To Thomas Archer Hirst   Nov. 1857¹

Nov. 1857

My dear Tom

I have been spending the end of the day with Frankland who has removed from Manchester² and is now Lecturer at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital.³ It is nearly 11 oC. but I think a line or two to you before I go to bed will not make my sleep less sound. Your last letter⁴ was written to me in one of those dewy moments when the heart gets rid of its bondage and the feelings pour themselves like fluids into expression. It did me good to read the letter, and it did old Francis good also—I send you his note⁵ which also contains his reply to your request on behalf of D^r. Simpson.⁶ I would not make the highest demands on the friendship of Francis: I do not think him quite capable of that half romantic self-sacrifice which one friend is sometimes ready to make for the sake of another: but there is a bottom of pure human good nature in the man; a tremulous sympathy with every act of feeling and of kindness which is highly refreshing to observe in a man plunged as he is in the midst of London business. Did I not see this fountain of good feeling in him I think I should have quarrelled with him long ago. I am rejoiced to learn that you have got another stroke of work off hands, and to find that you have made Liouville’s acquaintance. It is I am firmly persuaded only the beginning of things. I might have got you a mathematical tutorship in the family of the late King of France⁷ some days ago, but I thought, and think it better, that for the present you should not be disturbed by any thing of the kind. With regard to our comparative ways of living my dear Tom rest assured of it that there are times when my spirit thirsts for that tranquility which you habitually enjoy. A man’s life in London is often peddled into driblets by the multiplicity of the demands upon his time, and this to him who longs to pour the entire strength which God has given him in one direction, is often distressing There is a wholeness of purpose possible to solitude which is not attainable in London. I do not complain—our lives must be taken in their entirety, and from this point of view I have reason to be thankful that I am what I am.

I am still working at the ice paper,⁸ but hope soon to send it in to the Royal Society—Yesterday I made an important experiment with perfectly dry ice, which I had cooled down by solid carbonic acid to a temperature 120^oFaht. below the freezing point. Under the hydraulic press it was squeezed into a mass as white as the whitest table salt. If a mass of quartz were crushed in the same manner there could not be more white & less transparence. This has an important bearing upon the conversion of the Névé⁹ into ice. I have also made a multitude of experiments on the action of heat upon ice, and on the manner in which it disintegrates itself sometimes. These experiments have thus far kept the paper on hands.

It has gone 11 Tom and I fear if I continue writing that the wheel thus set going will continue to revolve. I was on the Royal Society Council last year, and proposed Frankland for a Royal Medal which I am happy to say was awarded him.¹⁰ On Thursday last I was obliged to give a brief account of our trip up Mont Blanc¹¹ at the Philosophical Club¹² dinner.¹³ But I am getting into gossip again, and will now lay my paper aside—Haply tomorrow will carry me to another sheet.

‘Tomorrow’ is come and passed: rolled on like a water-born pebble into the ocean of eternity. I worked all day at my ice and at my paper: shook a number of minor duties from my shoulders, and at 8 o’clock this evening began to feel cloudy. I knew that the heaviness would soon be compacted into pain if I persisted, So I shut all books and went off to a theatre. The brain sobered down and I walked home with the vigour of Driglington¹⁴ in my limbs: It is now long past the noon of night. sound and deep be your slumbers my dear boy. There is no restorer like sleep.

I am a curious oscillating machine—I suppose we are all so, and that it is simply human to be so. Sometimes physical strength is here, and the will is defective. Sometimes the will is paramount, and we wish that the brain was iron to carry out our aspirations. Thank God however for the strength he gives—our wisdom and duty it is to use it aright; to apply but not to squander it. Still one would fain sometimes condense one’s force to a cannon ball; it seems as if difficulties might thus be shattered which defy an equal amount of strength more widely distributed. But I suppose it is the impatient individual nature that thus expresses itself.

This letter was begun on the 20^th—it is now the 28^th and your note¹⁵ has come to spur me on. I thought Tom that you would be calling upon me for money instead of sending it to me—However I suppose you can afford it and hence I am content. John Martin has not yet made his appearance. I will send you the papers on the stereoscope¹⁶ by him. Ever & always | your affectionate John

RI MS JT/1/T/936

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/505–6