sery-maid, that they
might never suffer what I had done from ignorance of modern languages. I
besides gave them instruction in such things as I was capable of
teaching, and which were suited to their age.

It was a great amusement to Somerville and myself to arrange the
minerals we had collected during our journey. Our cabinet was now very
rich. Some of our specimens we had bought; our friends had given us
duplicates of those they possessed; and George Finlayson, who was with
our troops in Ceylon, and who had devoted all his spare time to the
study of the natural productions of the country, sent us a valuable
collection of crystals of sapphire, ruby, oriental topaz, amethyst, &c.,
&c. Somerville used to analyze minerals with the blowpipe, which I never
did. One evening, when he was so occupied, I was playing the piano, when
suddenly I fainted; he was very much startled, as neither I nor any of
our family had ever done such a thing. When I recovered, I said it was
the smell of garlic that had made me ill. The truth was, the mineral
contained arsenic, and I was poisoned for the time by the fumes.

At this time we formed an acquaintance with Dr. Wollaston, which soon
became a lasting friendship. He was gentlemanly, a cheerful companion,
and a philosopher; he was also of agreeable appearance, having a
remarkably fine, intellectual head. He was essentially a chemist, and
discovered palladium; but there were few branches of science with which
he was not more or less acquainted. He made experiments to discover
imponderable matter; I believe, with regard to the ethereal medium. Mr.
Brand, of the Royal Institution, enraged him by sending so strong a
current of electricity through a machine he had made to prove
electro-magnetic rotation, as to destroy it. His characteristic was
extreme accuracy, which particularly fitted him for giving that
precision to the science of crystallography which it had not hitherto
attained. By the invention of the goniometer which bears his name, he
was enabled to measure the angle formed by the faces of a crystal by
means of the reflected images of bright objects seen in them. We bought
a goniometer, and Dr. Wollaston, who often dined with us, taught
Somerville and me how to use it, by measuring the angles of many of our
crystals during the evening. I learnt a great deal on a variety of
subjects besides crystallography from Dr. Wollaston, who, at his death,
left me a collection of models of the form