Dionysius Lardner to Faraday   5 October 1834

Manchester 5 Oct 1834

My Dear Sir

If in making your Friday evening arrangements for the ensuing season you should find nothing more attractive it would give me great pleasure to give you two subjects - 1. Comets - 2. The progress & prospects of locomotion. The latter I can illustrate by very beautiful models - the former by drawings - but I entreat that you may not postpone any other subject of greater interest than these for them¹. I have so much of public exertion that I assure you my appetite for it is more than satisfied and my object in offering this is merely to contribute even in a minor degree to the objects of the institution.

I have arranged the heads of a course of popular lectures which I think will prove highly interesting in as much as they would bring within the comprehension of unmathematical people a class of problems which elementary teachers have rarely ventured to grapple with. The subject is the modern discoveries in astronomy among these would be comprised such questions as the true figure of the earth, the tides, the trade winds, the weights and densities of the planets, the periodic and secular inequalities of the system - and in a word most of the remarkable consequences of the principle of gravitation as manifested in our system - also the stellar & nebular discoveries effected by the modern improvements in space-penetrating power. I can conceive nothing more interesting or attractive nor (in a popular form) more novel.

If your committee should at any time want to fill a ì ì gap, I should be happy to endeavour to supply it by such a course².

Do not put me down for the fridays till after the 1st March as I shall be absent from London - but meanwhile letters addressed to 8 St James Square will reach me.

Ever yours truly | Dion: Lardner

Dr. Faraday