52 Faraday’. [ Jan., 
Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, 
induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to 
Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an oppor- 
tunity came in his way, he would favour my views; at the same 
time [ sent the notes I had taken at his lectures.” Davy was kind 
and generous, he saw Faraday and procured for him the situation 
of assistant in the Laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just 
vacant; but, writes Faraday, “he smiled at my notion of the 
superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he would leave 
me to the experience of a few years to set me right on that matter.” 
It has been most unjustly stated that Davy soon grew jealous of 
his assistant, and that during a visit to Paris, in October, 1813— 
Faraday having been appointed assistant only in March of the same 
year—he was annoyed at the attention which the French chemists 
paid to the young man; and that in 1824 Davy showed much 
unwillingness to Faraday’s being elected as a Fellow of the Royal 
Society. The first statement is so absurd that it carries its own 
refutation; of the second, it can only be said that Davy never 
exhibited any unwillingness to the election of Faraday to the 
honours belonging to F.R.S.; but we have reason to know that 
Davy was slightly annoyed that the certificate proposing Faraday 
for election should have originated with Richard Phillips, and that 
he should not have been consulted before that gentleman was allowed 
to take the matter in hand. 
It is not possible to trace out here the progress of Faraday as an 
experimentalist, or as a discoverer. His early devotion to Chemical 
Science was richly rewarded. Passing over several smaller matters, 
we may mention the discovery of Benzole in 1825, to which “we 
virtually owe our supply of aniline with all its magnificent progeny 
of colours.” Such is the judgment of Hofmann, who demands, 
“Who, then, discovered benzole >—England may well be proud of 
the answer, Michael Faraday.” He was ever a searcher after Truth, 
regardless of any money value belonging to a discovery; but he, 
doubtless, felt “that the search after the True for its own sake leads 
on to the discovery of its natural corollaries, the Useful and the 
Beautiful. For these, indeed, lie folded up in Truth, to be in due 
time evolved therefrom; even as the great tree unfolds itself from 
the little seed.’’* 
Other fine chemical investigations were carried out, and other 
discoveries made, by Faraday about the same time. In 1821 was 
published his paper on the condensation of the gases, in which he 
proclaimed them to be simply the vapours of volatile liquids. 
The important position assumed by the Science of Electricity, 
at this period, naturally won the attention of Faraday. In the 
same year, the ‘Quarterly Journal of Science’ contains a paper 
* Hofmann. 
