Item 34 - Letter from William Whewell

WW is walking some twenty to thirty miles a day among the highest parts of the Alps. He has just seen the glacier from which the Rhone issues. WW gives a description of the surrounding scenery with an emphasis on waterfalls, rivers and ice. HJR is to imagine the Rhone glacier in the following way: 'You are to suppose all the partial torrents and bounds of water which are woven together to make its expanse to be modelled in strange and fantastic pyramids of ice with deep blue chasms between; and the lines of the water below as it diverges and hastes away to be pencilled with the same deep crevices'. WW has been living amongst all sorts of different people. After WW has mixed and talked with more Germans he will be able to talk to HJR 'about faith and reason more obscurely than ever but perhaps with reasonable moderation and good hope of coming to a conclusion'.