_Chemistry_: there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same
book: there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vice, by my father,
according to the advice of Madame de Lagaraye, the woman in the black
cloak and ruffles, who weighs with unwearied scales, in the frontispiece
of a book, which perhaps my aunt remembers, entitled _Chemie de gout et
de l'odorat._ There are a set of accurate weights, just completed by the
ingenious Messrs. Lovell and Henry Edgeworth, partners: for Henry is now
a junior partner, and grown an inch and a half upon the strength of it
in two months. The use and ingenuity of these weights I do, or did,
understand; it is great, but I am afraid of puzzling you and disgracing
myself attempting to explain it; especially as, my mother says, I once
sent you a receipt for purifying water with charcoal, which she avers to
have been above, or below, the comprehension of any rational being.

My father bought a great many books at Mr. Dean's sale. Six volumes of
_Machines Approuves_, full of prints of paper mills, gunpowder mills,
_machines pour remonter les batteaux, machines pour_--a great many
things which you would like to see I am sure over my father's shoulder.
And my aunt would like to see the new staircase, and to see a kitcat
view of a robin redbreast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by
Lovell, and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine strawberries
round the crowded oval table after dinner, and to see my mother look so
much better in the midst of us.

If these delights thy soul can move,
Come live with us and be our love.


_To_ MRS. RUXTON.