Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   9 February 1857

My dear Faraday,

Not knowing exactly the direction of your friend¹ at Stamford Hill, I take the liberty to inclose a letter addressed to her by my eldest daughter and beg you to forward it to its place of destination. If the plan of Miss Schoenbein should happen to be realized, I am very glad to know her placed with an intimate friend of your’s and in your neighbourhood, being sure that in Stamford Hill she will find a second home and in you and Mrs. Faraday a father and mother.

As to the girl herself, being good-natured, cheerful, healthy, active, and I may add well-informed and well-bred too, I trust she will please and suit your friend.

During our late crisis and warlike preparations² I was very busy too, but in a very quiet and harmless way. I worked very hard upon oxigen (for what else should or could I do) and think to have succeeded in ascertaining a series of novel facts such as to my opinion at least, leave no shade of doubt about the correctness of an old notion of mine, according to which common oxigen must be considered as a chemically inert body and any oxydizing action apparently being brought about by O is invariably and as a conditio sine qua non preceded by an allotropic modification (change of chemical condition) of that elementary substance.

The facts alluded to appeared to me so simple and striking, when I saw them first, that looked for as they were, I felt an infantine joy, to which I could not help giving utterance, although I was quite alone in my laboratory. You shall know the details in my next letter, for at this present moment I have no leisure-time to write an epistolary memoir.

Amongst other little things I have found out that under given circumstances even strong acids may be chemically associated to metallic peroxides, such as PbO<2> and MnO<2> yielding, as you may easily imagine, highly energetic oxidizing solutions such indeed, as act like free ozonized oxigen.

So you see, every day a little step is made onward in my favorite study and I hope progressing still further for some time to come, for in the Ozone business much work is yet left to be done. We have hardly begun the “magisterium”.

I don’t know, whether you have been told that a great and wholly unexpected honor was bestowed upon Mr. Schoenbein some months ago. A gold medal conjointly with a prize of about 3500 francs has been awarded to him (by the King of Bavaria³) for his investigations on ozonised oxigen. Liebig being quite intimate with his Majesty, I suspect that our friend has not been quite strange to the matter. Be that however as it may, I cannot deny that I was highly gratified by that Royal munificence less on account of the money than of the meaning of the gift. The existence of the little baby, christened “Ozone” has been at last acknowledged even by a Monarch; now the schoolmasters must follow the Royal example.

I intend to spend the easter holidays at Munich a place which from several reasons I am exceedingly fond of and visit more than any other town. In the first place I have got there many friends of a very motley description, artists, poets, philosophers &c. and there is even a Nimrod found amongst them. Varietas delectate⁴. And then the Bavarian capital teems with master pieces of the fine arts, which, unartistical as I am, I nevertheless relish very much. It is indeed a great treat to me now and then to shake off from my shoulders the dust of the laboratory and store up my mind with the Images of exquisitely beautiful objects, creations certainly belonging to an order of things infinitely superior to that under which we range physical phenomena and philosophical truths. And I will not conceal it from you, that on returning to the earth from the lofty regions where Imagination reigns and rules, I feel myself a better philosopher and matter-of fact dealer, for even on the prosaic ground of palpable matter, we cannot do without that enchantress who conjures up Ideal worlds.

Now being at the end of my stories and sheet I beg you to pardon the loquacity of

Your | old and affectionate | friend C.F. Schoenbein.

Bâle Febr.9. 1857.

Dr. M. Faraday | &c &c &c

P.S. Pray present my best compliments to Mrs Faraday.