tute, a very fair compensation for
the times.

Very congenial were the duties of the young assistant. They were to keep
clean the beloved apparatus of the lecturers, and to assist them in
their demonstrations. The new world thus opened was full of bright
promise. He keenly felt the deficiencies of his early education, and
did his best to extend his learning, so that he might be able to make
the most of his opportunities. But what he perhaps appreciated the most
was the inspiration he received from the great teacher Davy, who was
then Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory of the Royal
Institution; for Faraday assisted at Davy's lectures, and in an humble
way even aided his investigations, sharing the dangers arising from the
explosion of the unstable substance, chloride of nitrogen, that Davy was
then investigating. Faraday has repeatedly acknowledged the debt owed to
the inspiration of this teacher. Davy also, in later life generously
recognized, in his former assistant, a philosopher greater than himself.
As the renowned astronomer, Tycho Brahe, discovered in one of his
pupils, John Kepler, an astronomer greater than the master, and as
Bergman, the Swedish chemist, in a similar manner, discovered the
greater chemist Scheele, so when Davy, in after years, was asked what he
regarded as his greatest discovery, he briefly replied,
"Michael Faraday."

The task of the scientific historian, who endeavors honestly to record
the progress of research, and to trace the influence of the work of some
individual on the times in which he lived, is by no means an easy one;
for, in scientific work one discovery frequently passes so insensibly
into another that it is often difficult to know just where one stops
and the other begins, and much difficulty constantly arises as to whom
the credit should be given, when, as is too often the case, these
discoveries are made by different individuals. It is only when some
great discovery stands alone, like a giant mountain peak against the
clear sky, that it is comparatively easy to determine the extent and
character of its influence on other discoveries, and justly to give the
credit to whom the credit is due. Such discoveries form ready points of
reference in the intellectual horizon, and mark distinct eras in the
world's progress. This is true of all work in the domain of physical
science, but it is especially true in that of electricity and magnetism,
in which Faraday was pr