Aug. 1851.
Dear Sir,
I have to return you my sincere thanks for your kind and valuable letter.2 I was already aware of your dislike to giving written testimonials and therefore took care not to ask you for anything of the kind – Indeed the manner of recommendation which you allude to would be more agreeable to me than that by certificate, and if the parties have an agent in this country (of which I am not yet aware) I doubt not it would be the most practical and effectual.
With regard to my paper at Ipswich there is one matter which I should like to call to your mind. During the reading of it I was haunted by the consciousness that the Section was already tired, and this caused me, I doubt not, to appear somewhat hurried.3 Had it occurred earlier in the
day, as I hoped it would I think I should have satisfied you better.
I believe you will find the experiments4 to be as I have described them. If you once turn the light of your intellect upon this matter I think you will not long halt between two opinions5 – that you will once more take the thought to your bosom which suggested that significant note to a passage in the Bakerian Lecture for 1849 ‘Perhaps these points may find their explanation hereafter on the action of contiguous particles’.6
With best thanks, dear Sir | Most faithfully yours | John Tyndall
Prof. Faraday | &c &c
RI MS JT/2/12/4013
Transcript Only
[2–3]: probably written two days after Faraday’s letter (0506) which was written two days after Tyndall’s request (letter 0505). Given the importance of both Toronto and Faraday for Tyndall, he might have replied even more rapidly and 2 August should not be ruled out.
your . . . letter: letter 0506.
my paper . . . hurried: see letter 0501 on the circumstances which led to the rescheduling of Tyndall’s paper, ‘On Diamagnetism and Magnecrystallic Action’.
the experiments: this letter suggests that the experiments discussed in letters 0505 and 0506 were those recounted in Tyndall’s BAAS paper.
will not long halt between two opinions: 1 Kings 18:21: ‘And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but Baal, then follow him’.
perhaps … action of contiguous particles: Tyndall cites Faraday, ‘ERE 22 (continued)’, p. 30 n.
Please cite as “Tyndall0507,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0507