TO LEWIS CAMPBELL, Esq.

                                                                    Trin. Coll., 14th July 1853.

You wrote just in time for your letter to reach me as I reached Cambridge. After examination I went to visit the   Rev. C. B. Tayler (uncle to a Tayler whom I think you have seen under the name of Freshman, etc., and author of   many tracts and other didactic works). We had little expedites, and walks, and things parochial and educational,   and domesticity. I intended to return on the 18th June, but on the 17th I felt unwell, and took measures  accordingly to be well again—i.e. went to bed, and made up my mind to recover. But it lasted more than a     fortnight, during which time I was taken care of beyond expectation (not that I did not expect much before). When   I was perfectly useless, and could not sit up without fainting, Mr. Tayler did everything for me in such a way that I   had no fear of giving trouble. So did Mrs. Tayler; and the two nephews did all they could. So they kept me in   great happiness all the time, and detained me till I was able to walk about, and got back strength. I returned on the  4th July.     The consequence of all this is that I correspond with Mr. Tayler, and have entered into bonds with the nephews,    of all of whom more hereafter. Since I came here I have been attending Hop., but with his approval did not begin     full swing. I am getting on, though, and the work is not grinding on the prepared brain.

 I have been reading Villette by Currer Bell alias Miss Bronté. I think the authoress of Jane Eyre has not ceased   to think and acquire principles since that work left her hands. It is autobiographic in form. The ego is a personage of great self-knowledge and self-restraint, strength of principle  and courage when roused, otherwise preferring the station of an onlooker.   Then there is an excellent prying, upright, Jesuitical, and successful French school directress; a fiery, finical,   physiognomic professor, priestridden, but taking his own way in benevolence as in other things, etc. etc.    Faraday's experiments on Table-turning, and the answers of provoked believers and the state of opinion generally,   show what the state of the public mind is with respect to the principles of natural science. The law of gravitation   and the wonderful effects of the electric fluid are things which you can ascertain by asking any man or woman not  deprived by penury or exclusiveness of ordinary information. But they believe them just as they believe history,   because it is in books and is not doubted. So that facts in natural science are believed on account of the number of   witnesses, as they ought! I believe that tables are turned; yea! and by an unknown force called, if you please, the   vital force, acting, as believers say, thro' the fingers. But how does it affect the table? By the mechanical action of   the sideward pressure of the fingers in the direction the table ought to go, as Faraday has shown. At this last   statement the Turners recoil.