Faraday to Joseph Dalton Hooker¹   7 February 1854

Royal Institution | 7 Feby 1854

My dear Sir

I believe you are aware that several of your friends and our’s conceive that it would be for the advancement of science and hope that it would be agreeable to yourself to deliver some lectures here on botany after Easter. Dr. Bence Jones, has, I know, already written to you on the matter. Our Managers have done me the honor of asking me to communicate with you on this point²: which I do, therefore, less in a formal manner than with the view of expressing my personal feelings. If you could give us six or seven lectures after Easter I should be very glad; because I think it would be of service to science. I understand you are some degree bound by feelings of honor to the Government[.] I may not hope that my opinion would have any weight with Lord John Russel[l]³ but I think if he knew the case as I know it and believed as I do that it would be for the real benefit of Science he would approve of your consenting to our request. We have an honorary chair of botany which at different times has been occupied by Sir J.E. Smith⁴ Dr. Lindley and others but is vacant at present & has been for some years: I should like to see you in that chair and so would others: but we cannot elect or propose a person for it until after he has given a course of lectures in the R Institution; nor at any but one meeting in the year. If we are fortunate enough to hear you in our lecture room after Easter then I hope that everything would be favourable to our nomination of you in May 1855. You see how far I look forward: it is because I think the object is a right one and worth looking forward to⁵.

I am | My dear Sir | Ever Truly Yours | M. Faraday

Dr. Hooker | &c &c &c