Gradually Faraday's interest widened in those matters which later on were to entirely engross his attention. His apprenticeship at first gave him many opportunities of reading philosophical and scientific works. "I loved," he afterwards wrote, referring to this time, "to read the scientific books which were under my hands, and, amongst them, delighted in Marcet's _Conversations in Chemistry_, and the electrical treatise in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. I made," he adds, and the item is interesting as giving us a first glimpse at his experiments, "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." Watts' _On the Mind_, was, he said, the first thing that made him really think; while his thoughts were directed towards science by an article on electricity, which he lighted upon in an encyclopædia entrusted to him to bind. Such glimpses into the early reading--showing us how the bent of his genius is decided--are always interesting in the life of one who, as Tennyson says, "Has made by force his merit known." Into Faraday's early reading--or that part of his reading which bore upon the science with which his name is so intimately connected--we have indeed something more than a glimpse, for he compiled (during 1809-10) a note book in which he wrote down the names of such books and articles connected with the sciences as interested him. This note book he called, "_The Philosophical Miscellany_: being a collection of notices, occurrences, events, etc., relating to the arts and sciences, collected from the public papers, reviews, magazines, and other miscellaneous works; intended to promote both amusement and instruction, and also to corroborate or invalidate those theories which are continually starting into the world of science."