If it were desirable to fix any date when the scientific education of Faraday might be said to have ended, and his work as an educated man of science might be said to have begun, it would be at the beginning of this period.

For seven years as the private assistant of Davy, and as assistant in the laboratory and lecture-room at the Royal Institution, Faraday had now served his apprenticeship to science. He had begun a most laborious original investigation with Mr. James Stodart on the alloys of steel, which he was now about to publish. He had already had thirty-seven notices and papers printed in the ‘Quarterly Journal of Science’ (one or two of them were of great importance to science), and he had given his first course of lectures on chemistry at the City Philosophical Society with great success as a speaker and experimenter.

But highly as Faraday was at this time educated, and much as he had done, he was as yet only at the beginning of a still higher education. It was not until the eleventh year from this date that his first paper ‘On Experimental Researches in Electricity’ was published. In other words, he took eighteen years to educate himself for the great scientific work which he had to do.

The progress of this education, the reputation which he obtained, the traits of his character, and the course of his life during this period, will be now shown, (1) in the works he published; (2) in the lectures he gave; (3) in the honours paid to him; (4) in the letters which he wrote and received.