Page:Lifelettersoffaradayjonesvol1.djvu/32

1810.
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Æt. 18-19.

lectures by bills in the streets and shop-windows near his house. The hour was eight o'clock in the evening. The charge was one shilling per lecture, and my brother Robert (who was three years older and followed his father's business) made me a present of the money for several. I attended twelve or thirteen lectures between February 19, 1810, and September 26, 1811. It was at these lectures I first became acquainted with Magrath, Newton, Nicol, and others.'

He learned perspective of Mr. Masquerier,^[1] that he might illustrate these lectures. Masquerier lent me Taylor's "Perspective," a 4to volume, which I studied closely, copied all the drawings, and made some other very simple ones, as of cubes or pyramids, or columns in perspective, as exercises of the rules. I was always very fond of copying vignettes and small things in ink; but I fear they were mere copies of the lines, and that I had little or no sense of the general effect and of the power of the lines in producing it.'

In his earliest note-book he wrote down the names of the books and subjects that interested him: this he called '"The Philosophical Miscellany," being a collection of notices, occurrences, events, &c., relating to the arts and sciences, collected from the public papers, reviews, magazines, and other miscellaneous works; intended,' he says, 'to promote both amusement and instruction, and also to corroborate or invalidate those theories which are continually starting