Faraday to Harriet Jane Moore¹   24 August 1850²

I have kept your picture to look at for a day or two before I acknowledge your kindness in sending it³. It gives the idea of a tempting place; but what can you say to such persons as we are who eschew all the ordinary temptations of society? There is one thing, however, society has which we do not eschew; perhaps it is not very ordinary, though I have found a great deal of it, and that is kindness, and we both join most heartily in thanking you for it, even when we do not accept that which it offers. I must tell you how we are situated. We have taken a little house here on the hill-top, where I have a small room to myself, and have, ever since we came here, been deeply immersed in magnetic cogitations. I write and write and write, until three papers for the Royal Society are nearly completed⁴, and I hope that two of them will be good if they justify my hopes, for I have to criticise them again and again before I let them loose. You shall hear of them at some of the Friday evenings⁵; at present I must not say more. After writing, I walk out in the evening, hand-in-hand with my dear wife, to enjoy the sunset; for to me who love scenery, of all that I have seen or can see there is none surpasses that of Heaven. A glorious sunset brings with it a thousand thoughts that delight me.