Cambridge <1>
2d June 1820
I trust this letter will find you duly established in your new residence. Our college examination is over, and I have the pleasure of informing you that I am in the first class – There were only five in the 1st class, I was 4th. The examination was chiefly mathematical, but a little Homer. I have heard nothing whatever of Kit, <2> since I saw him set agoing at Oxford – Have you heard any news of Penrice <3> lately? Cambridge is emptying fast – I am going to stay here & read till August – I am afraid it will be doleful.
The votes about the cornbill appear to me very strange – against the wish both of Ministers & Opposition. I have not read the Quarterly Review <4> on Parga I do not mean to attempt it. There is a good article about the river Niger, that crux geographorum, <5> the evidence for its being identical with the Nile of Egypt is so strong that one does not know how to avoid believing it: but if so, its course is much longer than that of any other river in the world – Its source is well known, and lies close to the west coast of Africa, not far from Sierra Leone; – If this be indeed the source of the Egyptian Nile, it has much better pretensions than we were aware of, to the “fontium qui celat origines” <6> of Horace, Bruce <7> “at the source of the Nile” would then have been several thousand miles from the spot he supposed.
Mr Barlow <8> of the Royal Military college has made a discovery which will probably be very important to navigation. He has discovered a method by which the disturbing attraction of a ships guns and the rest of the iron in her, upon the compass, may be discovered, & therefore allowed for – He has also discovered a very singular fact, namely that the attraction of a bit of iron upon a compass, depends, not upon the quantity of the iron, but upon the size of its surface. He found that the compass was nearly equally deviated from its natural position by a hollow ball of iron weighing five pounds as it was by a [illegible deletion] quite solid ball, of the same diameter, weighing perhaps a hundred weight.
My love to Mr F. & my sisters <9> & believe me
Yr Affte Son
W. H. F. Talbot
Lady Elisabeth Feilding
Poste Restante
Boulogne
Notes:
1. Trinity College, Cambridge.
2. Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890), immensely wealthy landowner, mathematician & politician; WHFT’s Welsh cousin.
3. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
4. The Quarterly Review, established by John Murray in 1809 as a Tory rival to the Whig supporting Edinburgh Review.
5. Baffling problem of geographers.
6. River which conceals the origins of its springs.
7. Probably a reference to James Bruce’s, Travels to discover the source of the Nile: In the years 1768, 1769, 1770,1771, 1772, and 1773 (Edinburgh: J. Ruthven, 1790). [See Doc. No: 00667].
8. Peter Barlow (1776–1862), English mathematician and engineer who investigated areas of mathematics, physical sciences and engineering. This reference probably refers to his studies in electromagnetism.
9. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father, and his daughters Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister, and Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.