Cambridge <1>
Janry 14th 1820
My Dear Mr Feilding,
Until I received your letter this morning I was in complete ignorance of where you were, never having received the letter which you mention as written the day before you left Canteleu I wrote a letter the other day directed No 2 Sackville St <2> I hope it will not miscarry. The weather is very severe, the river is frozen, and the country covered with snow frozen hard. The Senate House examination comes on on Monday. I am very much interested about it having several friends who are candidates for honours. Edward Murray <3> is going to take his degree, & then one of the masterships at Westminster, for a year or two before he takes orders. His mother is extremely against this plan, but I think he is quite right, as it is worth £300 a year. – Who wrote the article in the Edinburgh Review <4> about the manufactures &c of France? I disagree with the writer in many points, such as I know anything about. While he insists so much on the practical superiority of the English, he says not a word on the distance at which they have left us behind in all theoretical researches, as far as these are dependent upon mathematics – The English are however at present rapidly advancing in this department; – Some years ago, the more difficult writings of the French mathematicians were absolutely unintelligible on the other side of the water, except for a very few. They are now generally adopted and read here, while our own authors of later date are (very deservedly) becoming obsolete. As since Newton, <5> we have had very few who have contributed notably to what he discovered.
My love to all, & believe me,
Yours affectionately
Henry Talbot
A Monsieur
Monsieur Feilding
Rue du Houssaye No 4
à Paris
Notes:
1. Trinity College, Cambridge.
2. 2 Sackville Street, occaisional London base of WHFT.
3. Rev Edward Murray (1798–1852), author & inventor.
4. Edinburgh Review.
5. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727).