Life of James Clerk Maxwell | Project Gutenberg

JAMES CLERK MAXWELL'S position as Second Wrangler and equal Smith's Prizeman, gave deep satisfaction to his friends in Edinburgh. Any lurking wish that he had been Senior was silenced by the examples of William Thomson and Charles Mackenzie, as others have been since consoled with the examples of Maxwell and Clifford. His father was persuaded by Miss Cay to sit for his portrait to Sir John Watson Gordon, as a gift of lasting value to his son. James was not indifferent to these reflex aspects of his success; but the chief interest of the moment to him undoubtedly was that he was now free to prosecute his life-career, and to use his newly-whetted instruments in resuming his original investigations. His leisure was not absolute, for he took pupils as a matter of course, and the Trinity Fellowship was only to be gained by examination. But his freedom was as great as he himself desired, and it is a fact worthy of attention from “researchers,” that Maxwell, with his heart fully set on physical inquiries, engaged of his own accord in teaching, undertook the task of examining Cheltenham College, and submitted to the routine which belonged to his position at Cambridge. As a foretaste of delights in store, he had spent the evenings of the Senate-house days in (physico-) magnetic séances with his friends. But when actually emancipated he seems to have reverted principally at first to his beloved Optics. He makes inquiries about a microscope manufactory at Zurich; reads Berkeley’s Theory of Vision—taking up Mill’s Logic by the way, and finding there by no means the last word on the relation of sense to knowledge; looks up his stock of coloured papers furnished by D. R. Hay, and sets to work spinning and weaving the different rays; inquires him out colour-blind persons on all sides; and invents an instrument for inspecting the living retina, especially of dogs. By and by it is the Art of Squinting which again has charms for him, and he combines it with the teaching of solid and spherical geometry, by drawing wonderful stereoscopic diagrams. So far, his investigations oscillate between colour and form. But even the fascination of the Colour-Top[177] cannot hold him long from searching into the more hidden things of Matter in Motion. Thus, in his letter to his father of May 15, 1855, after describing a successful exhibition of the Top and extemporary statement of his optical theories before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, he adds:—“I am reading Electricity and working at Fluid Motion.” And on May 23—“I am getting on with my electrical calculations every now and then, and working out anything that seems to help the understanding thereof.' Some days earlier, May 5, he had written:—“I am working away at Electricity again, and have been working my way into the views of heavy German writers. It takes a long time to reduce to order all the notions one gets from these men, but I hope to see my way through the subject, and arrive at something intelligible in the way of a theory.” These brief notices obviously refer to the studies which led up to his important paper on Faraday's Lines of Force, which was put into shape in the winter of 1855-6.

The “vassals” were not forgotten by him even when most occupied at Cambridge. The choice and provision of suitable literature for the consumption of Sam Murdoch and Sandy Fraser is a frequent topic of correspondence between him and his father.

How earnestly he now set himself to make the most of life in a religious sense appears from a sort of aphorism on conduct which he wrote down originally for his own use, and afterwards communicated as a parting gift to his friend Farrar (now Canon of Westminster), who was about to become a master at Marlborough School. As a record of the spirit in which Maxwell entered at three-and-twenty on his independent career, this fragment[178] is of extraordinary value.

1854. Æt. 23.

He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday’s work, lest he fall into despair, nor to-morrow’s, lest he become a visionary,—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work, nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions.

Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of To-day a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises, because the present is given him for a possession.

Thus ought Man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it.

Meanwhile in his recreations he was as boyishly agile as ever, and his feats in bathing and gymnastics, though cautiously reported by him, somewhat alarmed his father, whose own health now showed signs of breaking.

His friendships went on multiplying. To the list already given must now be added in particular the names of Hort, V. Lushington, Pomeroy, and Cecil Monro. And his constant observation of character was gaining in fulness and precision. A letter to his father of 21st April 1855, besides referring to a pupil (Platt) who had gained a Trinity scholarship, contains a graphic delineation of several of his coevals who were going in for the first open competition for appointments in the Indian Civil Service. He confides to his father all his thoughts about them, in which speculative and personal interests are combined.

