Item 86 - Letter from Henry Hallam

4 pp

Wranall Lodge, near Bristol - Thanks WW for his book on education [Of a Liberal Education in General, and with Particular Reference to the Leading Studies of the University of Cambridge, 1845]: 'It has given me much pleasure to behold the rigours that you make for old geometry, which, perhaps from ignorance of other methods, I had long been led to think to be falling into neglect'. HH is surprised that someone like WW, 'still give the preference to the geometrical, as an exercise of the mind, and as the basis, at least, of permanent studies in mathematics'. The advantages of geometry seem to be among other things that WW mentions - 'that it is more logical and deductive, and that it makes the properties of the external world more distinctly before the eye'.