From William Spence   26 January 1857

My dear Sir

Very many thanks for your List of prizes which I have read with great pleasure. I only wish Prince Albert’s Congress just held had sent a deputation to see from the sparkling eyes & happy faces of your young Candidates on Wednesday what a powerful lesson in addition to those they suggest, might be had from making children act on the suggestions of their parents so as to induce them to let them stay longer at school to enable them to compete with effect at these tests of the improvement of their observing & intellectual powers which the marvellous success of your plan of Botanical teaching proves to be so effectual. I remember when first in Wales many years ago & deploring their ignorance of English, having observed to my Companions that if the Government instead of shutting their eyes to the Common principles of human nature, had opened English schools along with Welsh ones & arranged that every year there should be two or three heats of cricket, football & tea & cakes, to which none should be admitted but those who could read & write English as well as Welsh, the whole thing would have been done, as no male or female Taffy could have withstood their Children’s resolution to acquire the test of admission into these gatherings against in principle like yours.

In declining Dr Lyon Playfair’s invitation to his Science on Wednesday at the Educational Museum, I told him in a few weeks when the crowd is less, I mean to take a leisurely stroll round it, & I hope then to see your Diagrams of the Dried Hitcham flowers of your young Botanists which will give me greater pleasure than any florist shows. I trust you will before long give us in a Volume your admirable papers in the Gardeners’ Chronicle shewing how you have worked the miracle of transforming Country children into expert Botanists. The great defect of our Common Country Schools, as observed by a newspaper writer in commenting on the late Conference which does small credit to Prince Albert & all concerned but where you of all men should have been, is no doubt that every-thing is so dry & unattractive & with no pleasurable associations for after life. In a Review lately of was an anecdote of some emigrant who had left England very young & being asked what he remembered about it, said the only things he recollected were the daisies & buttercups. There are some charming traits in George Stephenson’s Life. I am just reading how in his old age when covered with honours he resumed his young delights of birds nesting & Rabbit-finding.

I shall be glad if you can have an Excursion but if the wherewithal is not yet ample enough your youngsters must live in hope for another year.

Trusting this glorious weather will last over your Show I am

my dear Sir, | yours very truly | W. Spence