13 Great Street
Edinburgh
Monday
My Dear Charles
Is there a photographer at Cardiff? If so, I shd like to have a photograph made of your Elevation of the new school at Lacock, which I would Engrave and distribute a few copies among our neighbours in the Parish that they may see what they are asked to subscribe to.
I searched in the library of the R. Society <1> for the paper of M. Chasles <2> wch I quoted in my memoir wch I gave you a copy of last week, and I found that that geometer had discovered and given your Theorem, that a Triangle (or other Polygon) circumscribes an ellipse & having its angles upon 3 or more other confocal ellipses has a Constant Perimeter. Today is bitterly cold. The new statues of Allan Ramsay <3> & Wilson look uncomfortable as if they did not like it. Crowds are still staring at them.
Your affte
Father
Notes:
1. Royal Society of Edinburgh.
2. Michel Chasles (1793–1880), worked on projected geometry.
3. Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), poet and Edinburgh wig–maker; laureate of the Jacobite ‘Easy Club’, 1715.