Steam Engines in the
Cornish mines, and especially of the Pumping Engines and Pumps. It
made an excellent lecture: the subjects were at that time undescribed
in books, and unknown to engineers in general out of Cornwall.

"My College lectures seem to have been, Oct. 21st to Dec. 14th to 31
Junior Sophs, Dec. 4th to 12th to 12 Senior Sophs. I assisted at the
examinations of the Questionists. I had no private pupils. On
Nov. 26th I communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a
Paper on the Theory of Pendulums, Balances, and Escapements: and I
find applications of Babbage's symbolism to an escapement which I
proposed. I have various investigations about the Earth, supposed to
project at middle latitudes above the elliptical form. In November an
account of the Dolcoath failure (by Whewell) was given to the Royal
Society.

"At length on Dec. 7th, 1826, the election to the Lucasian
Professorship took place: I was elected (I think unanimously) and
admitted. I believe that this gave great satisfaction to the
University in general. My uncle, Arthur Biddell, was in Cambridge on
that evening, and was the first of my friends who heard of it. On the
same page of my quires on which this is mentioned, there is a great
list of apparatus to be constructed for Lucasian Lectures, notes of
experiments with Atwood's Machine, &c. In December, correspondence
with Dollond about prisms. I immediately issued a printed notice that
I would give professorial lectures in the next Term.

"On Dec. 13th I have a letter from Mr Smith informing me of the
dangerous illness (fever) which had attacked nearly every member of
his family, Richarda worst of all. On Dec. 23rd I went to Bury. The
affairs with Cropley had been settled by the sale of his property
under execution, and my father did not lose much of his debt. But he
had declined much in body and mind, and now had strange
hallucinations.

"The commencement of 1827 found me in a better position (not in money
but in prospects) than I had before stood in: yet it was far from
satisfactory. I had resigned my Assistant Tutorship of _L150_ per
annum together with the prospect of succeeding to a Tutorship, and
gained only the Lucasian Professorship of _L99_ per annum. I had a
great aversion to entering the Church: and my lay fellowship would
expire in 7 years. My prospects in the law or other professions might
have been good if I could have waited: but then I must have been in a
state of starva