Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   19 September 1861

Royal Institution | 19 Septr. 1861

My dear Schoenbein

I lost the sight of Mr. Merian¹. For when he came to town I was at Newcastle;- when I came to town he was at Manchester² (where I was not);- & when he returned I was away.- I am sent out of town a good deal now;- sometimes a little Trinity business, more generally for rest & health. But I have the Fluor spar and thank you very sincerely for it - and I have tried a few of your experiments with it.

When you send me such things, I long for the power I once had of taking possession by reading, of all new facts & making them my own; always in honorable trust for the discoverer. Now that is changed and when I tried to compare former experiments with the more recent, I became confused: & so either in reading such papers as yours, or in trying to lay their matter before others I become confused,- forgetting the facts. So you must bear with me, yet not forgetting me; for I long to know all you do. No wonder that my remembrance fails me, for I shall complete my 70 years next Sunday (the 22);- and during these 70 years I have had a happy life; which still remains happy because of hope & content.

I look forward to your new results with great interest but I am becoming more & more timid; when I strive to collate hypotheses relating to the chemical constitution of matter: I cannot help thinking sometimes whether there is not some state or condition, of which our present notions give us very little idea, and which yet would reveal to us a flood a world of real knowledge:- a world of facts, available both by practical applications & their illustrations of first principles: and yet I cannot shape the idea into a definite form or reach it by any trial facts that I can devise:- and that being the case I drop the attempt, & imagine that all the preceding thought has just been a dreaminess & no more;- and so there is an end of it.

Good bye My dear friend - Our kindest thoughts to Mrs. Schoenbein & the girls. I pass now & then the place where one of them reposes & go in & look at the place.

Miss Hornblower is deeply subjected to physical pain - We scarcely expect her to survive from week to week.

Ever My dear Schoenbein | Yours | M. Faraday