To Thomas Archer Hirst¹

My dear Tom,

I think the employment of Intellect is fair and honorable and not to be always consciously in love, or a lover, is no fault of yours or any body elses. If this feeling is within you it will flow out spontaneous where occasion offers, but dont hunt after it. There is an old proverb in Ireland which to this moment I have thought utterly without meaning ‘a watched pot never boils’ It springs from the nature of things in Ireland, as the vacuous native sits with anxious eye watching the potato pot, he no doubt imagines the boiling point one of tardy attainment; but if he quit his watching and leave the matter to itself it will boil in due time, and that all the quicker apparently for him. If within you, as I have said, it will flow out of you at proper times, and in choosing these times it is scarcely ever polite enough to consult your will in the matter, if not within you (which I utterly disbelieve) then good; be true to your own nature; if you are the Devil’s child as somebody says² why by all means be true to the devil! – but preaching on these matters is of very little use, you can by no means shirk your present schooling, and a day will come when you will be better able to appreciate its value than you are at present.

A lover! A friend! Sweet words. Truly has somebody said that our unconscious acts are greatest. As a matter of curiosity I should like to know the verdict of 12 of the wisest men in Halifax upon the act you have just committed.³ ‘The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light’⁴ Go tell John Abbott⁵ what you have done, he will call you a fool for your pains. Here I have been receiving a packet of motley currencies Louis, Thalers, florins and Kreuzers,⁶ sufficient to break an asses back, sent to me by order of Thomas Hirst Esq. of Halifax on Mr Schwann⁷ of Huddersfield. I never was more puzzled in my life than to guess the contents of that packet before I opened it. I had not the remotest dream of its contents, and imagined that some benevolent individual had sent me a lot of crystals knowing that I was experimenting⁸ with the same. Well Tom I was never so deeply in debt before, and there is no man under heaven’s umbrella to whom I would prefer being in debt. I wrote to Carter as I imagined that an act of the kind on his part would be mere reciprocity. I did not ask him to lend me 20 pounds but merely for the sake of enlightening myself as to what was best to be done, I wished to know in case of need what I had to fall back upon. The probability is that I should never have borrowed a penny from him, and my asking him was merely calculated to make my footing more sure. Burn the letter⁹ by all means; you have rendered the question unnecessary. As I told you however I am in no immediate want of money. I have a little beside me here and have left 30 pounds in the hands of Mr Edmondson so that strictly speaking, I am not yet a pauper. I cannot say that I love you a bit the better on account of this remittance, and were the case otherwise, I should begin to doubt the purity of the connexion between us; but your act affords me very pleasing material for a Journal entry an entry that may warm my old heart when my ‘pow’ is frosty and if a young Tyndall should be in the way it may do him good. ‘There lad’ I can exclaim ‘you see when your father was poor he had a friend that trusted him’.

Whence comes that deep interest which one feels on meeting unexpectedly a picture of some well known spot? There is the dwelling house, and the apple tree at the corner, and there is tiger the mastiff with his tail cocked to the left, and little Bill or Tom or Jimmy playing a penny trumpet,¹⁰ at such times we detect the common nature of artist and lookeron and the discovery causes us pleasure, nor could the most familiar landscape that human pencil could draw be better recognised and understood than your picture of yourself, drawn by yourself; and I would wager £10 against a Hessian halter¹¹ that Emerson would understand it too, that he has gone over the same ground, and that he would agree with me when I say that if a man would know anything he must not expect to shirk their zwischenraum,¹² this strife gulph in his existence.

You have heard of Henry Kirk White, Byron wrote as follows about him.¹³

‘Unhappy White while life was in its spring

And thy young muse just shook her joyous wing

The spoiler came, and all thy promise fair

Has sought the grave to sleep for ever there.

O! what a noble heart was here undone

When Science Self destroyed her favourite son!

Yes she too much indulged the fond pursuit

She sowed the seeds but death has reaped the fruit.

T’was thine own genius gave the final blow

And helped to plant the wound which laid thee low

So the struck Eagle stretched upon the plain

No more through rolling clouds to soar again

Viewed his own feather as the fatal dart

And winged the shaft which quivered in his heart.

Keen were his pangs but keener far to feel

He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel

While the same plumage that has warmed his nest

Drank the last life drop from his bleeding breast.’

This is only a note of recommendation, the youth who drew that encomium from Byron muss etwas taugen.¹⁴ The following is a scrap extracted from a larger scrap entitled ‘my own character’ written by White himself¹⁵

Well, first I premise its my honest conviction

That my heart is a chaos of all contradiction

Religious, deistic, now loyal now warm

Then a dagger drawn democrat hot for reform

This moment a fop, that sententious as Titus

Democritus now and anon Heraclitus

Now laughing and pleased like a child with a rattle

Then vexed to the soul with impertinent tattle

Now moody and sad, now unthinking and gay

To all points of the compass I veer in a day

I’m proud and disdainful to fortunes gay child

But to poverty’s offspring submissive and mild

As rude as a boor and as rough in dispute

Then as for politeness, oh dear, I’m a brute!

I shew no respect where I never can feel it

And as for contempt take no pains to conceal it

And so in the suit of these laudable ends

I’ve a great many foes and but very few friends

There is a vein of pleasantry here but it is solid earnest at bottom – there never was a chosen soul who escaped this ordeal. ‘Whom the lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth’.¹⁶

I shall be very glad indeed to know Phillips; wherever I meet an article from him I am always sure to read it, and the outline I have gathered of the man from his writings is just such a one as your character of him would fill up, I have read the masque of life¹⁷ – it evinces a good deal of poetic power.