He had soon another outlet for this kind of sympathy. The children of his uncle, Mr. R. Dundas Cay, who had lately returned from Hong-Kong, were advancing in their education, and two of the boys, William and Charles, showed considerable promise in mathematics. He had spent some days with his cousins in the summer vacation of 1854 at Keswick, where there was also a Cambridge reading party under Mathison, the tutor of Trinity. After a joyous time with them he walked home to Galloway from Carlisle, and it was during this walk that he thought out certain improvements in his dynamical top. He took a continuous interest in the progress of his cousins, and prepared a special set of problems for the behoof of Willy, the eldest, who was by this time a student in Edinburgh.

Maxwell continued his contributions to the “Apostle” Essay Club, and on May 5, 1855, he read to them in his own rooms a paper on Morality, in which he summed up the principles and tendencies of the chief existing systems of moral philosophy, so resuming another thread of his earlier thought.[179]

This essay appears to have been promised early in the year, to judge from an allusion to the subject of it in a letter to C. J. Monro of February 7, which may be quoted here as showing also by what home cares his intellectual energies were interrupted or diversified. The reader of what precedes will not be misled by the light way in which he speaks of things which touched his heart so nearly.

I am at present superintending a course of treatment practised on my father, for the sake of relieving certain defluxions which take place in his bronchial tubes. These obstructions are now giving way, and the medico, who is a skilful bellowsmender, pronounces the passages nearly clear.

However, it will be a week or two before he is on his pins again, so would you have the goodness to tell Freeman to tell Mrs. Jones to tell those whom it may concern, that I cannot be up to time at all.... I may be up in time to keep the term, and so work off a streak of Mathematics, which I begin to yearn after. At present I confine myself to Lucky Nightingale’s fine of business, except-that I have been writing descriptions of Platometers for measuring plane figures, and privately by letter confuting rash mechanics, who intrude into things they have not got up, and suppose that their devices will act when they can’t. I hope that my absence will not delay the assumption of W. D. Maclagan.[180] He has been here all the vacation, if not there and everywhere. The foundation of Ethics, though it may have tickled my core, has not germinated at my vertex. Whether it will yet be laid bare, either as a paradox or a truism, is more than I can tell. Perhaps it may be a pun....

I have now to do a little cooking and buttling, in the shape of toast and beef-tea and everfizzing draught.... Does Pomeroy flourish, and has he Crimean letters still?

It was only because his father insisted on his doing so that he returned to Cambridge at all at this time.

At the meeting of the British Association, held at Glasgow in September 1855, Maxwell was present when Brewster made an attack on Whewell’s optical theories, but he followed the example of the Master of Trinity, who was present, in saying nothing. He exhibited his Colour-Top, however, the same afternoon, by appointment, at Professor Ramsay’s house, where Brewster had been expected, but did not appear. Maxwell at the same time renewed his intercourse with Dr. George Wilson, the Edinburgh Professor of Technology, whose likeness hung beside that of Forbes in his rooms at Trinity. Wilson brought out immediately afterwards a little book on Colour Blindness, in which the substance of his conversations with Maxwell is recorded.

In October he gained his fellowship at Trinity. It was his second trial, and his name appeared as one of three mathematicians who had been chosen from the bachelors of the second year.

He was at once appointed to lecture to the Upper Division of the third year in Hydrostatics and Optics, and, to reserve time for his own studies, he now desisted from taking private pupils. He had indeed enough to occupy him without burdening himself with them. Besides the lecture in hydrostatics and optics, for which he found it desirable to read beforehand “so as not to tell lies,” he had a large share in “exercising the questionists,” i.e. preparing pass-men for the final examination, by setting papers in arithmetic, algebra, etc., and looking them over with the writers individually.

He had also been asked to prepare a text-book[181] on optics, and made some plans for doing so, having previously resisted the solicitation of his friend Monro, who had urged upon him the task of “translating Newton.” And it is a fact worthy of the attention of bachelor fellows, that young Clerk Maxwell thought it worth while to attend the lectures of the Professor of Mechanics[182] and to exchange ideas with him.

For Electricity and Magnetism he took out Poisson again, and presently began putting together more systematically his own ideas on Faraday's Lines of Force.

