Michael Faraday. Gladstone John Hall

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      The change in Michael Faraday's employment naturally made him more earnest still in the pursuit of knowledge. He was admitted as a member of the "City Philosophical Society," a fraternity of thirty or forty men in the middle or lower ranks of life, who met every Wednesday evening for mutual instruction; and here is a contemporary picture of him at one of its debates: —

      "But hark! A voice arises near the chair!

      Its liquid sounds glide smoothly through the air;

      The listening muse with rapture bends to view

      The place of speaking, and the speaker too.

      Neat was the youth in dress, in person plain;

      His eye read thus, Philosopher in grain;

      Of understanding clear, reflection deep;

      Expert to apprehend, and strong to keep.

      His watchful mind no subject can elude,

      Nor specious arts of sophists e'er delude;

      His powers, unshackled, range from pole to pole;

      His mind from error free, from guilt his soul.

      Warmth in his heart, good humour in his face,

      A friend to mirth, but foe to vile grimace;

      A temper candid, manners unassuming,

      Always correct, yet always unpresuming.

      Such was the youth, the chief of all the band;

      His name well known, Sir Humphry's right hand.

      With manly ease towards the chair he bends,

      With Watts's Logic at his finger-ends."

      Another way in which he strove to educate himself is thus described in his own words: – "During this spring 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."

      Seven months after his appointment there began a new passage in Faraday's life, which gave a fresh impulse to his mental activity, and largely extended his knowledge of men and things. Sir Humphry Davy, wishing to travel on the Continent, and having received a special pass from the Emperor Napoleon, offered to take him as his amanuensis: he accepted the proposal, and for a year and a half they wandered about France, Italy, and Switzerland, and then they returned rapidly by the Tyrol, Germany, and Holland.

      From letters written when abroad we can catch some of the impressions made on his mind by these novel scenes. "I have not forgot," he writes to Abbott, "and never shall forget, the ideas that were forced on my mind in the first days. To me, who had lived all my days of remembrance in London, a city surrounded by a flat green country, a hill was a mountain, and a stone a rock; for though I had abstract ideas of the things, and could say rock and mountain, and would talk of them, yet I had no perfect ideas. Conceive then the astonishment, the pleasure, and the information which entered my mind in the varied county of Devonshire, where the foundations of the earth were first exposed to my view, and where I first saw granite, limestone, &c., in those places and in those forms where the ever-working and all-wonderful hand of nature had placed them. Mr. Ben., it is impossible you can conceive my feelings, and it is as impossible for me to describe them. The sea then presented a new source of information and interest; and on approaching the shores of France, with what eagerness, and how often, were my eyes directed to the South! When arrived there, I thought myself in an uncivilized country; for never before nor since have I seen such wretched beings as at Morlaix." His impression of the people was not improved by the fact of their having arrested the travellers on landing, and having detained them for five days until they had sent to Paris for verification of their papers.

      Again, to her towards whom his heart was wont to turn from distant lands with no small longing: "I have said nothing as yet to you, dear mother, about our past journey, which has been as pleasant and agreeable (a few things excepted, in reality nothing) as it was possible to be. Sir H. Davy's high name at Paris gave us free admission into all parts of the French dominions, and our passports were granted with the utmost readiness. We first went to Paris, and stopped there two months; afterwards we passed, in a southerly direction, through France to Montpellier, on the borders of the Mediterranean. From thence we went to Nice, stopping a day or two at Aix on our way; and from Nice we crossed the Alps to Turin, in Piedmont. From Turin we proceeded to Genoa, which place we left afterwards in an open boat, and proceeded by sea towards Lerici. This place we reached after a very disagreeable passage, and not without apprehensions of being overset by the way. As there was nothing there very enticing, we continued our route to Florence; and, after a stay of three weeks or a month, left that fine city, and in four days arrived here at Rome. Being now in the midst of things curious and interesting, something arises every day which calls for attention and observations. The relics of ancient Roman magnificence, the grandeur of the churches, and their richness also – the difference of habits and customs, each in turn engages the mind, and keeps it continually employed. Florence, too, was not destitute of its attractions for me, and in the Academy del Cimento and the museum attached to it is contained an inexhaustible fund of entertainment and improvement; indeed, during the whole journey, new and instructive things have been continually presented to me. Tell B. I have crossed the Alps and the Apennines; I have been at the Jardin des Plantes; at the museum arranged by Buffon; at the Louvre, among the chefs d'œuvre of sculpture and the masterpieces of painting; at the Luxembourg Palace, amongst Rubens' works; that I have seen a Glowworm!!! waterspouts, torpedo, the museum at the Academy del Cimento, as well as St. Peter's, and some of the antiquities here, and a vast variety of things far too numerous to enumerate."

      But he kept a lengthy journal, and as we turn over the pages – for the best part of it is printed by Bence Jones – we meet vivid sketches of the provokingly slow custom-house officers, the postilion in jack-boots, and the thin pigs of Morlaix – pictures of Paris, too, when every Frenchman was to him an unintelligible enemy; when the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, and the Dying Gladiator were at the Louvre, and when the First Napoleon visited the Senate in full state. "He was sitting in one corner of his carriage, covered and almost hidden from sight by an enormous robe of ermine, and his face overshadowed by a tremendous plume of feathers that descended from a velvet hat." We watch Sir Humphry as Ampère and others bring to him the first specimens of iodine, and he makes experiments with his travelling apparatus on the dark lustrous crystals and their violet vapour; we seem, too, to be present with the great English chemist and his scholar as they burn diamonds at Florence by means of the Grand Duke's gigantic lens, and prove that the invisible result is carbonic acid; or as they study the springs of inflammable gas at Pietra Mala, and the molten minerals of Vesuvius. The whole, too, is interspersed with bits of fun, and this culminates at the Roman Carnival, where he evidently thoroughly enjoyed the follies of the Corso, the pelting with sugar-plums, and the masked balls, to the last of which he went in a nightgown and nightcap, with a lady who knew all his acquaintances; and between the two they puzzled their friends mightily.

      This year and a half may be considered as the time of Faraday's education; it was the period of his life that best corresponds with the collegiate course of other men who have attained high distinction in the world of thought. But his University was Europe; his professors the master whom he served, and those illustrious men to whom the renown of Davy introduced the travellers. It made him personally known, also, to foreign savants, at a time when there was little intercourse between Great Britain and the Continent; and thus he was associated with the French Academy of Sciences while still young, his works found a welcome all over Europe, and some of the best representatives of foreign science became his most intimate friends.

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