bookseller gave him for the whole! On his return from Derby, my father
spent a day with Mr. Keir, the great chemist, at Birmingham: he was
speaking to him of the late discovery of fulminating silver, with which
I suppose your ladyship is well acquainted, though it be new to Henry
and me. A lady and gentleman went into a laboratory where a few grains
of fulminating silver were lying in a mortar: the gentleman, as he was
talking, happened to stir it with the end of his cane, which was tipped
with iron,--the fulminating silver exploded instantly, and blew the
lady, the gentleman, and the whole laboratory to pieces! Take care how
you go into laboratories with gentlemen, unless they are like Sir Plume
skilled in the "nice conduct" of their canes.

Have you seen any of the things that have been lately published about
the negroes? We have just read a very small pamphlet of about ten pages,
merely an account of the facts stated to the House of Commons.
Twenty-five thousand people in England have absolutely left off eating
West India sugar, from the hope that when there is no longer any demand
for sugar the slaves will not be so cruelly treated. Children in several
schools have given up sweet things, which is surely very benevolent;
though whether it will at all conduce to the end proposed is perhaps
wholly uncertain, and in the meantime we go on eating apple pies
sweetened with sugar instead of with honey. At Mr. Keir's, however, my
father avers that he ate excellent custards sweetened with honey. Will
it not be rather hard upon the poor bees in the end?

Mrs. Yearsly, the milkwoman, whose poems I daresay my aunt has seen,
lives very near us at Clifton: we have never seen her, and probably
never shall, for my father is so indignant against her for her
ingratitude to her benefactress, Miss Hannah More, that he thinks she
deserves to be treated with _neglect._ She was dying, absolutely