Faraday to Lambert-Adolphe-Jacques Quetelet   6 August 18601

Royal Institution | 6 August 1860

My dear Mr Quetelet

Your letter2 gave me great pleasure containing as it did so agreeable a mark of your remembrance. I heard you had been in London3 and at one moment hoped to meet you at Miss Coutts but could not get there - Just as I learned that you were at the house of M. Van der Weyer4 & was preparing at all event to leave a card for you, you were gone. I know how much your hours would be in request at the beginning of things, & I hope they were not shortened here by any cause of anxiety at home[.] May you be happy there - in that in that [sic] indeed which makes the true and real part of life.

I thank you very much for the many kind scientific remembrances which you send me - proving as they do your active & powerful exertions in the cause of science. I have little or nothing to send you in return - only a short note on regelation5 which this post will bring you - All things wear out and philosophers amongst the rest: and for my part I think it best that we should have this lesson & be content & happy in our latter years - in possession of the many blessings that are granted to an humble & satisfied mind.

Ever my dear friend | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday

1
Lambert-Adolphe-Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874, DSB). Astronomer at the Brussels Observatory from 1828 and Permanent Secretary of the Brussels Academy from 1834.
2
Not found.
3
For the meeting of the International Statistical Congress in July 1860 which Quetelet attended. Times,17 July 1860, p.5, col. a.
4
Jean-Sylvain Van de Weyer (1802-1874, BNB). Belgian ambassador to London.
5
Faraday (1860d).

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1860d): “Note on Regelation”, Proc. Roy. Soc., 10: 440-50.

Please cite as “Faraday3816,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday3816