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Slough - WW and George Peacock have 'absolutely turned his [Babbage] brain by your inflammatory conversation'. Babbage has been 'running analysis mad' and so has JH: 'I really have read and written more in the last fortnight than ever I did in twice the time in any other part of my life and I advise you to go and do likewise'. 'The distress of the poor and the pressure of the times forms the subject of conversation here'.

GA does not think WW's letter to David Brewster 'at all savage': 'If I had any discussion with Brewster on these points I would certainly hit him about his bad information and his influence in acting on it. The revenues of professorships &c is one point already reproached - another is the character of the professors "Whewell, Airy & Hamilton" the only true experimenters - Does not [James?] Cumming do more than all? And did [Sir W. R. ?] Hamilton since he drew vital air ever make or meditate an experiment or trouble himself about other peoples?...I wish Babbage's non-lecturing could somehow be lugged into this controversy'.

JH's reasons for declining to become a candidate for the Lucasian Chair: He does 'not wish to devote myself exclusively or par excellence to any one branch of science - perhaps too a consciousness that I prefer physical to mathematical science'. Any science he does do 'I had rather should be considered as done an amateur than as a matter of duty and profession'. JH has written to [James] Wood to canvass for Babbage. JH has become 'an ultra-Huttonian in regard of long geological periods'.

Devonshire Rd, Portland Place - Babbage received WW's thirty guineas and has paid 31 for his fees at the Royal Society. Three members of the Astronomical Society have donated 100 guineas toward the Cambridge Observatory (50 came from William Pearson). 'Sir J. B [Joseph Banks] is about to resign and has recommended Davies Gilbert. But all sorts of plans speculations and schemes are afloat, and all sorts of people proper and improper are penetrated with the desire of wielding the sceptre of science. Whether this elective throne shall be filled by a philosopher or peer a priest or prince is a problem pendent on the fortuitous course of events. The Society is in a position of unstable equilibrium or rather it is like a comet which has not made up its mind whether it shall soberly circulate round the light of truth or traverse boundless space through endless time frying and damning the predestined infidels of other systems until some starry giant shall fascinate to its destruction this erring ball which has "run a muck" through creation'.

Letter of introduction for 'Mr Forbes [James D. Forbes] a friend of Dr Brewster's and mine'.

He congratulates him on his commercial tables: 'I admire your tables and have made use of one the 3 per cent. - It is exceedingly desirable to have the Constants of Commerce and Manufactures and when I have printed my volume I will try to make the manufacturers who are most interested collect more of them'.

JH and Babbage are 'analysing outrageously'. Could WW ask [George] Peacock whether he is making progress in the printing of a work entitled 'A Supplement to Lacroix' which should have been published some months ago.

Could WW take the enclosed letters to Laplace and Edwards. Biot will introduce WW to Cuvier. If he sees Arago to ask him whether he received a letter from JH announcing his election to the Astronomical Society, and if he sees Picollet whether he got Babbage's letter on his machine. If JH's theodolite by Schenck has arrived at Bouvard's could WW take it back to England with him. The two blue pamphlets are for Cauchoix and Fortiu [the optician]. The printed letters about Babbage's machine are at his request to be given to Prony and Cauchy and any others WW may think interested.