362 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. XI. 
he (Macaulay) having set off from the West End 
to walk to the Tower and back, saying he found 
the air most pure and the interruptions fewest at 
that time, and that he had composed the whole 
of his pages on Judge Jeffreys’ downfall during a 
walk of that kind.’ 
The letter concludes with a reference to the 
Great Exhibition, and the building, which was fast 
approaching completion. ‘ The Crystal Palace is 
the most wonderful piece of work the world has 
ever seen erected in so short a space of time. 
Whatever be the result of the “ Exhibition,” one 
thing is certain — the building must impress every 
foreigner with a strong sense of English inventive 
power and perseverance.' 
In January 1851 Owen had several meetings 
with Thomas Carlyle, who was anxious to obtain 
materials for his life of John Sterling. In writing 
to Owen about this date, Carlyle says : — 
‘ Can you not advise Professor Airy, or some 
real mathematician and geometer, to undertake 
that business of Foucault’s pendulum, and (throwing 
Euler and his Algebra overboard) illuminate it 
for the geometrical mind.? It seems to me the 
prettiest experiment made in this century, though 
perhaps good for nothing otherwise. I have had 
a great wrestling with it occasionally in my own 
poor head (which used to know some mathematics 
twenty years ago), and a deadly suspicion haunts 
