'My Dear Tyndall,--Sir H. Davy was accustomed to call on the late Mr. Pepys, in the Poultry, on his way to the London Institution, of which Pepys was one of the original managers; the latter told me that on one occasion Sir H. Davy, showing him a letter, said: "Pepys, what am I to do, here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution--what can I do?" "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to wash bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly, if he refuses he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy; "we must try him with something better than that." The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the Laboratory at weekly wages.

'Davy held the joint office of Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory; he ultimately gave up the former to the late Professor Brande, but he insisted that Faraday should be appointed Director of the Laboratory, and, as Faraday told me, this enabled him on subsequent occasions to hold a definite position in the Institution, in which he was always supported by Davy. I believe he held that office to the last.

'Believe me, my dear Tyndall, yours truly,

'J. P. Gassiot.

'Dr. Tyndall.'

From a letter written by Faraday himself soon after his appointment as Davy's assistant, I extract the following account of his introduction to the Royal Institution:--

'London, Sept. 13, 1813.

'As for myself, I am absent (from home) nearly day and night, except occasional calls, and it is likely shall shortly be absent entirely, but this (having nothing more to say, and at the request of my mother) I will explain to you. I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am now turned philosopher,²

which happened thus:-- Whilst an apprentice, I, for amusement, learnt a little chemistry and other parts of philosophy, and felt an eager desire to proceed in that way further. After being a journeyman for six months, under a disagreeable master, I gave up my business, and through the interest of a Sir H. Davy, filled the situation of chemical assistant to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in which office I now remain; and where I am constantly employed in observing the works of nature, and tracing the manner in which she directs the order and arrangement of the world. I have lately had proposals made to me by Sir Humphry Davy to accompany him in his travels through Europe and Asia, as philosophical assistant. If I go at all I expect it will be in October next--about the end; and my absence from home will perhaps be as long as three years. But as yet all is uncertain.'

This account is supplemented by the following letter, written by Faraday to his friend De la Rive,³

'My Dear Friend,--Your subject interested me deeply every way; for Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have been to many of the human race. I entered the shop of a bookseller and bookbinder at the age of thirteen, in the year 1804, remained there eight years, and during the chief part of my time bound books. Now it was in those books, in the hours after work, that I found the beginning of my philosophy.

There were two that especially helped me, the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," from which I gained my first notions of electricity, and Mrs. Marcet's "Conversation on Chemistry," which gave me my foundation in that science.

'Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a precocious person. I was a very lively imaginative person, and could believe in the "Arabian Nights" as easily as in the "Encyclopædia." But