His interest in coevals and juniors, which even in his undergraduate days was often like that of an elder brother, assumed a deeper and more authoritative cast. He read more widely than ever, and nothing, from the latest novel to the newest metaphysical system, escaped his penetrating mind. He never read without criticising, and his criticisms, often quaintly expressed, were always worth attending to. “I hope that analysis of Hegel has done the writer good,” “Comte has good ideas about method, but no notion of what is meant by a person,” “Some people keep water-tight compartments in their minds.” Such were the sparks that flew about. Other examples, not less striking, will be found in the letters. His observation of social phenomena also took a new departure, and his remarks on life and manners were endlessly entertaining.

He was elected a member of the Ray Club, which he had attended as a visitor in the spring, and did not forsake the assembling of the “Apostles,” as appears from at least two essays which can only be referred to this period. He also took an active interest in the scheme for the higher education of working men, which had been lately set on foot by Mr. Maurice.

Between whiles he found time for a full course of classical English reading. And as all that he read he read critically, and had it thereafter in perfect possession, his literary acquirements were by this time of no mean order. He was, at the same time, careful to maintain himself in proper physical condition, by a steady course of exercises at the new gymnasium, which proved a welcome refuge in the wet November of that year. It was an unhealthy season, and to all his other employments was now added that of helping to nurse his friend Pomeroy, who was struck down with bilious fever.

His many-sided nature was in full activity. It is most characteristic of him that at this important crisis of his intellectual life, the best hour of day after day was given ungrudgingly to the task of literally making a friend's bed in his sickness. A lighter trait of the same kind may be found in the fact that, in the midst of the fellowship examination, he had given his father detailed advice about the “vassals’” reading:—“When Sam Murdoch has finished Arabia, there are the volumes of the Cabinet Library, called Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier, and Circumnavigation of the Globe, Humboldt's Travels and Polar Regions, but it would be better to change and try the third volume of Household Words.”

His thoughts turned homewards the more often, because his father’s health was now becoming a matter for grave anxiety. In going up to Trinity for the fellowship trials, he had been doubtful whether in any case it would be right for him to stay up for the rest of the term. And, although this question was decided in the affirmative, every letter home bears some trace of his unceasing solicitude.

Thus, at the close of a period of manifold brightness, there was some foreshadowing of darker days shortly to come, when Death would take his father from him, and make the first breach in the circle of his friends.

From his Father.

India Street, 4th Feby. 1854.

I have got yours of the 1st inst., and to-night or on Monday I will expect to hear of the Smith’s Prizes. I get congratulations on all hands, including Prof. Kelland and Sandy Fraser, and all others competent.

18 India St., 6 th Feby. 1854.

George Wedderburn came into my room at 2 A.M. yesterday morning, having seen the Saturday Times, received by the express train, and I got your letter before breakfast yesterday. As you are equal to the Senior in the champion trial, you are but a very little behind him.

I am going to dine with John Cay, and with him proceed to the Royal Society. I may perhaps catch Prof. Gregory about the microscopist.

5th March 1854.

Mrs. Morrieson told me she had a poetical epistle from you on St. David’s Day.[183]

Aunt Jane stirred me up to sit for my picture, as she said you wished for it and were entitled to ask for it, quâ wrangler. I have had four sittings to Sir John Watson Gordon, and it is now far advanced; I think it is very like. It is Kit-cat size, to be a companion to Dyce’s picture of your mother and self, which Aunt Jane says she is to leave to you.

To E. B. Litchfield, Esq.

Trin. Coll., 25th March 1854.

I am experiencing the effects of Mill, but I take him slowly. I do not think him the last of his kind. I think more is wanted to bring the connexion of sensation with Science to light, and show what it is not. I have been reading Berkeley on the Theory of Vision, and greatly admire it, as I do all his other non-mathematical works; but I was disappointed to find that he had at last fallen into the snare of his own paradoxes, and thought that his discoveries with regard to the senses and their objects would show some fallacy in those branches of high mathematics which he disliked. It is curious to see how speculators are led by their neglect of exact sciences to put themselves in opposition to them where they have not the slightest point of contact with their systems. In the Minute Philosopher there is some very bad Political Economy and much very good thinking on more interesting subjects. Paradox is still sought for and exaggerated. We live in an age of wonder still.

