I had a very pleasing view of the planet Saturn last week through a refractor with a power of ninety. I saw his ring very distinctly; ’tis a singular appendage to a planet, to a revolving globe, and I should think caused some peculiar phenomena to the planet within it. I allude to their mutual action with respect to meteorology and perhaps electricity....
The master, a French emigré named De la Roche, of King Street, Portman Square, to whom he engaged himself as a journeyman bookbinder, was of a very passionate disposition, and made Faraday very uncomfortable. He longed to get out of trade, and under the encouragement of Mr. Dance he wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, sending, “as a proof of my earnestness,” the notes he had taken of Davy’s last four lectures. Faraday’s letter, which has been preserved but never published, is an astounding example of the high-flown cringing style in vogue at that date. Davy’s reply was favourable, and led to a temporary engagement of some days as amanuensis at the time when he was wounded in the eye by an explosion of the chloride of nitrogen. Faraday himself, nearly twenty years afterwards, wrote[6] a full account of the circumstances.
[M. Faraday to Dr. J. A. Paris.]
Royal Institution, December 23, 1829.
My dear Sir,—You asked me to give you an account of my first introduction to Sir H. Davy, which I am very happy to do, as I think the circumstances will bear testimony to his goodness of heart.
When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of experiment and very adverse to trade. It happened that a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume.
My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he would favour my views; at the same time, I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures.
The answer, which makes all the point of my communication, I send you in the original, requesting you to take great care of it, and to let me have it back, for you may imagine how much I value it.
You will observe that this took place at the end of the year 1812, and early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just vacant.
At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress; and in a pecuniary point of view but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on that matter.