Michael Faraday, an English chemist and natural philosopher, born at Newington, Surrey, Sept. 22, 1791, died at Hampton Court, Aug. 25, 1867. His father was a blacksmith, of feeble health, and very poor. A short distance from their home in London was a bookseller's and bookbinder's shop kept by George Riebau, and there Faraday went, when 13 years of age, as an errand boy, on trial, for one year. It was a part of his duty at first to carry round the newspapers that were lent out by his master. At the end of a year he became an apprentice to Riebau, the indentures to continue seven years."In consideration of his faithful service," no premium was given to the master. Faraday says of himself: While an apprentice I loved to read the scientific books which were under my hands, and among them delighted in Marcet's ' Conversations on Chemistry' and the electrical treatises in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' I made such simple experiments as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and also constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass vial, and afterward with a real cylinder, as well as-other electrical apparatus of a corresponding kind."

My master," he says, allowed me to go occasionally of an evening to hear the lectures delivered by Mr. Tatum on natural philosophy at his house, 53 Dorset street. The charge was one shilling per lecture, and my brother Robert (who was a blacksmith) made me a present of the money for several." That he might be able to illustrate scientific lectures, he took lessons in drawing of a Mr. Masquirier, who also lent him Taylor'sPerspective,"which I studied closely," he says, copied all the-drawings, and made some other simple ones." Among the notes Faraday has left of his own life occurs the following:During my apprenticeship I had the good fortune, through the kindness of Mr. Dance, who was a customer of my master's shop, and also a member of the royal institution, to hear four of the last lectures of Sir Humphry Davy in that locality. Of these I made notes, and then wrote out the lectures in a fuller form, interspersing them with such drawings as 1 could make. I wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, sending as a proof of my earnestness the notes I had taken." He was invited by Davy to call upon him, which resulted in his appointment as assistant in the laboratory of the royal institution, whither he went in March, 1813. In October of the same year he went with Davy abroad, as amanuensis and assistant in experiments.

The tour lasted only a year and a half, but was full of the most vivid interest to young Faraday. In the latter part of April, 1815, they returned to England, and Faraday, now 23 years of age, resumed his place as assistant in the laboratory, and was also made assistant in the mine-ralogical collection, and superintendent of the apparatus, at a salary of 30 shillings per week. During the year 1816 he gave seven lectures before the City Philosophical Society:" 1, on the general properties of matter; 2, on the attraction of cohesion; 3, on chemical affinity; 4, on radiant matter; 5, 6, and 7, on oxygen, chlorine, iodine, fluorine, hydrogen, and nitrogen. His first paper appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Sciences," and was an analysis of some caastic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent to Davy by the duchess of Montrose. In 1817 he gave a second course of lectures before the city philosophical society, at the tenth of which, on carbon, he used notes for the first time, instead of reading his lectures.

In 1818 he investigated the subject of sounding flames, showing that they were not dependent, as De la Rive had supposed, upon the sudden expansion and condensation of vapor, but that they were connected with musical vibrations produced in a manner similar to the tones of a flute or of an organ pipe. He obtained the sounds as well when using a flame of carbonic oxide gas as when using one of hydrogen. In 1819 he made a tour on foot through Wales, and kept a journal in which there are many passages manifesting his intense love of nature and his vivid powers of description. In 1820 he published a paper on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and on a compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. It was read before the royal society, and was the first which was published in the Philosophical Transactions." On June 12, 1821, he was married to Miss Sarah Barnard, a daughter of an elder in the Sandemanian church, and, having obtained leave, took his wife to reside at the royal institution, where they remained until they moved to the house assigned them in Hampton Court by the queen in 1858. A month after his marriage he became a member of the Sandemanian church.

His ideas of religion are indicated by the following quotation from a lecture delivered on medical education in 1854:

High as man is placed above the creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his thoughts about his fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. I believe that the truth of the future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given. Let no one suppose for a moment that the self-education I am about to commend, in respect to the things of this life, extends to any consideration of the hope set before us, as if man by reasoning could find out God." In 1821 there occurred the only unpleasant circumstance that seems ever to have been connected with his life. Dr. Wollaston was the first person to entertain the idea of causing a wire to revolve around a magnet, or upon its own axis, and in a visit to Davy at the royal institution made some experiments and conversed upon the subject, during a part of which time Faraday was present.

It greatly excited his interest, and he could not refrain from making experiments, the result of which was that in the months of July, August, and September he wrote a history of the progress of electro-magnetism, which was 'published in the "Annals of Philosophy." In the latter month he made the discovery of the rotation of a wire in a voltaic circuit round a magnet, and of a magnet round a wire. He says:I did not realize Dr. Wollaston's expectation of the rotation of the electro-magnetic wire round its axis; that fact was discovered by Ampere at a later date." These experiments and publications of Faraday created considerable feeling, so much that the matter was discussed two years afterward, when he was proposed as a member of the royal society. He was charged with trespassing upon the province of another, and with using another's implements in cultivating the field; but his unblemished character in all other relations, and the great discoveries which he made in this abstruse department of electro-chemistry and electro-magnetism, at last removed all tinge of imputation of wrong intention; and long before he closed his labors all men of science were heartily glad that Faraday had followed his inclinations.