To Miss Cay.

Trin. Coll., Whitsun. Eve, 1854.

I am in great luxury here, having but 2 pups., and able to read the rest of the day, so I have made a big hole in some subjects I wish to know. We have hot weather now, and I am just come from a meeting of subscribers to the Bathing Shed, which we organised into a Swimming Club so as to make it a more sociable affair, instead of mere “pay your money and use your key.”

A nightingale has taken up his quarters just outside my window, and works away every night. He is at it very fierce now. At night the owls relieve him, softly sighing after their fashion.

I have made an instrument for seeing into the eye through the pupil. The difficulty is to throw the light in at that small hole and look in at the same time; but that difficulty is overcome, and I can see a large part of the back of the eye quite distinctly with the image of the candle on it. People find no inconvenience in being examined, and I have got dogs to sit quite still and keep their eyes steady. Dogs’ eyes are very beautiful behind, a copper-coloured ground, with glorious bright patches and networks of blue, yellow, and green, with blood-vessels great and small.

Trin. Coll., 21th Novr. /54.

I have been very busy of late with various things, and am just beginning to make papers for the examination at Cheltenham, which I have to conduct about the 11th of December. I have also to make papers to polish off my pups. with I have been spinning colours a great deal, and have got most accurate results, proving that ordinary peoples' eyes are all made alike, though some are better than others, and that other people see two colours instead of three; but all those who do so agree amongst themselves. I have made a triangle of colours by which you may make out everything.

You see that W lies outside the triangle B, R, Y, so that White can't be made with Blue, Red, and Yellow; but if you mix blue and yellow you don’t get green, but pink—a colour between W and R. Those who see two colours only distinguish blue and yellow, but not red and green: for instance—

6 of blue and 94 of red make a red which looks to them like a gray made of 10 W and 90 Black.

40 of blue and 60 of green make 34 of W and 66 Black.

I should like you to find out if the Normans have got Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Ballad Poetry, for if they have I would not send them a duplicate; if not I think the book would suit one-half of that family.

If you can find out any people in Edinburgh who do not see colours (I know the Dicksons don’t), pray drop a hint that I would like to see them. I have put one here up to a dodge by which he distinguishes colours without fail. I have also constructed a pair of squinting spectacles, and am beginning operations on a squinting man.

To C. J. Monro, Esq.

18 India Street, Edinburgh, 19th Feb. /55.

My steps will be no more by the reedy and crooked till Easter term. My father’s recovery is retarded by the frosty weather, though we have got up an etherial mildness here by means of a good fire and a towel hung up wet at the other end of the room, together with an internal exhibition of nitric ether.

I wrote to Mackenzie about putting a respectable man in my rooms as a stopper to Cat’s Hall men, Manns and Boy Joneses, but I have not heard of his success. I have no time at present for anything except looking through novels, etc., and finding passages which will not offend my father to read to him. He strongly objects to new-fangled books, and knows the old by heart. But he likes the Essays in Intervals of Business, cause why, they have not too many words. The frost here has lasted long, and I am beginning to make use of it. I get an uncle to take my place in the afternoon, and I rush off to Lochend or Duddingston. I have not yet succeeded in skating on one foot for an indefinite time and getting up speed by rising and sinking at the bends of the path; but I attribute my failure to want of faith, for I can get up speed for a single bend, only I always slip at a certain critical turning. However, I have only been 3 days, and I may do it yet. My plans are not fixt, but I think it will be some while before my father is on his pins again, and when he is I intend to look after him still, but do a private streak of work, for I will soon be in a too much bottled up condition of mathematics, from which even mental collapse would be a relief. I have no intention of doing a Newton or any elegant mathematics. I have a few thoughts on top-spinning and sensation generally, and a kind of dim outline of Cambridge palavers, tending to shadow forth the influence of mathematical training on opinion and speculation.

