Royal Institution | 20 May 1844
My dear Sir
I received your letter1 only to day & hasten to answer it and first to express my deep regret at your indisposition. I can well understand what a grief it must be to you to be deprived of the free use of your eyes those invaluable organs of men of which you have made such excellent use but I trust that before you can receive this letter then full use will be restored to you – for myself I am very well in body whilst I keep quiet but have lost my memory in a great measure & attention to any matter soon fatigues my head so I do little – nothing scarcely in research – keep quiet – do not go into the world – communicate with scarcely any body & have not been at any scientific meeting (except those of our own Institution where duty claims me) hardly for years.
With reference to your beautiful memoir on a liquid mass &c2 I received a copy, read it, was so much struck with then phenomenon that I repeated several, spoke of it amongst our own members at the Royal Institution & purposed giving the matter of it as an evening discourse in our lecture room but I found the forms & appearance were not sufficiently visible at a distance (our room holds 700 or 800 persons) and was obliged to give it up. I made the oil green by dissolving in it a little oxide of copper & though that helped much still it was not sufficiently distinct for a large room – About three weeks or a month ago I saw Mr. Richard Taylor who told me he was about to insert a translation of your paper in the scientific memoirs3[.] You may suppose that I approved his intention & he asked me for a note about the colouring of the oil to put at the foot of the page. I told him he might refer to it if he liked & say that I had repeated some of your experiments4[.] So I hope you will not think so hardly of me as you apparently had reason to do - Out of the Royal Institution I really have no opportunity of doing any thing because I live so like a hermit in it & confine myself to it[.]
As to my papers I believe I have sent you all except the note on Speculations concerning matter5 & these I did not think worth sending to many or out of the country. Perhaps too Series xviii6 of my Exp Researches may be wanting but up to series xvii7 I have them marked down as sent to you through the late Mr Roberton8 of the Royal Society, but I fear that sometimes the papers went sadly wrong. Of late years I have done very little and that is one reason why you have not heard of me.
When I see Mr. Wheatstone I will (if I can remember which is very doubtful) tell him that I have heard from you & let him know the pith of your letter. Now I must conclude in haste but not without again expressing my current hopes for your full recovery to health & return to active philosophic occupation.
I am | My dear Sir | Your Very faithfully & respectfully | M. Faraday
Profr. Jh. Plateau | &c &c &c
Address: A monsieur | Monsieur Jh. Plateau | Professor | &c &c &c | University | a Gand | Belgium
ANON (1940): The Record of the Royal Society of London, 4th edition, London.
FARADAY, Michael (1840b): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Seventeenth Series. On the source of power in the voltaic pile.- (Continued)”, Phil. Trans., 130: 93-127.
FARADAY, Michael (1843): “On Static Electrical Inductive Action”, Phil. Mag., 22: 200-4.
FARADAY, Michael (1844a): “A speculation touching Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter”, Phil. Mag., 24: 136-44.
PLATEAU, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand (1843): “Mémoire sur les phénomènes que présente une masse liquide libre et soustraite a l'action de la pesanteur”, Mém. Acad. Sci. Bruxelles, 16. [Separately paginated].
PLATEAU, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand (1844): “On the Phaenomena presented by a free Liquid Mass withdrawn from the Action of Gravity”, Taylor Sci. Mem., 4: 16-43.
Please cite as “Faraday1586a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday1586a