In 1804, when thirteen years of age, Michael Faraday went as errand-boy to Mr. Geo. Riebau, a bookseller in Blandford Street. Part of his duty in this capacity was to carry round papers lent on hire by his master, and in his "Life of Faraday," Dr. Bence Jones tells how anxious the young errand-boy was to collect his papers on Sunday morning in time to attend the Sandemanian service with the other members of his family. Faraday was apprenticed to Mr. Riebau on October 7, 1805, and learned the business of a bookbinder. He occasionally occupied his spare time in reading the scientific books he had to bind, and was particularly interested in Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations in Chemistry," and in the article on "Electricity" in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." These were days before the existence of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, and, though Professor Anderson in Glasgow had shown how the advantages of a university might be extended to those whose fortunes prevented them from becoming regular university students, Professor Stuart had not yet taught the English universities that they had responsibilities outside their own borders, and that the national universities of the future must be the teachers of all classes of the community. But private enterprise supplied in a measure the neglect of public bodies. Mr. Tatum, of 43, Dorset Street, Fleet Street, advertised a course of lectures on natural philosophy, to be delivered at his residence at eight o'clock in the evenings. The price of admission was high, being a shilling for each lecture, but Michael's brother Robert frequently supplied him with the money, and in attending these lectures Faraday made many friendships which were valuable to him afterwards. Faraday appears to have been aware of the value of skill in drawing--a point to which much attention has recently been called by those interested in technical education--and he spent some portion of his time in studying perspective, so as to be better able to illustrate his notes of Mr. Tatum's lectures, as well as of some of Sir Humphry Davy's, which he was enabled to hear at the Royal Institution through the kindness of a customer at Mr. Riebau's shop.