I suppose when my father can move I will see him out of this eastern clime and safe located in Gallovidian westnesses, and so be up in Cam. before the beginning of next term.

I should like to know how many kept baccalaurean weeks go to each of these terms, and when they begin and end. Overhaul the calendar, and when found make note of.

Is Pomeroy up, or where This is the 2nd time of asking.

To his Father.

Trin. Coll., Saturday, 21st April 1855.
[Date in John C. M.’s hand.]

Lots of men are going in for the H.E.I.C.S. examination,—Pomeroy, B., C., D. (the best double degree for many years), E. (Senior Wrangler), etc., so I suppose the competition will be pretty active; but it is evident that these men will be totally different judges, etc., tho’ they may be all good in examination subjects.

Pomeroy is a genial giant, generous and strong, but hasty in condemnation tho’ slow to wrath. B., intelligent and able to detect any humbug but his own; but excitable, and impudent in the extreme to people he does not know. C. has strong feelings and affections, with a great amount of sympathy for all cases, but it is repressed for want of courage, and he is left with somewhat of a sneaking virtue of his own, always trying to put on the manners which suit those he is with. D. is a good man of business, using up every scrap of his time most successfully, and honest, I believe. E. is what I don’t know, but I can conceive him reduced by circumstances to act the part of Sir Elijah Impey in India; but I hope circumstances may be different, and then he may be a harmless mathematician or scientific referee, and leave a high reputation behind him.

Trin. Coll., Vesp. SS. Philipp. & S. Jac. 1855.

I have been working at the motion of fluids, and have got out some results. I am going to show the colour trick at the Philosophical on Monday. Routh has been writing a book about Newton in conjunction with Lord Brougham. Stokes is back again and lecturing as usual.

Saturday, 5th May 1855.

The Royal Society have been very considerate in sending me my paper on colours just when I wanted it for the Philosophical here. I am to let them see the tricks on Monday evening, and I have been there preparing their experiments in the gaslight. There is to be a meeting in my rooms to-night to discuss Adam Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” so I must clear up my litter presently. I am working away at electricity again, and have been working my way into the views of heavy German writers. It takes a long time to reduce to order all the notions one gets from these men, but I hope to see my way through the subject and arrive at something intelligible in the way of a theory.

Trin. Coll., 15th May 1855.

The colour trick came off on Monday, 7th. I had the proof sheets of my paper, and was going to read; but I changed my mind and talked instead, which was more to the purpose. There were sundry men who thought that Blue and Yellow make Green, so I had to undeceive them. I have got Hay’s book of colours out of the Univ. Library, and am working through the specimens, matching them with the top. I have a new trick of stretching the string horizontally above the top, so as to touch the upper part of the axis. The motion of the axis sets the string a-vibrating in the same time with the revolutions of the top, and the colours are seen in the haze produced by the vibration. Thomson has been spinning the top, and he finds my diagram of colours agrees with his experiments, but he doubts about browns what is their composition. I have got colcothar brown, and can make white with it, and blue and green; also, by mixing red with a little blue and green and a great deal of black, I can match colcothar exactly.

I have been perfecting my instrument for looking into the eye. Ware has a little beast like old Ask,[184] which sits quite steady and seems to like being looked at, and I have got several men who have large pupils and do not wish to let me look in. I have seen the image of the candle distinctly in all the eyes I have tried, and the veins of the retina were visible in some; but the dogs’ eyes showed all the ramifications of veins, with glorious blue and green network, so that you might copy down everything. I have shown lots of men the image in my own eye by shutting off the light till the pupil dilated and then letting it on.

I am reading Electricity and working at Fluid Motion, and have got out the condition of a fluid being able to flow the same way for a length of time and not wriggle about.

Trin. Coll., Eve. of H. M. Nativity.

Wednesday last I went with Hort and Elphinstone to the Ray Club, which met at Kingsley of Sidney’s rooms. Kingsley is great in photography and microscopes, and showed photographs of infusoria, very beautiful, also live plants and animals, with oxy-hydrogen microscope.

... I am getting on with my electrical calculations now and then, and working out anything that seems to help the understanding thereof.

From his Father,

Glenlair, 21st May 1855.

