Six lectures on light : delivered in America in 1872-1873 / by John Tyndall.

Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Six lectures on light : delivered in America in 1872-1873 / by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    much-needed and delightful holiday at Niagara Falls ; it, moreover, rendered the successive stages of my work a kind of growth, which reached its most im- pressive development in New York and Brooklyn. My reception throughout has been that of a friend by friends ; and now that my visit has become virtually a thing of the past, I look back upon it as a memory without a single stain of unpleasantness. Excepting one inexorable event, nothing has occurred that I could wish not to have occurred; while from beginning to end I have been met by expressions of good-will on the part of the American people never, on my part, to be forgotten. Indeed, ' good-will' is not the word to ex- press the kindness manifested towards me in the United States. Would that it had been in my power to meet the wishes of my friends more completely,by responding to the invi- tations sent to me from the great cities of the Interior and the West. But the character of the lectures, and their weight of instrumental appliances, involved such heavy labour that the need, of rest alone would be a sufficient reason for my pausing here. Besides this, each succes- sive mail from London brings me intelligence of work suspended and duties postponed through my absence. The Eoyal Institution possesses an honorary secretary who has devoted the best years of an active professional life and the best energies of a strong man to its interests. And if anything of the kind should ever be founded here, the heartiest wish that I could offer for its success would be, that it may be served with the singleness of purpose, and self-sacrificing love, bestowed