238 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



rudiments of geometry and surveying. But the 

 practical farmer was better satisfied when the 

 youth manifested an intelligent interest in the pro- 

 cesses of draining and improving land ; and there 

 is no doubt that young William profited in after- 

 life by the experience, if it may be so called, which 

 he gathered in his boyhood while accompanying 

 his relative (" old William ") over his lands at Over 

 Norton. 



Whatever he saw, was remembered for ever. To 

 the latest hours of life he retained a clear and 

 complete recollection of almost every event of his 

 boyhood and often interested young and old by 

 his vivid pictures of what he had seen when a 

 child. These notices would be swelled to an un- 

 reasonable degree by introducing the pleasant 

 stories of " the narrative old man ; " but the fol- 

 lowing recollections, written in his seventieth year, 

 of events which had passed fifty-six years before, 

 are worth preserving as evidence of this peculiar 

 circumstantiality of memory. 



"I was early a tall and strong-grown boy, and in 

 my way to London, between twelve and thirteen 

 years of age, I particularly noticed the great work 

 of cutting down the chalk hill at Henley-upon- 

 Thames, and how the loaded carriages on an in- 

 clined plane were made to bring up the empty ones. 



" I was in London shortly after the riots of Lord 

 George Gordon ; and at the time when news of 

 Rodney's defeat of the French fleet arrived. 



" There was then a halfpenny toll for foot- 



