The duties of the assistant were specified by the managers in the following manner, his work being something other than the washing of bottles, which Pepys had recommended. It is a fact, also, that Faraday, almost from the commencement of his engagement, was concerned in more important work than that herein particularised. He was "to attend and assist the lecturers and professors in preparing for, and during, lectures; when any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room or laboratory to the lecture-room, and to clean and replace them after being used, reporting to the manager such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. That, in one day in each week, he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month." As has been said, Faraday's work was almost from the first of a higher nature; he is reported to have set in order the mineralogical collection soon after his arrival. But a very short while elapsed between Michael's appointment as assistant and his taking up the duties of his post, for, on the 8th of March, he writes to Abbott, dating his letter from his new home, the two rooms at the top of the Institution. His letter tells us that he was already concerned in the active duties of his post, as the following passages show: "It is now about nine o'clock, and the thought strikes me that the tongues are going both at Tatum's and at the lecture in Bedford Street; but I fancy myself much better employed than I should have been at the lecture at either of those places. Indeed, I have heard one lecture already to-day, and had a finger in it (I can't say a hand, for I did very little). It was by Mr. Powell on mechanics, or rather, on rotatory motion, and was a pretty good lecture, but not very fully attended. "As I know you will feel a pleasure in hearing in what I have been or shall be occupied, I will inform you that I have been employed to-day, in part, in extracting the sugar from a portion of beetroot, and also in making a compound of sulphur and carbon--a combination which has lately occupied in a considerable degree the attention of chemists."