so miserably wet.  It appeared to me that the surf was higher farther along the bank, but the air was so thickened by the rain and the spray that I could not tell.  When I returned the bad weather abated.  I have now borrowed somebody else’s trowsers while mine are drying (having got little wet in other parts, thanks to my great-coat, which successfully brought home a hundredweight of water), and do not intend to stir out again except perhaps to post this letter.

* * * * *

FLAMSTEED HOUSE,
1842, May 15.

Yesterday after posting the letter for you I went per steamboat to Hungerford.  I then found Mr Vignoles, and we trundled off together, with another engineer named Smith, picking up Stratford by the way, to Wormwood Scrubs.  There was a party to see the Atmospheric Railway in action:  including (among others) Sir John Burgoyne, whom I met in Ireland several years ago, and Mr Pym, the Engineer of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, whom I have seen several times, and who is very sanguine about this construction; and Mr Clegg, the proposer of the scheme (the man that invented gas in its present arrangements), and Messrs Samuda, two Jews who are the owners of the experiment now going on; and Sir James South!  With the latter hero and mechanician we did not come in contact.  Unfortunately the stationary engine (for working the air-pump which draws the air out of the pipes and thus sucks the carriages along) broke down during the experiment, but not till we had seen the carriage have one right good run.  And to be sure it is very funny to see a carriage running all alone “as if the Devil drove it” without any visible cause whatever.  The mechanical arrangements we were able to examine as well after the engine had broken down as at any time.  And they are very simple and apparently very satisfactory, and there is no doubt of the mechanical practicability of the thing even in places where locomotives can hardly be used:  whether it will pay or not is doubtful.  I dare say that the Commissioners’ Report has taken a very good line of discrimination.

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1843

“In March I wrote to Dr Wynter (Vice-Chancellor) at Oxford, requesting permission to see Bradley’s and Bliss’s manuscript Observations, with the view of taking a copy of them.  This was granted, and the books of Transits were subsequently copied under Mr Breen’s superintendence.  —­The following paragraph is extracted from the Report to the Visitors:  ’In the Report of last year, I stated that our reductions had dropped considerably in arrear.  I have the satisfaction now of stating that this arrear and very much more have been completely recovered, and that the reductions are now in as forward a state as at any time since my connection with the Observatory.’  In fact the observations of 1842 were sent to press on Mar. 1st, 1843.—­About this year the Annual Dinner at the Visitation began