Have you put a burn in fit condition to flow evenly, and not beat on its banks from side to side? That would be the useful practical application.

From Professor J. D. Forbes.

Clifton, Bristol, 4th May 1855.

I left directions with Messrs. Neill & Co. to forward proofs of your paper, by inquiring at 18 India Street, and I understand that they were sent out on the 1st May.

I am informed that my note to you about some of my experiments on colour has been printed in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. This was by no means what I intended.... What I thought that you might do was to introduce into that part of your paper where you speak of what has been done or written on the subject, mention of the fact that as early as January 18— (I do not at the moment recollect the year I stated to you) I had used the method of rapid motion in blending colours; that I had endeavoured to obtain an equation between certain mixed colours and pure gray; and that I had pointed out before Helmholtz, or I believe any one else, that a mixture of yellow and blue, under these circumstances at least, does not produce green; you yourself being a witness to what I then tried, though I was prevented from resuming the subject by ill health and some experimental occupations (conduction of heat) which I considered more imperative.

I hope you will continue to prosecute your interesting inquiries, and with an equal measure of success.

I address this to Cambridge, as I think you said you should be there this month.

From the Same.

Clifton, Bristol, 16th May 1855.

I am much obliged by your note mentioning your intention of referring to my experiments.

You inquire how I altered the proportions of the constituent colours. My plan was, in fact, the same as yours. I had sectors much larger than I required of each colour, making them overlap, and fixing them down by a screw at the centre, pressing a disc of indiarubber on the discs. When I got the anomalous result of blue and yellow, I got Mr. Hay to make a disc of many alternating narrow sectors merely to see whether it might be a physiological effect from the imperfect blending of the colours.

I still think the experiment ought to be tried without motion, by winding blue and yellow threads of silk or worsted round a card and looking at it at a good distance, or (as you proposed) by viewing it with a telescope out of focus.

You will recollect that I had a whirling-machine (made on purpose), in which a number of discs revolved simultaneously with equal velocities. I used black and white on one of these; colours on another. Your teetotum, combining both, I consider preferable for experiments. By the way, I did not get the teetotum you were to leave for me.

P.S.—I hope you have got the proof of the plate as well as of the paper. If not, write to Messrs. Johnston, engravers, 4 St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh.

To E. B. Litchfield, Esq.

Trin. Coll., 6th June 1855.

It is hard work grinding out “appropriate ideas,” as Whewell calls them. However, I think they are coming out at last, and by dint of knocking them against all the facts and ½-digested theories afloat, I hope to bring them to shape, after which I hope to understand something more about inductive philosophy than I do at present.

I have a project of sifting the theory of light and making everything stand upon definite experiments and definite assumptions, so that things may not be supposed to be assumptions when they are either definitions or experiments.

I have been looking into all the dogs’ eyes here to see the bright coating at the back of the eye, thro’ an instrument I made to that end. The spectacle is very fine. I remember the appearance of Mungo’s eyes at Cheltenham. He would be the dog to sit. Human eyes are very dark and brown as to their retina, but you can see the image of a candle quite well on it, and sometimes the blood-vessels, etc.

From William Dyce Cay, Esq., to John C. M.

(Glasgow, at the Meeting of the British Association).

18th September 1855.

Sir David Brewster was upon the triple spectrum. As far as I can understand, he believes the spectrum to be composed of three colours—red, blue, and yellow; and that the intermediate colours are composed of mixtures of these, as, for example, the green from a mixture of blue and yellow, which, I think, is different from what James believes. James did not say anything in the controversy which followed his speech, as he was to meet Sir D. Brewster at the Ramsays’ afterwards, where he would have his top and other apparatus to show him.

To his Father.

(After the Meeting of the British Association at Glasgow).

Holbrooke, by Derby, 2th Sept. 1855.

We had a paper from Brewster on the theory of three colours in the spectrum, in which he treated Whewell with philosophic pity, commending him to the care of Prof. Wartman of Geneva, who was considered the greatest authority in cases of his kind, cases in fact of colour-blindness. Whewell was in the room, but went out, and avoided the quarrel; and Stokes made a few remarks, stating the case not only clearly but courteously. However, Brewster did not seem to see that Stokes admitted his experiments to be correct, and the newspapers represented Stokes as calling in question the accuracy of the experiments.

