190 MY LIFE 



C. F. Hayward, Esq., a well-known London architect, who 

 had a country house close by my cottage. Mr. Hayward 

 began life with nothing but a good education, industry, and 

 a love of knowledge. He is an example of the possibility 

 of success in farming without early training and with very 

 scanty capital. Of course, the period was a good one for 

 farmers, but it was not everyone who could have made even 

 a bare living under such unfavourable conditions. After he 

 came to live at Godalming, when over seventy years of age, he 

 began to exercise his hitherto dormant faculty of water- 

 colour drawing. For this he made most of his own colours 

 from natural pigments, earthy or vegetable, and executed a 

 number of bold and effective landscapes, showing that if he 

 had had early training he might have excelled in this beautiful 

 art. Mr. Hayward was among my oldest and most esteemed 

 friends. 



During the larger portion of my residence at Neath we 

 had very little to do, and my brother was often away, either 

 seeking employment or engaged upon small matters of busi- 

 ness in various parts of the country. I was thus left a good 

 deal to my own devices, and having no friends of my own 

 age I occupied myself with various pursuits in which I had 

 begun to take an interest. Having learnt the use of the 

 sextant in surveying, and my brother having a book on 

 Nautical Astronomy, I practised a few of the simpler observa- 

 tions. Among these were determining the meridian by equal 

 altitudes of the sun, and also by the pole-star at its upper or 

 lower culmination; finding the latitude by the meridian 

 altitude of the sun, or of some of the principal stars; and 

 making a rude sundial by erecting a gnomon towards the 

 pole. For these simple calculations I had Hannay and 

 Dietrichsen's Almanac, a copious publication which gave 

 all the important data in the Nautical Almanac, besides 

 much other interesting matter, useful for the astronomical 

 amateur or the ordinary navigator. I also tried to make a 

 telescope by purchasing a lens of about two feet focus at an 

 optician's in Swansea, fixing it in a paper tube and using the 



