Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/46

30 If this event had happened during the lifetime of my father, it would have been most gratifying to myself, because, whilst it would have given him much pleasure, it would then also have afforded intense delight to my mother.

I concluded that the next post would bring me the official confirmation of this report, and after some consideration I sketched the draft of a letter, in which I proposed to thank the University sincerely for the honour they had done me, but to decline it.

This sketch of a letter was hardly dry when two of my intimate friends, the Rev. Mr. Lunn and Mr. Beilby Thompson, who resided close to me in the Piazza del Populo, came over to congratulate me on the appointment. I showed them my proposed reply, against which they earnestly protested. Their first, and as they believed their strongest, reason was that it would give so much pleasure to my mother. To this I answered that my mother's opinion of her son had been confirmed by the reception he had met with in every foreign country he had visited, and that this, in her estimation, would add but little to it. To their next argument I had no satisfactory answer. It was that this election could not have occurred unless some friends of mine in England had taken active measures to promote it; that some of these might have been personal friends, but that many others might have exerted themselves entirely upon principle, and that it would be harsh to disappoint such friends, and reject such a compliment.

My own feelings were of a mixed nature. I saw the vast field that the Difference Engine had opened out; for, before I left England in the previous year, I had extended its mechanism to the tabulation of functions having no constant