This Continental trip with Davy forms one of the chief episodes in Faraday's life. He had, though two-and-twenty years of age, never before been further than a few miles out of London. The country through which he passed, the sea, and the mountains, all came to him as a revelation. The letters which he wrote home from abroad, and the journals which he kept, all express his wonder at the strange sights, and all breathe the kindliness of nature and affection for home and those at home which all his life long were strongly marked characteristics. His letters to his mother are especially pleasing. He was away for but little over eighteen months, yet an account of his travels merits a chapter to itself. The commencement of 1813 marked an epoch in his life, the close of the same year marked another. [Illustration] FOOTNOTE: [4] Some of the books which Faraday bound for the Royal Institution are there now; kept carefully with other relics of the great chemist. See the chapter entitled "About the Royal Institution." [Illustration] CHAPTER III. "HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD." "One rule his life was fashioned to fulfil: That he who tends Truth's shrine, and does the hest Of Science, with a humble, faithful will, The God of Truth and Knowledge serveth best." "Wednesday, October 13th, 1813.--This morning formed an epoch in my life." Thus commences the first entry in that journal, in which, all the while that he was away, Faraday noted down particulars of what he saw and thought. And, indeed, the young traveller's remark is by no means an exaggeration, as we recognise when we consider that he had never been out of sight of the metropolis, that he was accompanying one of the leading chemists, and that he and Davy, Englishmen both, were allowed free passports through France, although this and that country were at the time at war with one another. The fact that Davy was a scientist overshadowed the fact that he was an Englishman in the eyes of the French authorities; as the former, he was permitted to travel anywhere, and to use libraries, museums, etc., at any time; as the latter, he would have been instantly taken prisoner. This was an early and pleasing recognition of the universality of science, of its more than political or national interest, nay, of its international importance.