After the year of trial, Michael Faraday was formally apprenticed to learn the arts of bookbinder, stationer, “and bookseller,” to Mr. Riebau. The indenture[2] is dated October 7, 1805. It is stated that, “in consideration of his faithful service, no premium is given.” During his seven years of apprenticeship there came unexpected opportunities for self-improvement. Faraday’s lifelong friend and co-religionist, Cornelius Varley, says:--“When my attention was first drawn to Faraday, I was told that he had been apprenticed to a bookbinder. I said he was the best bookworm for eating his way to the inside; for hundreds had worked at books only as so much printed paper. Faraday saw a mine of knowledge, and resolved to explore it.” To one of his friends he said that a book by Watts, “On the Mind,” first made him think, and that the article on “Electricity” in a cyclopædia which came into his hands to be bound first turned his attention to science. He himself wrote:--“Whilst an apprentice I loved to read the scientific books which were under my hand; and, amongst them, delighted in Marcet’s ‘Conversations in Chemistry’ and the electrical treatises in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ I made such simple experiments in chemistry as could be defrayed in their expense by a few pence per week, and also constructed an electrical machine, first with a glass phial, and afterwards with a real cylinder, as well as other electrical apparatus of a corresponding kind.” This early machine[3] is now preserved at the Royal Institution, to which it was presented by Sir James South. Amongst the books which he had to bind were Lyons’ “Experiments on Electricity” and Boyle’s “Notes about the Producibleness of Chymicall Principles,” which books, together with Miss Burney’s “Evelina,” all bound with his own hands, are still preserved in the Royal Institution. [Sidenote: NEW ACQUAINTANCES.]