years of practice had brought it
no farther on its way either to scientific rank or to practical
fruitfulness. The time would have been better spent in severer studies,
though these were not absent. From Green Bank he writes to his sister in
1830:--

Sam and I are at present engaged in some calculations
on population, which have brought us to a very curious,
beautiful, and important conclusion hitherto overlooked
by all writers on the subject whom I have consulted, and
which threatens to invalidate a considerable part of
Malthus's theory. It respects the increase or diminution
of fecundity; but I will write you more fully when we have
quite established our facts. I have just finished a number
of very tedious tables, all of which confirm our conclusions
in a manner I had not ventured to anticipate....

I am now (September 3, 1830) very busy reading
and arranging and meditating for my lectures on history,
which will be ten times the labour of my last; also
collecting from all history and all science every fact, or
principle, or opinion, or admission, or event, which can
in any way bear upon magnetism, or suggest any argument
for its correctness, whereby I have amassed a
profusion of ancient and modern learning, which I think
will astonish the natives when I bring it forward.

My other occupations at present are reading through
the best authors and orators of our country--to get a
perfect command of language and style--as Hooker,
Taylor, Burke, Canning, Erskine, Fox, etc., after which
I shall take to French literature, and make myself as
well acquainted with Voltaire, Moliere, Bossuet, Massillon,
Flechier, and Condorcet, as I am with Mme. de Stael
and Rousseau and Montesquieu and Volney. This will
be work enough for another year; and what fit may
then come upon me, it is impossible to see. My views
on population are confirmed by every fresh calculation
I see, and Sadler's new work affords me the means of
controverting his theory and establishing my own. The
moral, physical, and political influence of manufactures
and Poor Laws I must next examine.

A little later he writes:--

Everything bears indications of some approaching
struggle between the higher and lower classes, and the
guilt of it, if it does come, will lie at the door of those
who, by their inflammatory speeches, public and private,
and by their constant and monotonous com