Faraday to Cornelia Augusta Hewett Crosse   12 July 1855¹

July 12, 1855.

.... Believe that I sympathise with you most deeply², for I enjoy in my life-partner those things which you speak of as making you feel your loss so heavily.

It is the kindly domestic affections, the worthiness, the mutual aid in sorrow, the mutual joy in happiness that has existed, which makes the rupture of such a tie as yours so heavy to bear; and yet you would not wish it otherwise, for the remembrance of those things brings solace with the grief. I speak, thinking what my own trouble would be if I lost my partner; and I try to comfort you in the only way in which I think I could be comforted.

M. Faraday