Robert and Elizabeth Faraday's six sons were each of them brought up to some trade or craft, and were thus all of them fitted to go out into the world and fight the battle of life. One son became a grocer and (as his grandfather, "Richard ffaraday," had been) tiler; one a farmer; one a shoemaker, and so on. The third son, James, to us the most interesting member of this large family, although he appears to have been of somewhat weak constitution and unfitted for so laborious a vocation, became a blacksmith, served his apprenticeship, and exercised his craft for some time in the neighbourhood of his birthplace. When he was five-and-twenty years old (in 1786), James married; his wife being Margaret Hastwell, the daughter of a farmer living near Kirkby Stephen, a place some few miles away from Clapham, over the Westmoreland border. For two years or thereabouts did the young blacksmith and his wife remain in the neighbourhood of Clapham; but after that time had elapsed they determined to come up to London, and seek their fortunes in the great metropolis. To the young men and women of our rural places the very name of London has about it, even to-day, a ring as of genuine coin, that tempts them to leave in large numbers the homes of their childhood that they may plunge into the vortex of city life. A hundred years ago this strange attractive power of the metropolis was probably much greater, owing to the difficulty of reaching it and the vague stories that were told of its wealth. They who had "been to London" were looked upon in rural places as veritable travellers, and were to their "home-keeping" friends objects of greater curiosity than anyone who to-day returns from the farthest or wildest portion of the earth's surface. The old story of "the London streets being paved with gold"--the story that had buoyed up the spirits of the youthful Whittington--seems yet in the last century to have gained some credence. Whether they were induced to do so by promises of work, or merely attracted to London as a centre where work would probably be plentiful, we cannot say; but it is at any rate certain that the Faradays removed from the Yorkshire village to a London suburb some time before the autumn of 1791. For it was on the 22nd of September in that year that there was born to them at Newington Butts their third child, Michael, the future illustrious chemist and philosopher, upon the story of whose life we are now about to enter.