XII. 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF FARADAY. 



UNDERTAKEN and executed in a reverent and loving 

 spirit, the work of Dr. Bence Jones makes Faraday the 

 virtual writer of his own life. Everybody now knows the 

 story of the philosopher s birth; that his father was a 

 smith ; that he was born at Newington Butts in 1791 ; 

 that he slid along the London pavements, a bright-eyed 

 errand-boy, with a load of brown curls upon his head and a 

 packet of newspapers under his arm ; that the lad s master 

 was a bookseller and bookbinder a kindly man, who 

 became attached to the little fellow and in due time made 

 him his apprentice without fee ; that during his appren 

 ticeship he found his appetite for knowledge provoked and 

 strengthened by the books he stitched and covered. Thus 

 he grew in wisdom and stature to his year of legal man 

 hood, when he appears in the volumes before us as a writer 

 of letters, which reveal his occupation, acquirements, and 

 tone of mind. His correspondent was Mr. Abbott, a mem 

 ber of the Society of Friends, who, with a forecast of his 

 friend s greatness, preserved his letters and produced them 

 at the proper time. 



In later years Faraday always carried in his pocket a 

 blank card on which he jotted down in pencil his thoughts 

 and memoranda. He made his notes in the laboratory, 

 in the theatre, and in the streets. This distrust of his 

 memory reveals itself in his first letter to Abbott. To a 



