TALBOT6048

Dear Sir,

I have just received the very valuable packet of Talbotypes ¹ which you have been so kind as to send me, and for which I thank you most heartily. I do not believe that a Child ever received a Toy with more pleasure than I do a Sun-Picture. It is a sort of monomania which my dealings with light have inflicted upon me.

I saw the Aurora of the 24 very favourably, & examined the bright purple light of the most westerly beams both with a polariscope and a Prism. I could not trace the least appearance of Polarisation in it; nor could I perceive any bands or lines in the purple light, which I refracted into a dark recess among our Monastery Ruins, ² and made the angle of Incidence a maximum to supply the want of a narrow aperture wh^h if used w^d not have admitted light enough for decomposition.

I am not engaged at present in any very specific inquiry. You will see in the next N^o of the Phil. Magazine, the result of a very laborious investigation of the law of Atmospheric polarisation ³ which I think you will consider satisfactory.

I shall be very glad to circulate, usefully, your Reply to the Quarterly. ⁴ There are some writers in that Journal who are very dishonest persons. I had occasion to attend particularly to a most dishonest review of D^r Keiths’ Work on Prophecy,⁵ in which that excellent man was charged with the vilest plagiarism, & the charges supported by false and tricky citations. My elder Brother the late D^r Brewster of Craig, ⁶ as D^r Keith’s friend wrote an elaborate pamphlet in reply to the Review, which completely demolished it, and yet in subsequently noticing the pamphlet they had recourse to the same tricks & falsehoods which they had employed a^gst D^r Keith. You will probably share the same fate. I suspected that the assailant of D^r Keith was a clergyman, whom I personally know, but I believe y^t in Reviews of the “slashing” order, two or three individuals club their malevolence.

I shall read with much pleasure your English Etymologies, and have to have to [sic] thank you for the Copy of it which I shall receive soon. I have put it down in the list of Books for our Library, and shall endeavour to get a Notice of it into the North British Review.⁷

I am, Dear Sir, Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster

S^t Leonards’ College
S^t Andrews
Nov^r 13^th 1847

Henry Fox Talbot Esq^r
&c &c &c