I am getting my electrical mathematics into shape, and I see through some parts which were rather hazy before; but I do not find very much time for it at present, because I am reading about heat and fluids, so as not to tell lies in my lectures. I got a note from the Society of Arts about the platometer, awarding thanks, and offering to defray the expenses to the extent of £10, on the machine being produced in working order. When I have arranged it in my head, I intend to write to James Bryson about it.

I got a long letter from Thomson about colours and electricity. He is beginning to believe in my theory about all colours being capable of reference to three standard ones, and he is very glad that I should poach on his electrical preserves.

Trin. Coll, 27th Sept. 1855.

... It is difficult to keep up one’s interest in intellectual matters when friends of the intellectual kind are scarce.[185] However, there are plenty friends not intellectual, who serve to bring out the active and practical habits of mind, which overly-intellectual people seldom do. Wherefore, if I am to be up this term, I intend to addict myself rather to the working men who are getting up classes, than to pups., who are in the main a vexation. Meanwhile there is the examination[186] to consider.

Trin. Coll., 5th October 1855.

You say Dr. Wilson has sent his book. I will write and thank him. I suppose it is about colour-blindness. I intend to begin Poisson’s papers on electricity and magnetism to-morrow. I have got them out of the library; my reading hitherto has been of novels,—Shirley and The Newcomes, and now Westward Ho.

Trin. Coll., 10th October 1855.

Macmillan proposes to get up a book of optics, with my assistance, and I feel inclined for the job. There is great bother in making a mathematical book, especially on a subject with which you are familiar, for in correcting it you do as you would to pups.—look if the principle and result is right, and forget to look out for small errors in the course of the work. However, I expect the work will be salutary, as involving hard work, and in the end much abuse from coaches and students, and certainly no vain fame, except in Macmillan’s puffs. But, if I have rightly conceived the plan of an educational book on optics, it will be very different in manner, though not in matter, from those now used.

From his Father.

Glenlair, 10th October 1855.

The book sent by Dr. Wilson is the full edition about colour-blindness, with notes and appendices, containing your letter to him and notices of your communications to him on the subject.

To Lewis Campbell, Esq.

Trin. Coll., 17th October 1855.

I expect to be grinding this term. There are lectures on hydrostatics and optics, papers for questionists to be set and read over with the men, which is procrastinations. Besides this I may have to lecture the working men, and what spare time I have I intend to use on various subjects, which will keep me in work for some time to come, so I do not require any pupils to keep my hand in this term. I was looking for Jowett’s book in the library, but, as usual, all the new theology had been carried off in a lump by the M.A.’s, who get in the first day. I wanted Ellicott, but he was out too, so I took Carlyle on the French Revolution. I have been reading the English language, comprising Chaucer, Sir Tristram, Bacon F., Pope, Berkeley, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns’ letters, Isaac Taylor’s Saturday Night, Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Maurice, and combining the whole with Trench on English Past and Present, and with all this I derive pleasure and information, but not a single glimmer of a theory about Words.

And yet I have presently to state whether words mould thought or thought brews words. Is not one theory as good as another? Faith and a dale better too, if it was not for the sake of laying them together by the ears, which is a difficult task when you have to catch both yourself.

I was staying at the Blackburns’ when I was at Glasgow, but they were away, and the Ramsays fed and tended me. I found your photograph there, together with a few other pleasant recollections. I have been over to H. M. Butler, who is come up again. We were talking about Maurice, etc. Maurice is a man I am loath to say nay to, or to accuse of wilful perversion of facts; but in some matters I think he is in great error, especially in his estimate of respectable ordinary Christians, as far as regards their creed. He cannot go too far in enforcing practice and work on people who were bound to it beforehand theoretically confess it, but he is too hard upon the theories, and totally misrepresents them. I would rather be taken for a Yezide than for one of Maurice’s popular religionists.

To his Father.

Trin. Coll., 17th October 1855.

