TALBOT878

Cambridge ¹
2^d June 1820

I trust this letter will find you duly established in your new residence. Our college examination is over, and I have the pleasure of informing you that I am in the first class – There were only five in the 1^st class, I was 4^th. The examination was chiefly mathematical, but a little Homer. I have heard nothing whatever of Kit, ² since I saw him set agoing at Oxford – Have you heard any news of Penrice ³ lately? Cambridge is emptying fast – I am going to stay here & read till August – I am afraid it will be doleful.

The votes about the cornbill appear to me very strange – against the wish both of Ministers & Opposition. I have not read the Quarterly Review ⁴ on Parga I do not mean to attempt it. There is a good article about the river Niger, that crux geographorum, ⁵ the evidence for its being identical with the Nile of Egypt is so strong that one does not know how to avoid believing it: but if so, its course is much longer than that of any other river in the world – Its source is well known, and lies close to the west coast of Africa, not far from Sierra Leone; – If this be indeed the source of the Egyptian Nile, it has much better pretensions than we were aware of, to the “fontium qui celat origines” ⁶ of Horace, Bruce ⁷ “at the source of the Nile” would then have been several thousand miles from the spot he supposed.

M^r Barlow ⁸ of the Royal Military college has made a discovery which will probably be very important to navigation. He has discovered a method by which the disturbing attraction of a ships guns and the rest of the iron in her, upon the compass, may be discovered, & therefore allowed for – He has also discovered a very singular fact, namely that the attraction of a bit of iron upon a compass, depends, not upon the quantity of the iron, but upon the size of its surface. He found that the compass was nearly equally deviated from its natural position by a hollow ball of iron weighing five pounds as it was by a [illegible deletion] quite solid ball, of the same diameter, weighing perhaps a hundred weight.

My love to M^r F. & my sisters ⁹ & believe me

Y^r Aff^te Son
W. H. F. Talbot

Lady Elisabeth Feilding
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