Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   6 April 1855

Hastings | 6 April 1855

My dear friend

I have brought your letter¹ here, that I might answer its great kindness at some time when I could remember quietly all the pleasure I have had since the time I first knew you. I say remember it all, but that I cannot do; for as a fresh incident creeps dimly into view I lose sight of the old ones, and I cannot tell how many are forgotten altogether. But think kindly of your old friend;- you know it is not willingly but of natural necessity that his impressions fade away. I cannot tell what sort of a portrait you have made of me,- all I can say is, that whatever it may be I doubt whether I should be able to remember it:- indeed I may say I know I should not, for I have just been under the Sculptors hands², and I look at the Clay, & I look at the marble, and I look in the glass, & the more I look the less I know about the matter & the more uncertain I become[.] But it is of no great consequence lable the marble & it will do just as well as if it were like. The imperishable marble of your book will surely flatter³.

You describe your state as a very happy one; healthy, idle, & comfortable. Is it indeed so? or are you laying up thoughts which are to spring out into a rich harvest of intellectual produce? I cannot imagine you a do-nothing as I am; Your very idleness must be activity. As for your book, it makes me mad to think I shall lose it. There was the other⁴, which the Athenaeum⁵ or some other periodical reviewed in German, but we never saw it in English - I often lent it to others & heard expressions of their enjoyment, & sometimes had snatches out of it; but to me it was a shut book. How often have I desired to learn German; but head ache & giddiness have stopped it.

I feel as if I had pretty well worked out my stock of original matter, & have power to do little more than reconsider the old thoughts. I sent you by post a notice of a Friday Evening here⁶, and would have sent you a paper from the Philosophical Magazine⁷; - but I am afraid of our post, i.e, I am afraid that unawares I may put my friends to much useless expense. I receive almost daily now, papers & journals, which coming by post are charged to me two, three, & four shillings, until I absolutely cannot afford it; and fearing that with equal innocency I may be causing my friends inconvenience I have abstained: However I hope that a friend of mine, Mr Twining, will in the course of a month or two put the paper I speak of in your way. You will therein perceive that I am as strong as ever in the matter of lines of magnetic force & a magnetic medium; and what is more I think that men are beginning to look more closely to the matter than they have done heretofore, and find it a more serious affair than they expected. My own convictions & expectations increase continually; that you will say is because I become more & more familiar with the idea. It may be so & in some measure must be so; but I always tried to be very critical on myself before I gave any body else the opportunity, and even now I think I could say much stronger things against my notions than any body else has. Still the old views are so utterly untenable as a whole, that I am clear they must be wrong; whatever is right.

I had forgotten that Wiedemann was in Basle give my kindest remembrances to him. I think I received a paper on electrolysis from him, but out here cannot remember & cannot refer⁸. Our sincerest remembrances also to Mrs. Schoenbein & the favourable family critics. I can just imagine them, hearing you read your M.S., & flattering you up, & then giving you a sly mischievous mental poke in the ribs, &c. They cannot think better of you than I do.

Ever My dear Schoenbein | Your attached friend, | M. Faraday

Address: Dr Schoenbein | &c &c &c | University | Basle | on the Rhine