The lectures were settled last Friday. I am to do the upper division of the third year in hydrostatics and optics, and I have most of the exercising of the questionists.

From his Father.

Glenlair, 20th October 1855.

If you do a book for M'Millan on optics, do not let him hurry it on. Take full time to yourself to revise and re-revise the MS., and let anything published be creditable. Do nothing in a careless manner, and so get a bad name. A first work especially should be very carefully got up.

When you are set to lecture on hydrostatics and optics, have you any apparatus for illustration?

To his Father.

Trin. Coll., 25th October 1855.

I have refused to take pupils this term, as I want to get some time for reading and doing private mathematics, and then I can bestow some time on the men who attend lectures.

I go in bad weather to an institution just opened for sports of all sorts—jumping, vaulting, etc. By a little exercise of the arms every day, one comes to enjoy one’s breath, and to sleep much better than if one did nothing but walk on level roads.

1st November 1855.

I have been lecturing two weeks now, and the class seems improving, and they come up and ask questions, which is a good sign.

I have been making curves to show the relations of pressure and volume in gases, and they make the subject easier. I think I told you about the Ray Club. I was elected an associate last Wednesday.... We had a discussion and an essay by Pomeroy last Saturday about the position of the British nation in India, and sought through ancient and modern history for instances of such a relation between two nations, but found none. We seem to be in the position of having undertaken the management of India at the most critical period, when all the old institutions and religions must break up, and yet it is by no means plain how new civilisation and self-government among people so different from us is to be introduced. One thing is clear, that if we neglect them, or turn them adrift again, or simply make money of them, then we must look to Spain and the Americans for our examples of wicked management and consequent ruin.

From his Father.

11th November 1855.

The platometer will require much consideration, both by you and by any one that undertakes the making. You need hardly expect the details all rightly planned at the first; many defects will occur, and new devices contrived to conquer unforeseen difficulties in the execution. I would suspect £10 would not go far to get it into anything like good working order. If the instrument were made, to whom is it to belong? And if it succeeds well, for whose profit is all to be contrived? Does Bryson so understand it as to be able to make it? Could he estimate the cost, or would he contract to get an instrument up? Fixing on a suitable size is very important.

To his Father.

Trin. Coll., 12th November 1855.

I attended Willis on Mechanism to-day, and I think I will attend his course, which is about the parts of machinery. I was lecturing about the velocity of water escaping from a hole this morning. There was a great noise outside, and we looked out at a magnificent jet from a pipe which had gone wrong in the court. So that I was saved the trouble of making experiments.

I was talking to Willis about the platometer, and he thinks it will work. Instead of toothed wheels to keep the spheres in position always, I think watch-spring bands would be better.

Trin. Coll., 25th November 1855.

I think I told you that Pomeroy was ill. He has had rather a sharp attack of bilious fever. His mother has come up. He was getting round on Thursday, but he saw too many people, and was rather the worse of it. However, the doctor says that the recovery simply requires attention, and patience, and no hurrying.

I have been reading old books of optics, and find many things in them far better than what is new. The foreign mathematicians are discovering for themselves methods which were well known at Cambridge in 1720, but are now forgotten.

I have got a contrivance made for expounding instruments. It is a squared rod, one yard long, on which slide pieces, which will carry lenses. Each piece has a wedge which fixes it tight on the rod, and a saw-shaft, with holes through it, for fastening the pasteboard frame of the lens. By means of this I intend to set up all kinds of models of instruments.

To R. B. Litchfield, Esq.

Trin. Coll., 28th November 1855.

I am busy with questionists pretty regularly just now, slanging them one after another for the same things. As they have just set upon me for the evening, I must stop now and get out some optical things to show them.

To his Father.

Trin. Coll., 3d December 1855.

I had four questionist papers last week, as my subjects come thick there; so I am full of men looking over papers. I have also to get ready a paper on Faraday’s Lines of Force for next Monday.

CHAPTER VII. BACHELOR-SCHOLAR AND FELLOW OF TRINITY—1854 to 1856—Æt. 22-24.

CHAPTER VII.
BACHELOR-SCHOLAR AND FELLOW OF TRINITY—1854 to 1856—Æt. 22-24.