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HON EDITOR
it were possible! This is the way to break up the wilderness Knowledge is the only ploughshare for the barren mind — and once the soil is prepared, the truth cannot fail to grow when cast into it. It has half-occurred to me that H. [Herschel] might amuse himself in a dull hour, scribbling a few pages of a Treatise for translation in this Chinese Series is the idea altogether ridiculous? Seriously, then, if it be worth one moment's thought — I can only say that I would make myself personally responsible for the strictest fulfilment here of every wish whatever that H. [Herschel] might express for my guidance in the publication; and there is the highest guarantee for its being turned into the most Classical Chinese pronounceable, in the names of Bridgman and Gutzlaff whose knowledge of the language is quite remarkable and the admiration even of Chinese Scholars. If not in this way, perhaps the Society may have your support or good wishes in some other—I commend it to you very warmly.
**
TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW, SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, 26TH JANUARY, 1836.
44
chel.
•
+
I have done nothing meteorological whatever, Hers- All my own meteorological observations have been confined to blowing my
nails on the house-top, like
a sparrow or stuffing my “hands
into my breeches pockets like
a crocodile" — at the grey hour of
dawn each morning; and think that I never experienced any cold so intense. It would be a noble climate at this season, but for the durance vile. How my fancy scampers on these occasions over the wild rocky hills around, that look so provokingly clear and near and dear to view by that unsheathed light! Well—I shall have a spell at Macao by and bye—the Chinese Naples! and shall I not enjoy it!
TO HIS SISTER DATED 30TH NOVEMBER AND 3RD DECEMBER 1836 FROM THE SHIP “ASIA” AT SEA.
He had been very ill since 6th August with two successive abscesses and internal ruptures of the liver and had been laid