Sir John Herschel's Letters

Abstract

IT is known to many through the numerous applications I have made, that a collection of the letters of Sir John Herschel is in progress. For the many and valuable contributions, as well as for the kind and sympathetic expressions which I have been favoured with, I cannot be too ready to express once more my sincere acknowledgment; and when I recall these to mind I hesitate to take any less private step to further the end in view, or, by venturing on a public appeal, to forego the advantage of more direct communication. Several considerations however—which not even your courtesy in allowing this letter to appear in the columns of NATURE would justify me in dwelling upon—forbid me to depend solely on the activity of a single importunate pen. The correspondence in question covers more than half a century. Many of the correspondents were of a former generation, and their present representatives are known to but few. I may instance the names of Davy, Young, Wollaston,—not to mention many continental savans—in illustration of this. Many others, less eminent, but not the less recipients of letters which the student of scientific history will prize as containing the germs of much of the force whose impetus we now feel, were hardly known by name beyond their own immediate circles. Many more, as I would fain believe, who either themselves corresponded with my father, or knew him in his letters to their relations, are even now in possession of such letters, and may not be unwilling to let them be seen. Lastly, I hear too much of autograph collectors not to feel a keen desire to make their instant acquaintance. Have they not devoted themselves to preserving individual letters, no matter how trifling, from the fate which has—alas too after—overtaken others, no matter how numerous, or how valuable!