Penicuik, 30th December 1853.
You will need to get muffetees for the Senate-Room. Take your plaid or rug to wrap round your feet and legs.
To Miss Cay.
Trin. Coll., 13th January 1854.
All my correspondents have been writing to me, which is kind, and have not been writing questions, which is kinder. So I answer you now, while I am slacking speed to get up steam, leaving Lewis and Stewart, etc., till next week, when I will give an account of the five days. There are a good many up here at present, and we get on very jolly on the whole, but some are not well, and some are going to be plucked or gulphed, as the case may be, and others are reading so hard that they are invisible. I go to-morrow to breakfast with shaky men, and after food I am to go and hear the list read out, and whether they are through, and bring them word. When the honour list comes out the poll-men act as messengers. Bob Campbell comes in occasionally of an evening now, to discuss matters and vary sports. During examination I have had men at night working with gutta-percha, magnets, etc. It is much better than reading novels or talking after 5½ hours’ hard writing.
Hunter is up here all the vacation. Do you know anything of him in Edinburgh? His father, who is dead, or his uncle, were known in Edinburgh, but I am not up in that subject. The present man is a freshman at Queen’s, and is a thundering mathematician, is well informed on political, literary, and speculative subjects, and is withal a jolly sort of fellow with some human nature at the bottom, and lots of good humour all through. He does not talk much, and when he does it is broad Scotch and to the purpose. I hope to see more of him next term. Old Charlie Robertson is in better case I think than usual, and rejoices in the good opinion of several men whose opinion is most worth having. He has become better known and better estimated of late, especially since Sandy[176] came up. He did pretty well in the three days, and does not fret about anything. The snow here is nearly gone, and it looks like frost again. I have never missed a long tramp through the slush day by day. When one is well soaked in a snow wreath, cleaned and dried, and put beside a good fire, with bread and butter and problems, one can eat and grind like a miller.... I have been reading a book of poems called Benoni, by Arthur Munby of Trinity, which are above the common run of such things (not Lorenzo Benoni, illustrated by J. R, which I have seen but not read). Have you seen the Black Brothers, a small book of Ruskin’s, illustrated by Doyle;—a good child’s book, which big people ought to read.
From His Father.
18 India St., 80th January 1854.
I heartily congratulate you on your place in the list. I suppose it is higher than the speculators would have guessed, and quite as high as Hopkins reckoned on. I wish you success in the Smith’s Prizes; be sure to write me the result. I will see Mrs. Morrieson, and I think I will call on Dr. Gloag to congratulate him. He has at least three pupils gaining honours.
[136] He was the younger brother of Mr. Mackenzie of Silverknowe, who had married Isabella Wedderburn.
[137] Then Tutor of Peterhouse, now Professor Emeritus of Aberdeen.
[138] Contrast with this the following entry in the Diary:—“1842, Feb. 19. Saturday.—Go with James to Cooke’s Circus at 2 P.M. at York Hotel, Arena—being James’s first time of seeing such entertainments.”
[140] “Jamsie’s dirt,” the disrespectful name for the hits of unannealed glass, etc. etc., in the Coterie-Sprache.
[141] Now Rector of Smeeth, near Ashford, in Kent.
[142] I did not know of this until the present year, 1881.
[143] In 1852 H. M. had left Cambridge. F. M. went as a freshman to Trinity in October 1852. See a book named Early Death not Premature, being a Memoir of Francis L. Mackenzie, late of Trinity College Cambridge. With Notices of Henry Mackenzie, B.A. By the Rev. Charles Popham Miles, M.A., M.D., F.L.S., Glasgow. Nisbet and Co. Fourth Edition. 1861.
[144] Including the present Earl Cairns.
[145] His uncle, Sir G. Clerk, is said to have had the same peculiarity.
[146] Viz. at the time of my proposed visit to Cambridge.
[147] In the preceding Christmas vacation I was at a private “séance” in Edinburgh, where Maxwell—whether he shammed or not who can tell?—was selected by the operator (a man named Douglas, I think), who vainly tried to make him seem to forget his name.
