With a mind calmed and strengthened by this beautiful domestic life, he continued with greater and greater enthusiasm to ask questions of Nature, and to interpret her replies to his fellow-men. Just before his marriage he had been appointed at the Royal Institution superintendent of the house and laboratory, and in February 1825, after a change in the management of the Institution, he was placed as director in a position of greater responsibility and influence. One of his first acts in this capacity was to invite the members to a scientific evening in the laboratory; this took place three or four times in 1825, and in the following years these gatherings were held every week from Feb. 3 to June 9; and though the labour devolved very much upon Faraday, other philosophers sometimes brought forward discoveries or useful inventions. Thus commenced those Friday evening meetings which have done so much to popularize the high achievements of science. Faraday's note-books are still preserved, containing the minutes of the committee-meetings every Thursday afternoon, the Duke of Somerset chairman, and he secretary; also the record of the Friday evenings themselves, who lectured, and on what subject, and what was exhibited in the library, till June 1840, when other arrangements were probably made. The year 1827 was otherwise fruitful in lectures: in the spring, a course of twelve on chemical manipulation at the London Institution; after Easter, his first course at Albemarle Street, six lectures on chemical philosophy (he had helped Professor Brande in 1824);[3] and at Christmas, his desire to convey knowledge, and his love to children, found expression in a course of six lectures to the boys and girls home for their holidays. These were a great success; indeed, he himself says they "were just what they ought to have been, both in matter and manner,--but it would not answer to give an extended course in the same spirit." He continued these juvenile lectures during nineteen years. The notes for courses of lectures were written in school copy-books, and sometimes he appends a general remark about the course, not always so favourable as the one given above. Thus he writes, "The eight lectures on the operations of the laboratory, April 1828, were not to my mind." Of the course of twelve in the spring of 1827, he says he "found matter enough in the notes for at least seventeen."