CAMBRIDGE   6r

Those who have read Whewell's Life, which was written by a loving hand and dwells mainly on his kindly, domestic character, will gather little idea of the rough power of the man and his too frequent overbearing attitude. In after-days he invited me to the Lodge, where I found him most unexpectedly gracious.

It may be worth mentioning that at the time of which I am writing, brakes to carriages were unknown in England except in the Lake Country, where the many hills made it difficult to travel without restraint, unless by frequently stopping to put on or take off the drag. Their use gradually spread, as the first sentimental opposition to them subsided. A near relative of my own, who was a devoted whip and drove his own four-horse drag for many years, was at first contemptuous towards brakes, but soon changed his mind, and ever afterwards used one.

One of the longer excursions was to Scawfell, where I found a small encampment of ordnance surveyors with theodolite and heliostat. Their immediate object was to obtain by direct observation the bearing of Snowdon, ninety-six miles off (as I think they said), to form the side of one of their principal triangles. A corresponding station was set up on the top of Snowdon, whence after many days' waiting in vain the long-wished-for star of light reflected from the sun by the mirror on Snowdon, became faintly but clearly visible through the telescope at Scawfell. I t had been seen on three days altogether, two of which were successive. The obstruction to light by a few miles of mist, etc., in the lower layers of the atmosphere, contrasts forcibly with the ease with which every detail of the