Speicher on the heights of the Canton | of Appenzell Aug. 4th 1858.
My dear Faraday,
I won’t let wait you long for an answer to your very kind letter1, with which you favored me some days ago and first of all permit me to tell you that I felt much gratified at learning from it, that you have not altogether condemned my heretical views. You are aware that I have these many years entertained them and tried on more than one occasion to combat Davy’s doctrine on the nature of Chlorine &c2. I can therefore see no harm in making known those views to the scientific public of England3, though I am quite sure that they will be but slightly relished by the majority of the british Chymists. I am even prepared to see Mr. Schoenbein declared to be half if not an entire fool, but being very little ambitious and caring far more for what I consider to be true than for earning applause and eulogies from others, I shall take very cooly any strictures made upon my old-fashioned notions.
If you think my last letter to you worthy of being published in the Philosophical Magazine I give you full liberty to modify and curtail it, where and in what manner soever you please to do so. Getting more and more out of practice to speak and write your native tongue, I have no doubt, that my epistolary production will teem with all sorts of grammatical blunders and if your kindness is not too much taxed by the demand, I ask you the favor to correct the most palpable faults of my letter in order to render it less grating to english ears.
These last three weeks Mrs. Schoenbein, my two youngest daughters and myself have been residing upon the heights of the canton of Appenzell, that spot of Switzerland, I am most particularly fond of. It is the greenest land I know and I doubt very much, whether Ireland, emphatically called “the Emerald Island” can compete with Appenzell, the whole country about looking like an immense carpet of the softist velvet and being broken up into numberless hills chasms, valleys, dales, which here and there are patched with firwoods and covered with neat and snug little houses, the mere sight of which conveys comfort to the eye. Add to all these beauties a most extensive view on a great part of Switzerland Swabia, Bavaria and the Tyrol, between which the “swabian Sea”, the stately lake of Constance is expanding its broad and blue sheet of water, you will readily allow, that such a seat and sight deservedly merit to be called glorious.
All of us, as you may easily imagine, fully enjoy the Charms of the country, the peculiar nature of which seduces us to lead a truly gipsy life, to-day making this, to-morrow another hill our temporary leager.
As often as I discover new beauties, I cannot help saying to myself: how should my friend Faraday enjoy such a sight! That under such circumstances Chymistry and every sort of philosophy are entirely forgotten, I hardly need assuring you.
In the beginning of next week we shall leave our alpine abode, Mrs. Schoenbein and the girls returning to Basle and Mr. Schoenbein going to Jena.
Pray present our best compliments to Mrs. Faraday and believe me
Your’s | most truly | C.F. Schoenbein
KNIGHT, David (1992): Humphry Davy: Science & Power, Oxford.
SCHOENBEIN, Christian Friedrich (1858c): “Further Observations on the Allotropic Modifications of Oxygen, and on the Compound Nature of Chlorine, Bromine, &c.”, Phil. Mag., 16: 178-82.
Please cite as “Faraday3494,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on