A 'FLITTING' IN PROSPECT. 473 



The month of August was spent in Burntisland, as reasons, to 

 be found in subsequent letters, made it unsuitable for him to be 

 at a distance from town. A letter to Mr. Charles Tomlinson, 

 London, written on paper with the University stamp, gives one 

 reason. 



" BURNTISLAND, August 3, 1859. 



" CAEISSIME CAROLE, See, my dear friend, what a pass the 

 Emperor of the French has brought us to ! The University of 

 Edinburgh transferred to Burntisland, which after all is not an 

 island, and therefore not a burned one, but only a Trappean 

 Peninsula, which looks out from the Kingdom of Fife, across the 

 Firth of Forth, to Arthur Seat and Edinburgh, and invites the 

 latter to dip its hot face and sun- stricken brains beneath its 

 cooling waters. In short, as there can be no manner of doubt 

 that the French are by this time half way across the Channel, 

 the University of Edinburgh has thought it proper to put its 

 valuables in safety, and accordingly but modesty prevents me 

 enlarging on the topic the Professor of Technology is secure 

 here for this current month." A more sober reason given is, 

 that "the lease of my laboratory has expired, and the New 

 Buildings are not (Hibernice) begun, so that I have before me 

 the formidable horrors of a flitting. The bother of this is very 

 considerable, and is one reason for my keeping so near Edin- 

 burgh." " We in Scotland call a removal ' a flitting/ " he tells 

 Mrs. John Gladstone, "I suppose on the antithetic principle 

 that it is a process as totally unlike the flitting of a butterfly or 

 a bird as can well be conceived; and where all the contents and 

 machinery of a laboratory must be transported, it is no easy 

 matter. But fancy, further, that whilst turned out of my old 

 den in the middle of September, I have no new one to go to. 

 A butterfly preparing to flit from one rose to another has nothing 

 to pack up (or roll up) but its trunk, and is certain to leave 

 none of its goods behind, but if, after deserting its ancestral rose- 

 leaf, it should find that it had left the ' last rose of summer,' and 

 that there was no other to receive it, it would doubtless find it- 

 self in a sad predicament. In such a predicament am I. 



" I have been in a heap of worries. This is worry the first, 

 and most tiresome. . 



