Faraday as a Discoverer. 35 
been to me a labor of difficulty, if also a labor of love. For 
however well acquainted I may be with the researches and dis- 
coveries of that great master,—however numerous the illustra- 
not easy of performance, and all but impossible amid the dis- 
traction of duties of another kind. That I should at one 
period or another speak to you regarding Faraday and his 
work, is natural, if not inevitable ; but I did not expect to be 
called upon to speak so soon. Still the bare suggestion that 
this is the fit and proper time for speech sent me immediately to 
my task: from it I have returned with such results as I could 
gather, and also with the wish that those results were more 
worthy than they are of the greatness of my theme. 
It is not my intention to lay before youa life of Faraday in 
the ordinary acceptation of the term. The duty I have to per- 
orm is to give you some notion of what he has done in the 
world ; dwelling incidentally on the spirit in which his work 
was executed, and introducing such personal traits as may be 
necessary to the completion of your picture of the philosopher, 
though by no means adequate to give you a complete idea of 
e man. 
The newspapers have already informed you that Michael 
Faraday was born at Newington Butts, on the 22nd of Sep- 
tember, 1791, and that he fell finally asleep at Hampton 
Court, on the 25th of August, 1867. Believing as I do, in the 
general truth of the doctrine of hereditary transmission—shar- 
ing the opinion of Mr. Carlyle that “‘a really able man never 
proceeded from entirely stupid parents’”—I once used the priv- 
ilege of my intimacy with Mr. Faraday to ask him whether 
his parents showed any signs of unusual ability. He could 
remember none, His father, I believe, was a great sufferer dur- 
ing the latter years of his life, and this might have masked 
whatever intellectual power he possessed. When thirteen 
years old, that is to say in 1804, Faraday was apprenticed toa 
bookseller and bookbinder in Blandford street, Manchester- 
Square : here he spent eight years of his life, after which he 
worked as a journeyman elsewhere. 
You have also heard the account of Faraday’s first contact 
with the Royal Institution : that he was introduced by one of 
the members to Sir Humphry Davy’s last lectures ; that he 
took notes of those lectures, wrote them fairly out, and sent 
them to Davy, entreating him at the same time to enable him 
