348 NINETEENTH CENTUR K pt. II 



Professor Arago, whom we mentioned before (p. 311) as 

 making experiments on light, succeeded in magnetising a 

 steel bar with currents from an ordinary electrical machine, 

 that is, a glass cylinder rubbed against silk, instead of using 

 a battery. 



Michael Faraday, 1791-1867. — We must now travel 

 back to England, where one of our greatest philosophers was 

 watching these new discoveries with intense interest. Michael 

 Faraday, the son of a poor journeyman blacksmith, was bom 

 at Newington Butts in 1791. When he was thirteen years 

 old he went as errand boy to a bookseller named Mr. 

 Rieban, in Blandford Street, Manchester Square, and it was 

 there that the books fell into his hands which first awoke 

 his love of science. Mrs. Marcet's * Conversations on 

 Chemistry,' Lyons's ' Experiments on Electricity,' and other 

 books of a like kind made the lad long for more knowledge 

 about these wonderful sciences. He constructed an elec- 

 trical machine, and spent his evenings in making experi- 

 ments, and he persuaded his brother Robert to pay a few 

 shillings for him to attend some lectures given by a Mr. 

 Tatum on Natural Philosophy. 



But one of the first great pleasures of his life was when 

 a customer at the bookshop, a Mr. Dance, took him to four 

 lectures at the Royal Institution, given by Sir Humphry 

 Davy. These lectures filled him with an intense longing 

 to learn more, and he took the bold step of writing a letter 

 to Davy, enclosing the notes which he had made of the 

 lectures, and asking for some employment connected with 

 science. It will always be remembered to Davy's honour 

 that he did not throw this letter aside, but wrote a kind 

 reply, telling the young man to come and see him, and 

 in the end made him his assistant at the Royal Institution 



I 



