R.I. Tuesday
My dear Mr. Faraday
I have often thought of writing to you, and should have done so before now had I not been tossed about in body and soul more than I anticipated.
The examinations took me a long time. It is dreary work plodding out these answers, hunted by the consciousness that you may possibly do a candidate wrong. Then this time the examiners had to accompany their returns with a report, which to draw up properly also took time. I have a suspicion that this is one result of that correspondence1. I have put my notations again strongly, but have done it by arranging facts, rather than by expressing an opinion. This I shall continue to do whenever I have an opportunity, as long as I find natural philosophy, taken together rated equal to French alone, Latin alone, and at 250 marks less than the number awarded to English literature. Such an absurdity I think cannot live long in the world, if there be only somebody to hold it up to the attention of men.
I have made a number of experiments connected with the passage of a current across the place of junction of two metals - Peltier2 generalised3 - Here there is a conversion of heat into electricity; I fear the knowledge is a long way off still one does long to know something more of the intimate nature of their conversion. As yet I am in perfect darkness.
Monday I was swept suddenly down to Hampshire to see my young friend4 who, in accordance with the advice of Dr. Stokes5 of Dublin, goes off to the South of France immediately with his wife6. She manifestly has no idea of her danger which makes it all the sadder. She talks about coming back as a matter of course, when it is the opinion of some that she hardly ever will return.
I have had rather a strong letter7 from Mr. Sorby8 the geologist complaining of my misapprehension of his views, in my late lecture at the R.I.9 He has also sent a paper10 on the subject to Francis. In his eagerness to make out a strong case against me, he has left one little more to do than to quote his own words. This I have done11 without any show of feeling - indeed before I wrote I got all feeling under, for the longer I live the more I feel that these personal discussions are a perfect nuisance to science. There may be an avarice of the intellect as well as of the pocket, and one, in quality is not very much superior to the other. Snow Harris has sent up a violent response to Reiss’s last short communication12, which also might have been far milder and more courteous. Francis has written to him advising him not to print it - I do not know what the result will be13.
One morning soon after you left I received a note from Stokes informing me that the grant committee had acceded to my application for £10014. I wrote to him requesting him to return my thanks to the committee for this proof of their confidence; I said however that having been led to conclude that my application had been considered ineligible I had resorted to private sources and obtained from them all the funds I needed. If therefore the grant committee thought the money voted to me could be otherwise usefully employed, I should be glad if they would consider my application as extinct, and the £100 again at their disposal. I concluded by saying that at some future time, if permitted, I should probably be glad to avail myself of the assistance which the grant offers.* Stokes has written to me again15, the upshot of his note is that he does not think it likely that it will be recalled, so the matter rests at present.
The morning on which Sorby’s letter reached me I met Prof. Haughton16 of Trinity Coll. Dublin. He is an eminent mathematician and geologist; Professor indeed of Geology in Dublin, and he told me that his interpretation of Sorby was precisely the same as mine.
Now a truce to science. I hope you are well, I hope Mrs. Faraday and Miss Barnard are well. This is glorious weather in the country - but at Newcastle with its artificial atmosphere it may be the reverse. I associate with the name visions of foundries, smoke, and grimy miners - perhaps the reality is not quite as bad as my picture of it.
I am half inclined to write this letter again, for it is very confusedly written but I remember that you are accustomed to Matteucci, and after him you will not find me difficult to decipher.
Believe me ever | faithfully yours | John Tyndall
22nd. July 1856.
*Bence Jones agreed with this view of the subject.
PELTIER, Jean Charles Athanase (1834): “Nouvelles Expériences sur la Caloricité des courans électriques”, Ann. Chim., 56: 371-86.
RIESS, Peter Theophilus (1856): “On the Law of Electric Discharge”, Phil. Mag., 11: 524-7.
SORBY, Henry Clifton (1856): “On the Theory of the Origin of Slaty Cleavage”, Phil. Mag., 12: 127-9.
TYNDALL, John (1856a): “Comparative View of the Cleavage of Crystals and Slate Rocks”, Proc. Roy. Inst., 2: 295-308.
TYNDALL, John (1856b): “Observations on the preceding Paper”, Phil. Mag., 12: 129-35.
Please cite as “Faraday3166,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 10 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday3166