11 



JEt. 13 to 19 (1805 to 1811). 



On the / th of October, 18U5, when fourteen, Faraday was apprenticed; and, 

 in consideration of his faithful service, no premium was given to Riebau. 



Four years later his father wrote (in 1 809), "Michael is bookbinder and sta- 

 tioner, and is very active at learning his business. He has been most part of 

 four years of his time out of seven. He has a very good master, and 

 mistress, and likes his place well : he had a hard time for some while at 

 first going ; but, as the old saying goes, he has rather got the head above 

 water, as there is two other boys under him." 



Faraday himself says, "Whilst an apprentice I loved to read the scien- 

 tific books which were under my hands, and amongst them delighted in 

 Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry,' and the electrical treatises in the 

 ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' I made such simple experiments in chemistry 

 as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and also 

 constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass phial, and afterwards 

 with a real cylinder, as well as other electrical apparatus of a corresponding 

 kind." He told a friend that Watts on the Mind first made him think, 

 and that his attention was turned to science by the article "Electricity" 

 in an encyclopaedia he was employed to bind. 



" My master," he says, " allowed me to go occasionally of an evening to 

 hear the lectures delivered by Mr. Tatum in natural philosophy at his 

 house, 53 Dorset Street, Fleet Street. I obtained a knowledge of these 

 lectures by bills in the streets and shop-windows near his house. The hour 

 was eight o'clock in the evening. The charge was Is. per lecture, and my 

 brother Robert [who was three years older and followed his father's busi- 

 ness] made me a present of the money for several. I attended twelve or 

 thirteen lectures between February 19, 1810, and September 26, 1811. It 

 was at these lectures I first became acquainted with Magrath, Newton, 

 Nicol, and others." 



He learned perspective of a Mr. Masquerier, that he might illustrate 

 these lectures. " Masquerier lent me Taylor's Perspective, a 4to volume, 

 which I studied closely, copied all the drawings, and made some other very 

 simple ones, as of cubes or pyramids, or columns in perspective, as exer- 

 cises of the rules. I was always very fond of copyiug vignettes and small 

 things in ink ; but I fear they were mere copies of the lines, and that I 

 had little or no sense of the general effect and of the power of the lines in 

 producing it." How he was educating himself at this time and the subjects 

 that interested him, may be seen in a manuscript volume (a shadow of the 

 future) which he called "The Philosophical Miscellany, being a collection 

 of notices, occurrences, events, &c. relating to the arts and sciences col- 

 lected from the public papers, reviews, magazines, and other miscellaneous 

 works. Intended," he says, " to promote both amusement and instruc- 

 tion, and also to corroborate or invalidate those theories which are continu- 

 ally starting into the world of science. Collected by M. Faraday, 1809-10." 



In 1811 (set. 19) he became acquainted, at Mr. Tatum's, with Mr. 



