1838-30. ENGLISH CLERGYMEN. 169 



hereafter, by storing myself with all the truths it has already 

 gathered. 



" Mr. Graham is an excellent teacher ; so well versed in his 

 subject, and so earnest in displaying it aright, and in impressing 

 it on his audience, that the hour of lecture speeds very rapidly 

 away. I cannot make intelligible to any of my non- chemical 

 friends the nature of the inquiries he is pursuing, except per- 

 haps by saying, that he is prosecuting the study of the ' Laws of 

 Combination' between different substances. 



" Another assistant, as well as I, is working at his subjects : 

 the other pupils, four in number, are labouring for their own 

 profit. We have at last succeeded in getting a corner apiece in 

 the Laboratory ; before this desirable arrangement was accom- 

 plished, we were always in each other's way, and half the ana- 

 lyses were ruined in their middle stages by the carelessness of 

 some one else than the experimenter. It would often have been 

 amusing had it not been very provoking, to return anticipating 

 the progress your analyses had made, and find your vessels, 

 materials, ay, everything gone, some other philosopher having 

 found a use for your apparatus, and not troubled himself to inquire 

 whether the vessel and its contents were precious or no. That 

 is past, and it is now death by law to meddle with anything on 

 another's table. Suffocation in the laughing gas is the method 

 proposed for the infliction of capital punishment. 



" So much, my dear mother, for my weekly employments. I 

 had intended writing you at length on the system of church 

 worship here, and I shall do so yet, at some early period. Let 

 me only tell you that I came up to London embued, in spite of 

 my love for Episcopacy, with the idea that a pious, sincere, 

 simple-minded English clergyman, was a very rare thing. I 

 was most agreeably disappointed. I have now heard a great 

 number of the London ministers, and can assure you, that in 

 meekness, simplicity, and earnestness of purpose, they cannot 

 well be surpassed by the ministers of any denomination, and I 

 should feel that I praised any denomination amply if I said its 

 preachers equalled them. My love for Episcopalian form of 

 worship is a love in the abstract ; that is, I love the system of 

 bishops, archbishops, and the like, I like the solemn simplicity 



