[2] This idea was suggested by some remarks of Faraday to the Baroness Burdett Coutts.
[3] Sir Roderick Murchison used to tell how he was attending Brande's lectures, when one day, the Professor being absent, his assistant took his place, and lectured with so much ease that he won the complete approval of the audience. This, he said, was Faraday's first lecture at the Royal Institution.
[4] The laboratory note-book shows that at this very time he was making a long series of commercial analyses of saltpetre for Mr. Brande.
[5] The following anecdote has been sent me on the authority of Mr. Benjamin Abbott:—"Sergeant Anderson was engaged to attend to the furnaces in Mr. Faraday's researches on optical glass in 1828, and was chosen simply because of the habits of strict obedience his military training had given him. His duty was to keep the furnaces always at the same heat, and the water in the ashpit always at the same level. In the evening he was released, but one night Faraday forgot to tell Anderson he could go home, and early next morning he found his faithful servant still stoking the glowing furnace, as he had been doing all night long." A more probable and better authenticated version of this story is that after nightfall Anderson went upstairs to Faraday, who was already in bed, to inquire if he was to remain still on duty.
[6] One evening, when the Rev. A. J. D'Orsey was lecturing "On the Study of the English Language," he mentioned as a common vulgarism that of using "don't" in the third person singular, as "He don't pay his debts." Faraday exclaimed aloud, "That's very wrong."
[7] The St. Paul's Magazine, June 1870.
[8] British Quarterly Review, April 1868.
[9] See Appendix.
[10] No wonder the celebrated electrician P. Riess, of Berlin, once addressed a long letter to him as "Professor Michael Faraday, Member of all Academies of Science, London."
[11] Bacon's "Novum Organum," i. 1.