Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/70

 experience can be of any use to you, I will give it with so much the greater pleasure as the fruit of it will be of use to the public and will accrue to my own honor. After you enter upon physics, it might be useful to follow them up for some time more extensively, especially those which concern the causes of natural things; and also all other things necessary and curious, especially those of the household, etc. Immediately after I sent off my letter to you, I received yours. My wife and children desire to be remembered to you most kindly, and they also thank you for your compliments."."

The last sentence of this letter possesses a pathetic interest in view of later developments. In another letter, of the same month. Polhem writes,—

This eagerness to develop practical, useful results from their science, it is pleasant to find, was a marked characteristic of Polhem, as well as of Swedenborg himself. A gap of a few months in the correspondence of these friends indicates a time when they enjoyed each other's company, and when the elder presented young Swedberg and his Dædalus to Charles XII., at once the most sagacious, the most bold, and the most obstinate of men. The occasion was a brief lull in the warrior monarch's stormy career, when, after reducing his coun-