t it out
with joy, and shall in the battle of experience cause not pain, but, I
hope, pleasure.' Faraday notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly
checks it. There is at times something almost mechanical in his
self-restraint. In another nature it would have hardened into mere
'correctness' of conduct; but his overflowing affections prevented
this in his case. The habit of self control became a second nature to
him at last, and lent serenity to his later years.

In October 1812 he was engaged by a Mr. De la Roche as a journeyman
bookbinder; but the situation did not suit him. His master appears to
have been an austere and passionate man, and Faraday was to the last
degree sensitive. All his life he continued so. He suffered at times
from dejection; and a certain grimness, too, pervaded his moods. 'At
present,' he writes to Abbott, 'I am as serious as you can be, and
would not scruple to speak a truth to any human being, whatever
repugnance it might give rise to. Being in this state of mind, I
should have refrained from writing to you, did I not conceive from the
general tenor of your letters that your mind is, at proper times,
occupied upon serious subjects to the exclusion of those that are
frivolous.' Plainly he had fallen into that stern Puritan mood, which
not only crucifies the affections and lusts of him who harbours it,
but is often a cause of disturbed digestion to his friends.

About three months after his engagement with De la Roche, Faraday
quitted him and bookbinding together. He had heard Davy, copied his
lectures, and written to him, entreating to be released from Trade,
which he hated, and enabled to pursue Science. Davy recognised the
merit of his correspondent, kept his eye upon him, and, when occasion
offered, drove to his door and sent in a letter, offering him the post
of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. He was
engaged March 1, 1813, and on the 8th we find him extracting the sugar
from beet-root. He joined the City Philosophical Society which had
been founded by Mr. Tatum in 1808. 'The discipline was very sturdy,
the remarks very plain, and the results most valuable.' Faraday
derived great profit from this little association. In the laboratory
he had a discipline sturdier still. Both Davy and himself were at
this time frequently cut and bruised by explosions of chloride of
nitrogen. One explosion was so rapid 'as to blow my hand open, tear
away a part of one n