Item 32 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

Trinity College - WW is preparing the sermons he is to give at St. Mary's in February. He is shortly departing with Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] on an expedition to Paris. He is behind in writing the sermons: 'with time enough I should not fear the greater part of the work - all the argument about the activity and omnipresence of the Deity, but when I come to the indications of benevolent design in the moral frame of society I have not such an habitual familiarity with the view of the subject in its details as merits with the confidence and vehemence which would be becoming. I have no doubt I should get on better if I had you at my elbow'. Babbage is in Cambridge canvassing for the Lucasian Chair - John Herschel is here to support him - 'but all in vain'. George Airy has been elected. WW thinks this a good choice - he 'will reside and give lectures - practical and painstaking ones - who is par eminence a mathematician - and whose reputation will all go to the account of the university'.