Mr. Smedley has just called: tell Sneyd we think him very pleasing. I enclose the "Butterfly's Ball" for Sophy, and a letter to the King written by Dr. Holland when six years old: his father found him going with it to the post. Give it to Aunt Mary.
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This letter was an offer from Master Holland to raise a regiment. He and some of his little comrades had got a drum and a flag, and used to go through the manual exercise. It was a pity the letter did not reach the King: he would have been delighted at it.
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To C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH.
LONDON, May 1, 1813.
Please to take this in small doses, but not fasting.
Let us go back, if you please, to Cambridge. Thursday morning we went to breakfast with Mr. Smedley. It had been a dreadful rainy night, but luckily the rain ceased in the morning, and the streets were dried by the wind on purpose for us. In Sidney College we found your friend in neat, cheerful rooms, with orange-fringed curtains, pretty drawings, and prints: breakfast-table as plentifully prepared as you could have had it—tea, coffee, tongue, cold beef, exquisite bread, and many inches of butter. I suppose you know, but no one else at home can guess, why I say inches of butter. All the butter in Cambridge must be stretched into rolls a yard in length and an inch in diameter, and these are sold by inches, and measured out by compasses, in a truly mathematical manner, worthy of a university.
Mr. Smedley made us feel at home at once: my mother made tea, I coffee; he called you "Sneyd," and my father seemed quite pleased. After having admired the drawings and pictures, and Fanny's kettle-holder, we sallied forth with our friendly guide. It was quite fine and sunshiny, and the gardens and academic shades really beautiful. We went to the University Hall—the election of a new Professor to the Chemical Professorship was going on. Farish was one of the candidates: the man of whom Leslie Foster used to talk in such raptures when he first came from Cambridge; the man who lectured on arches, and whose paradox of the one-toothed wheel William will recollect. My father was introduced to him, and invited him to dine with us: Mr. Farish accepted the invitation. We sat on a bench with a few ladies. A number of Fellows, with black tiles on their heads, walked up and down the hall, whispering to one another; and in five minutes Mr. Smedley said, "The election is over: I must go and congratulate Mr. Professor Farish."
We next proceeded to the University Library, not nearly so fine as the Dublin College Library. Saw Edward the Sixth's famous little MS. exercise book: hand good, and ink admirable; shame to the modern chemists, who cannot make half as good ink now! Saw Faustus' first printed book and a Persian letter to Lord Wellesley, and an Indian idol, said to be made of rice, looking like, and when I lifted it feeling as heavy as, marble. Mr. Smedley smiled at my being so taken with an idol, and I told him that I was curious about this rice-marble, because we had lately seen at Derby a vase of similar substance, about which there had been great debates. Mr. Smedley then explained to me that the same word in Persian expresses rice and the composition of which these idols are made.