26th June 1853.
My dear Francis
I feel truly grateful to you for your kind and considerate letter1 – I was afraid you might deem me churlish but you have on the contrary felt as my friend and attributed to me nothing of the kind. With regard to the coming part2 make your mind easy I will get all ready myself I send you a sheet and a half3 by this post and hope by the end of the week to have most of the stuff hewn into shape. Your motives in continuing the memoirs were mine, and even now I regret that the thing is not able to support itself. I suppose most of our English men of Science can read the originals and hence do not support translations. Some of them I fear will regret the stopping of the publication and none perhaps more than Faraday – but I think we have done our duty in giving the public a year’s publication for nothing – You I fear have lost something. Of course I cannot hear the bit of good news you communicate without a certain elation of heart. But my chief hopes and pleasure lie far in the future – if my health only hold out I trust to be able to justify the proposition which for the present I must regard as being partly prompted by the kindness of my friends. Excuse this muddled letter – my head has been muddled for some time lately however I begin to feel a pulse of returning thought and with a little quiet I hope soon to be myself again.
ever yours truly | John Tyndall
a capital paper, that of Brunner4 – I see Bunsen’s finger throughout.
RDS 27/30
your kind and considerate letter: letter missing.
the coming part: the fourth and final part of Tyndall and Francis (eds), Scientif. Mem., which would be published later that year. (See letter 0698, n. 8.)
a sheet and a half: not identified.
that of Brunner: Carl Emanuel Brunner (1796–1867), Swiss pharmacist and Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Bern (F. Szabadváry, History of Analytical Chemistry [London: Pergamon Press, 1966], p. 294, n. 30). As Brunner wrote a large number of papers, it is difficult to determine which one Tyndall is referring to here (‘Brunner, Carl’, RS Catalogue, vol. 1, pp. 679–81).
Please cite as “Tyndall0772,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on