From Juliet Pollock

My dear M^r. Tyndall,

I must congratulate you at once upon the complete success of your lecture last night.¹ It was admirably clear and interesting throughout, and triumphantly overturned one theory² while it substituted another³ which seems to me a very beautiful one, though I cannot pretend to be a competent judge of its merits.

I may venture to speak more confidently of your manner of treating your subject and I do so with unqualified praise.

A year had passed last Thursday since I had heard you lecture⁴ and I found that you had gained more than a year upon your audience. You have as it appears to me lost that sense of their presence which had at moments to impede the flow of your thoughts when you addressed them.

It gives me a very high degree of pleasure to look forward to your whole course on heat⁵—

In writing to you I feel sure that you will acquit me of presumption and that you will quite understand that the only value I suppose attached to my praise is that of perfect sincerity. You have reason to know that I am sincere; the expression I am now giving you of the gratification I felt last night falls very short of the actual feeling. Frederick⁶ was as much delighted as I was with your lecture and this assurance is more worth giving you as his understanding of the subject is of course beyond mine—

I do not wait to say all this till Monday,⁷ when I am to have the pleasure of seeing you, for I believe you would not like to hear it said while there were others present to listen to it.

Walter’s⁸ love—he thanks you for your letter⁹ and he has a particular question to ask you on Monday—

Yours most truly | Juliet Pollock | 59 Mont. Sq. | Saturday 23.^d Jan. | 1858

RI MS JT/1/P/167