country, Charles XII. straining every nerve and exhausting the life-blood of the nation for his ambitious wars. "It seems to me," he writes, "that Sweden is now prostrated, and that soon she will be in her last agony, when she will probably kick for the last time. Many perhaps wish that the affliction may be short, and that we may be released."
This is written in June, 1716. The letter concludes: "Sister Caisa [Catherina] has increased the world and our family; she has had a httle daughter, at whose baptism I was a witness the day before yesterday. A thousand kind remembrances to sister Anna and little brother Eric."
Emanuel Swedberg's association with Polhammar grew more intimate, with his publication of the latter's inventions and scientific speculations, together with his own. On the 26th of June, 1716, he writes to his brother Benzelius,—
"I am engaged on the subject which I intend for the last number of this year, and which I shall finish this week, namely, Polhammar's ideas upon the resistance of mediums, which at first were written down in Latin, and which have cost me a great deal of labor and mental exertion to reduce into such a form as will please the Assessor and the learned; likewise my method of finding the longitude of places, which I warrant to be certain and sure,—I must hear what the learned sag about it."
On the 4th of September he writes again to the same,—
"I am very glad that Dædalus, part iii., has appeared. I thank you for having taken so much trouble and care with it: when I am present with you, I will thank you still more. I am already thinking of the contents of part v, of the Dædalus. I think it will be best for me, first, to put down Assessor Polhammar's ingenious tap, with a sufficient mechanical and algebraical description; second, to make an addition to the description of his 'Blankstötz' machine, as this is a work which requires greater accuracy, reflection, and consideration than it has yet received; third, to leave room for some of the eclipses observed by Professor Elfvius, by which the
