Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/54

. . . Within three or four months I hope, with God's help, to be in France; for I greatly desire to understand its fashionable and useful language. I hope by that time to have, or to find there, letters from you to some of your learned correspondents. . . . Your great kindness and your favor, of which I have had so many proofs, make me believe that your advice and your letters will induce my father to be so favorable towards me as to send me the funds which are necessary for a young man, and which will infuse into me new spirit for the prosecution of my studies. Believe me, I desire and strive to be an honor to my father's house and yours, much more strongly than you yourself can wish and endeavor. . . . I would have bought the microscope, if the price had not been so much higher than I could venture to pay before receiving your orders. This microscope was one which Mr. Marshall showed to me especially; it is quite new, of his own invention, and shows the motion in fishes very vividly. There was a glass with a candle placed under it, which made the thing itself, and the object, much brighter; so that any one could see the blood in the fishes flowing swiftly, like small rivulets; for it flowed in that way, and as rapidly. At a watchmaker's I saw a curiosity which I cannot forbear mentioning. It was a clock which was still, without any motion. On the top of it was a candle, and when this was lighted, the clock began to go and to keep its true time; but as soon as the candle was blown out, the motion ceased, and so on. . . . He told me that nobody had as yet found out how it could be set in motion by the candle. Please remember me kindly to sister Anna, my dear sister Hedvig, and also to brother Ericus Benzel, the little one, about whose state of health I always desire to hear."

The next letter that has come down to us was dated Paris, August, 1713. Meanwhile Swedenborg had left London and made a considerable stay in Holland. "I left Holland," he says, "intending to make greater progress in mathematics, and also to finish all I had designed in that science. Since