It was in Newington Butts, in London, England, that the man-child first opened his eyes on the wonders of the physical world around him.  To those eyes, in after years, were given a far deeper insight into the mysteries of nature than often falls to the lot of man.  This man-child was Michael Faraday, who has been justly styled, by those best capable of judging him, “The Prince of Experimental Philosophers.”

The precocity so common in the childhood of men of genius was apparently absent in the case of young Faraday.  The growing boy played marbles, and worried through a scant education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, unnoticed, and most probably, for the greater part, severely left alone, as commonly falls to the lot of nearly all boys, whether ordinary or extraordinary.  At the early age of thirteen, he was taken from school and placed on trial as errand-boy in the book-shop of George Ribeau, in London.  After a year at this work, he was taken as an apprentice to the book-binding trade, by the same employer, who, on account of his faithful services, remitted the customary premium.  At this work he spent some eight years of his life.

But far be it from us even to hint at the absence of genius in the young child.  Genius is not an acquired gift.  It is born in the individual.  Apart from the marvellous achievements of the man, a mere glance at the magnificent head, with its high intellectual forehead, the firm lips, the intelligent inquiring eyes, and the bright face, as seen in existing pictures, assures us that they portray an unusual individuality, incompatible with even a suspicion of belonging to an ordinary man.  Doubtless the growing child did give early promise of his future greatness.  Doubtless he was a formidable member of that terrible class of inquiring youngsters who demand the why and the wherefore of all around them, and refuse to accept the unsatisfactory belief of their fathers that things “are because they are.”  In its self-complacency, the busy world is too apt to fail to notice unusual abilities in children,—­abilities that perhaps too often remain undeveloped from lack of opportunities.  But whether young Faraday did or did not, at an early age, display any unusual promise of his life-work, all his biographers appear to agree that he could not be regarded as a precocious child.

Faraday disclaimed the idea that his childhood was distinguished by any precocity.  “Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a precocious person,” says Faraday, when alluding to his early life.  “I was a very lively, imaginative person, and could believe in the ‘Arabian Nights’ as easily as the ‘Encyclopaedia,’ but facts were important to me, and saved me.  I could trust a fact and always cross-examined an assertion.  So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet’s book [he is alluding to her ’Conversations on Chemistry’], by such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it.”