms up in the attics of the Royal Institution, or at Wood Street at his warehouse. It consisted, perhaps, of half-a-dozen persons, chiefly from the City Philosophical Society, who met of an evening to read together, and to criticise, correct, and improve each other's pronunciation and construction of language. The discipline was very sturdy, the remarks very plain and open, and the results most valuable. This continued for several years." It is a matter for wonder how Faraday, with all these attempts to improve his language and method, and to avoid even the slightest peculiarity, managed yet to retain in all his work a remarkable simplicity and naturalness of style.

On September 13, 1813, Faraday wrote to his uncle and aunt, giving them an account of himself because he had nothing else to say, and was asked by his mother to write the account:—"I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am how