Before he left England, on September 18, 1813, at the request of his mother, he wrote to an uncle and aunt the following account of himself:—
I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am now turned philosopher, which happened thus:—Whilst an apprentice, I, for amusement, learnt a little of 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, by the interest of 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 engaged in observing the works of Nature and tracing the manner in which she directs the arrangement and order of the world. I have lately had proposals made to me by Sir Humphry Davy to accompany him, in his travels through Europe and into 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. I have to repeat that, even though I may go, my path will not pass near any of my relations, or permit me to see those whom I so much long to see.
To Faraday, who was now twenty-two years old, foreign travel meant much more than to most young men of equal age. With his humble bringing up and slender resources, he had never had the chance of seeing the outside world; he had never, to his own recollection, even seen the sea. When on Wednesday, October 13, he started out on the journey to Plymouth, in order to cross to the port of Morlaix, he began his journal of foreign travel thus:—
This morning formed a new epoch in my life. I have never before, within my recollection, left London at a greater distance than twelve miles.
A NEW ELEMENT.
This journal he kept with minute care, with the sole purpose of recalling events to his mind. It gives full details as to Davy’s scientific friends and work, intermingled with graphic descriptions of scenery; and is remarkable also for its personal reticence. As with many another, so with Faraday, foreign travel took in his life the place of residence at a University. In France, in Italy, he received enlarged ideas; and what he saw of learned men and academies of science exercised no small formative effect upon one then at the most impressionable age. He comments gaily on the odd incidents of travel; the luminescence of the sea at night; the amazing fuss at the Custom House; the postilion with his jack-boots, whip, and pouch; the glow-worm (the first glow-worm he had ever seen); and the slim pigs of Normandy. At Paris he visits the Louvre, where his chief comment on its treasures is, that by their acquisition France has made herself “a nation of thieves.” He goes to the Prefecture of Police for his passport, in which he is described as having “a round chin, a brown beard, a large mouth, a great nose,” etc. He visits the churches, where the theatrical air pervading the place “makes it impossible to attach a serious or important feeling to what is going on.” He comments on the wood fires, the charcoal used in cooking, the washerwomen on the river bank, the internal decorations of houses, the printing of the books. Then he goes about with Davy amongst the French chemists. Ampère, Clément, and Désormes come to Davy to show him the new and strange substance “X,” lately discovered by M. Courtois. They heat it, and behold it rise in vapour of a beautiful violet colour. Ampère himself, on November 23rd, gives Davy a specimen. They carefully note down its characters. Davy and his assistant make many new experiments on it. At first its origin is kept a profound secret by the Frenchman. Then it transpires that it is made from ashes of seaweed. They work on it at Chevreul’s laboratory. Faraday borrows a voltaic pile from Chevreul. With that intuition which was characteristic of him, Davy jumps almost at once to a conclusion as to the nature of the new body, which for nearly two years had been in the hands of the Frenchmen awaiting elucidation. When he leaves Paris, they do not wholly bless his rapidity of thought. But Faraday has seen—with placid indifference—a glimpse of the great Napoleon “sitting in one corner of his carriage, covered and almost hidden by an enormous robe of ermine, and his face overshadowed by a tremendous plume of feathers, that descended from a velvet hat”; he has also met Humboldt, and he has heard M. Gay Lussac lecture to about two hundred pupils.
Dumas has recorded in his “Éloge Historique” a reflection of the impressions left by the travellers. After speaking of the criticism to which Davy was exposed during his visit, he says:—
His laboratory assistant, long before he had won his great celebrity by his works, had by his modesty, his amiability, and his intelligence, gained most devoted friends at Paris, at Geneva, at Montpellier. Amongst these may be named in the front rank M. de la Rive, the distinguished chemist, father of the illustrious physicist whom we count amongst our foreign associates. The kindnesses with which he covered my youth contributed not a little to unite us—Faraday and myself. With pleasure we used to recall that we made one another’s acquaintance under the auspices of that affectionate and helpful philosopher whose example so truly witnessed that science does not dry up the heart’s blood. At Montpellier, beside the hospitable hearth of Bérard, the associate of Chaptal, doyen of our corresponding members, Faraday has left memories equally charged with an undying sympathy which his master could never have inspired. We admired Davy, we loved Faraday.
It is December 29 when the travellers leave Paris and cross the forest of Fontainebleau. Faraday thinks he never saw a more beautiful scene than the forest dressed in an airy garment of crystalline hoar frost. They pass through Lyons, Montpellier, Aix, Nice, searching on the way for iodine in the sea-plants of the Mediterranean. At the end of January, 1814, they cross the Col de Tende over the snow at an elevation of 6,000 feet into Italy, and find themselves in the midst of the Carnival at Turin. They reach Genoa, and go to the house of a chemist to make experiments on the raia torpedo, the electric skate, trying to ascertain whether water could be decomposed by the electrical discharges of these singular fishes. From Genoa they go by sea to Lerici in an open boat, with much discomfort and fear of ship-wreck; and thence by land to Florence.
WITH DAVY IN ITALY.