wish to apply yourself diligently to the study of mechanics, I should very much like, if you are willing, that you would put up with my small accommodation, and more frequently confer orally with me; from which, I have no doubt, both of us would derive satisfaction. For although I am well aware that the present hard times, and the few days I have still to live, will prevent the execution of my designs, I nevertheless experience both pleasure and delight in discoursing upon them with one who is interested in them. . . .
"With many kind remembrances I remain, most learned Sir, your most obedient servant,
By the next February Swedenborg sends to Benzelius manuscript for the second part of the magazine, with several drawings of which he wishes that engravings may be made, hoping that the printing may be done and that he may receive a few copies to take with him to Court, then at Ystad. Among other things he mentions a project to get a Faculty of Mechanics established at the University. The same idea is elaborated more fully in another letter, of March 4th, with which he sends for the printer a small work on mathematics by Polhammar. It appears that in such a professorship he would have found at this time all he desired. More in joke than in earnest, he proposes that the present Faculty should relinquish one seventh of their salaries for the new appointment. Probably his serious brother-in-law, himself one of the Faculty, did not appreciate the joke; for about the 20th of March Swedenborg writes to him,—
"I was very glad to hear your opinion and ideas upon my proposition. I have never been, and I never will be, so forgetful of myself and of my standing at Upsal as to expect that the professors would support me to their own prejudice; but I thought that by such a desperate and execrable proposition I should compel your prudence and your imagination to discover something better for me; the whole of it was conceived merely as a joke, and this can very easily be mended en disant la vérité. . . . Still it would be very desirable that such a Faculty should be established; and if it is not practi-