[148] Mr. Mathison’s lecture on trigonometry.
[149] i.e. Anglicè, “How did the dip agree with it?”
[151] According to the “contemporary Cantab,” Peterhouse and Sidney really won the race, in spite of the removal of the bank of weeds. The reason why Trinity got the cups was that the pistol of P. and S.’s umpire missed fire.
[153] The late J. F. Maclennan, author of Primitive Marriage, etc.
[154] He was the first who spoke to me (about 1865) of the principles of coloured glass, which have since become fashionable; observing that it should be rich in sea-green, and not, “like the banners of the Assyrian, gleaming with purple and gold.” In his critical studies of modern poets he used to note their fondness for particular colours,—e.g., the uses of “white,” “red,” “black,” “ruby,” “emerald,” “sapphire,” in Tennyson and Browning.
[155] Professor Tait says, “He used to go up on the pollard at the bathing-shed, throw himself flat on his face in the water, dive and cross, then ascend the pollard on the other side, project himself flat on his back in the water. He said it stimulated the circulation!”
[156] See chap. VIII.
[158] “A wise son maketh a glad father.”
[159] It is said that on the first occasion of his reading in chapel after gaining his scholarship, his delivery of his first lesson (from the Book of Job) in tones which, perhaps from nervousness, were unusually broad, upset the gravity of every one, from the Master downwards.
[161] The Rev. F. W. Farrar, D.D., Canon of Westminster.
[162] The Rev. H. Butler, D.D., Head-Master of Harrow.
[163] The Rev. G. W. H. Tayler, now Vicar of Trinity Church, Carlisle.
[164] See the letter of 2d February 1853, in which his father refers to Miss Cay’s advice that he should take wine.
[165] At the same time, it is not to be supposed that Maxwell was ever completely identified with any particular school of religious opinion. He was too much “the heir of all the ages,” and, as he himself expressed it, “his faith was too deep to be in bondage to any set of opinions.” Scottish Calvinism was the theological system which had most historical interest for him, and most claim on his hereditary piety. He was learned in the writings of Owen and Jonathan Edwards. But that which his latest pastor has called “his deep though simple faith,” was not enclosed in any system. Even his youthful training (which in the case of one so loyal is not to be disregarded) was favourable to a comprehensive view of Christianity. Beginning with the Bible, which he knew by heart from a child, Presbyterian and Episcopalian influence had been blended as we have already seen. Hence, when he went to Cambridge, there was nothing strange to him in the service of the English Church. His mind was always moving (elle planait, as the French would say), above and “beyond these voices,” yet they were not indifferent to him.
It is to be regretted that a letter on the Parties in the Church of England, written to his father in 1852, has not been found. His general approval of Hare’s sermons, and his remarks on the Maurician controversy, indicate the direction which his thoughts on this subject must have taken. His interest in sermons, good and bad, was like Macaulay’s interest in novels, or Charles Lamb’s in old plays. Years after this, on board a friend’s yacht one Sunday, he gave a sort of impromptu exposition of a chapter in the Book of Joshua, shouting up his remarks from below, which struck those who heard it as full of originality and wisdom.
[166] Compare Plato, Thœt. 147, C D. A Cambridge friend who knew Maxwell at a later time, says of him, “One striking characteristic was remarked by his contemporaries at Hopkins’s lectures. Whenever the subject admitted of it he had recourse to diagrams, though the rest might solve the question more easily by a train of analysis.”
[167] In the garden at Glenlair.
[169] i.e. preached.
[171] Viz. of Elizabeth M'Keand (see above, p. 47).
[172] From the Diary:—“1846, July, W., 29.—(Day of the prize-giving at the Edinburgh Academy). Made all ready to start on journey to-morrow morning. At night James complained of the light of the candle hurting his eyes. Th. 30.—Bad, wet day. Jas. awoke at six; eyes weak and headache; ... seems to be a disorder from excitement of school examinations.”
[173] W. Christie, Esq., advocate.
[174] Bank-ground.
[175] Trinity College Examination.
[176] Alexander Robertson, Esq., now Sheriff of Forfarshire.