You drew my attention once to an article¹⁸ from the pen of Hutchinson, and at the time I formed my opinion of the writer. It was very cleverly written, much tact, clear sight, but all in one direction – the thing had no breath, and its cleverness barely rescued it from the tinge of bigotry – but how many honest simple souls are thus tinged, and estimating him as one of such I was glad to find that he had fallen in your way – his attainments may be very high Tom, but this critical way never led a man to the highest. Shakespeare has had a host of critics both in France and England, many of them able men, but no one among them ever derived half the benefit from Shakespeare that Goethe has derived, who sat down before the mighty man as docile as a child willing to accept all he had to give, and not caring to cavil about trifles.

The theory which our investigations contradict has emanated from Professor Plucker of Bonn,¹⁹ you are aware that when light falls perpendicularly upon a glass surface it goes straight through but when it falls obliquely it is bent on entering the glass and bent again on leaving it, pursuing in the last case a direction parallel to its first course. a b represents the perp. ray; c d e the oblique or refracted ray; now no matter what the angle is which the oblique ray makes with the perpendicular without the glass, the sine of this angle divided by the line of the angle which the oblique ray makes with the perpendicular within the glass, is a constant quantity; that is $\frac{\mathrm{\text{sin}}\alpha }{sin\alpha \prime }=n$ in the case of glass n is equal $\frac{3}{2}$ or 1½ and this is called the index of refraction for glass. for other substances it is different; diamond has a very high refractive power; in this case n or the index is$\frac{5}{2}$. But there are many crystalline bodies in which the law of refraction is a little more complicated, for example let us take the case of Iceland spar which has the form of a cube pressed into an oblique position, that is to say, the cube is bounded by 6 squares but the spar is bounded by 6 rhombuses, looking at any object thro’ this crystal (which as I have said is only an example of a numerous class) you see two images of that object – The ray on entering the crystal is decomposed into two, one of which follows the common law of refraction, that is, it has a constant n, the other on the contrary has a variable index the value of which depends upon the direction which this ray takes through the crystal; the former is called the ‘ordinary ray,’ the latter ‘the extraordinary ray’ – now there is one direction in which both fall together; and looking thro’ in this direction you have only one image; this direction has therefore received the name of the ‘optical axis’ – in Iceland spar (you can readily procure a bit) it is the line running diagonally through the crystal from one obtuse angle to the other. These crystals where the ordinary ray is bent more than the extraordinary have received the name of negative, those where the extraordinary ray is most bent are called positive. Prof. Plucker 1^st established the law;²⁰ that between the poles of a strong electric magnet the optical axis was always repelled; latterly however he has published in a letter²¹ to Faraday a modification of the law, the result of his three years experiments namely that the optical axis of positive crystals are attracted, those of negative repelled; and it is the law thus modified which our enquiries have overturned – I sent a short abstract of our investigation with Frankland to England for insertion in the Philosophical Magazine,²² but have as yet had no reply from him – Frankland is now Prof. of practical chemistry in the college of civil engineers at Putney near London, he left Germany about 3 weeks ago. The above explanation will render the abstract when you receive it intelligible. The term ‘diamagnetic’ refers to substances which are repelled by the poles of a magnet; ‘magnetic’ of course to those attracted. By the way Tom, there is a translation of a German work in Physics which I would recommend you to purchase; it is pretty dear, here in Germany it costs a pound, I believe the translation is cheaper, it is called Treatise of Physics²³ by Dr. John Müller founded on a treatise by Prof. Pouillet of Paris – a general acquaintance with this book which is very clearly written will be a great advantage to you should you come to Germany you will thus be able to derive twenty times more benefit from lectures on the same subject.

I had made up my mind to go to England at the end of next month, but with the intention of coming back again provided I could make any arrangement to enable me to spend the summer here, what you have done modifies this resolution. I shall probably remain here. To Berlin I intended to go for a month or so, but as to France that is improbable. Noll is in Berlin – he will return to Marburg in a month or two. I hope you will find him here when you come, he is a worthy fellow, no pretension but very clever.

By George I was on the point of forgetting all about the ‘articles’²⁴ – if it be received I must say it is more than I expect as it is wanting in that very material point²⁵ to which you allude. Should it be received however I leave the thing altogether in your hands, whatever contract you make I will abide by. I will not think of a book just yet; it would take too much time. Gustave is the incarnation of a few hints derived from the persons and circumstances around me. Pof. Knoblauch is your optical friend.²⁶

On this 6^th day of Feb. received the sum of 20 pounds from Thos. Hirst thro the hands of Madame Sophie Adler of Frankfort.

John Tyndall

There thou great Ursa Major is receipt & security

Before I received your letter²⁷ I had another sketch written for the Chronicle²⁸ on the same subject; your remarks may cause an alteration or two or rather an addition or two.

Do present my vows also at the shrine of ‘Jane Eyre’ – and be sure to tell her that I am the nicest young man of the three! I expect this as an act of honour on your part and as an act of justice to myself.

A garret is not respectable – I have my eye on a room a stage lower down.

Will you ask Ginty whether he has received a letter from me addressed to Capt. Wynne²⁹ and whether he has forwarded it to the Gentleman?

And now my brother for the present good bye. I have not thanked thee much, nor do I intend to do so. I absolve myself from this by the conviction that were our necessity changed I would do precisely the same for you.

Lebewohl! Lebewohl!³⁰ | Tyndall

Thomas Hirst | Horton Street | Halifax | Yorkshire³¹

RI MS JT/1/T/526