CHAP. VI.] SCHOLAR OF TRINITY. 185 



read them is to find out the facts first. With this pre- 

 caution they are tolerably transparent. I have been attend- 

 ing Sir James Stephen's lectures upon the causes of the first 

 French Eevolution. They are now done, so I look in upon 

 Stokes' dealing with light. 



FROM HIS FATHEB. 



Edinburgh, 13th March 1853. 



Ask Gedge to get you instructions to Brummagem 

 workshops. View, if you can, armourers, gunmaking and 

 gunproving swordmaking and proving Papier-macht 

 and japanning silver-plating by cementation and rolling 

 ditto, electrotype Elkington's Works Brazier's works, 

 by founding and by striking up in dies turning spinning 

 teapot bodies in white metal, etc. making buttons of sorts, 

 steel pens, needles, pins, and any sorts of small articles 

 which are curiously done by subdivision of labour and by 

 ingenious tools glass of sorts is among the works of the 

 place, and all kinds of foundry work engine-making 

 tools and instruments (optical and philosophical) both coarse 

 and fine. If you have had enough of the town lots of 

 Birmingham, you could vary the recreation by viewing 

 Kenilworth, Warwick, Leamington, Stratford-on-Avon, or 

 suchlike. 1 



Glenlair, 29th April 1853. 



You write (from King Edward's School, Birmingham) 

 about plans and visits, Freshman Tayler and two others 

 innominate. 



Glenlair, 12th May 1853. 



What do you know of Henry Mackenzie ? Do you find 

 Frank to be clever, good, agreeable, and wise, which you 

 state to be the desiderata for a friend ? 



Here is a Prop, anent fuel. What would be the amount 

 of heat evolved in the combustion of a given weight of dry 

 wood compared with the same weight of coal ? 



1 This letter has been quoted above, p. 7, note. 



