6 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



than literary or historical culture. He acquired, indeed, a 

 fair mastery of the classical languages, and retained to the 

 last a warm affection for his Greek Testament. But his 

 intellectual sympathies were enlisted rather by the air- 

 pump and the geological cabinet than by Homer or Horace. 

 He received a good grounding in mathematics, and formed 

 a strong desire to become a civil engineer ; he delighted 

 (like his father) in construction of all sorts. A tradition still 

 remains of a model of a ship made in the boys' workshop 

 at the bottom of the garden ; while a maturer effort, in 

 which he was aided by Mr. W. J. Odgers, then a resident 

 master in the school, produced " a most beautiful trans- 

 " parent instrument for showing the climates, which, being 

 " rectified for any latitude, shows the length of the day and 

 " night at the solstices and equinoxes, the altitude of the 

 " sun at noon, and illustrates very well the reason Avhy the 

 ''days are longer as we approach the higher latitudes." 

 This love of workmanship remained with him in after- 

 days. He fitted up his study with all sorts of small devices; 

 and he had a penetrating insight into the most intricate 

 machinery. But he was never able to give effect to his 

 early preference for the profession of engineering. 



The railway system had not then been developed, and no 

 suitable opening presented itself for the indispensable and 

 costly training. So he finally agreed to submit to the 

 wishes of his family, and under the kind proposals of Mr. 

 Estlin, a leading general practitioner in Bristol, and a 

 member of his father's congregation,* resolved to devote 

 himself to the study of medicine. His cherished hopes were 



* Mr. Estlin was the son of the Rev. Dr. Estlin, the predecessor of Dr. 

 Carpenter at Lewin's Mead. He was a man of wide scientific culture, and 

 frequently lectured at the Bristol Institution and the Mechanics' Institution. 

 He was specially eminent as an oculist ; and weekly, for forty years, attended 

 the Eye-dispensary which he founded. In later life he took a lead in philan- 

 thropic and religious movements. 



