To John Tyndall, Snr   Monay night, ([March/April] 1843)

Preston, | Monday night

My dear Father

Yours¹ came to hand this morning and I hasten to reply to it, not indeed because of your having asked me any questions which demand prompt replies but simply that I have a little spare time. Here I sit alone in my comfortable room, the last embers of a dying fire smoulder to my left. Evans and Latimer my other messmate are wandering where I know not, and surrounded by the circumstance of unbroken solitude my thoughts naturally revert to poor Leighlin – with all its faults I love it still – but I must check myself. I was just about entering upon a strain so pathetic that had I continued it I would most infallibly be guilty of having made my father weep like a child.

Yesterday was a most delightful day, I strolled more than once along the green banks of the clear Ribble,² viewing the scenery of each side. Everything looked blooming – the birds carolled on the boughs, the boughs were covered with fresh green leaves or scented buds, ‘the early promise of the spring’. Yet notwithstanding the heat of the sunbeams which glanced upon us during the day we had a most tremendous shower of hail in the evening, accompanied by some vivid flashes of lightening and booming thunder – You ask me in earnest when I think I will go home. I have just paid my subscription to the Preston Institution³ for the ensuing quarter, and when it has expired why then I’ll be talking to you somewhat serious about the matter. I am sorry I have no plants to mould⁴ here I’d like to exercise my muscles at such work, perhaps I’d eat some of those which Kit⁵ has moulded. You imagine the small papers I sent you⁶ to be poison – Millions think otherwise. I am glad to hear that my mother and Emma were in Ballybromwell.⁷ They ought to go out often, it would serve my mother very much to take a trip out to the country every month at least. So Emma got the rhyme that I wrote to Debby.⁸ When I go home I’ll shew you some more specimens of rhyming. Ginty and I have kept up a constant fire since I came to England. Nearly all our letters are in rhyme. You’ll laugh at some of them. You ask how is the public mind in England. In this portion of it, the public tongue calls aloud for a repeal of the corn laws.⁹ The English are a stern people, and will not suffer what they conceive to be their rights kept from them. They have plenty of firebrands among them to keep their minds in a blaze. I sent Emma a couple more specimens of their publications. Tho’ I did not mention Mrs Hennessy¹⁰ in my letter her bankruptcy was surprising news to me, has Pat Kelly¹¹ come to much loss by her?

RI MS JT 1/10/3289

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