To Lewis Campbell, Esq.

Glenlair, 28th August 1857.

... I have been battering away at Saturn, returning to the charge every now and then. I have effected several breaches in the solid ring, and now I am splash into the fluid one, amid a clash of symbols truly astounding. When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles....

To the Same.

Ardhallow, Dunoon, 4th Sept. 1857.

The road along Loch Eck is the most glorious for shape and colour of hills and rocks that I have seen anywhere, specially on a fine calm day, with clouds as well as sun, and with large patches of withered bracken mixed with green on the less steep parts of the hills. Then the crushing and doubling up of the strata, and the slicing and cracking of the already doubled up strata, quite without respect to previous torment, gives a notion of active force, as well as passive, even to ungeological minds. We inspected Duncan Marshall, the Hermit of these parts, and wound up the day with a pull in the boat till dark....

Mrs. Wed[derburn] professes herself ready to “follow South” when asked, so when Johnny and I have done our Moidart and Loch Aylort, we shall hoist sail or get up steam or something, and then very likely he may reappear to his parent and aunt, and I shall continue my road with my aunt to wait upon the faithful Tobs, and realise Saturn’s Rings, and probably feed a few natives of the valley with the produce of its soil. I was writing great screeds of letters to Professor Thomson about those Rings, and lo! he was a-laying of the telegraph which was to go to America, and bringing his obtrusive science to bear upon the engineers, so that they broke the cable with not following (it appears) his advice. However, I know nothing. List to the new words to a common song, which I conceived on the railway to Glasgow. As I have only a bizzing, loose, interruption-to-talking-&-deathblow-to-general-conversation-memory of the orthodox version, I don’t know if the metre is correct; but it is some such rambling metre anyhow, and contains some insignificant though apparently treasonable remarks in a perfect thicket of vain repetitions. To avoid these let left parenthesis normal upper U right parenthesis = “Under the sea,” so that 2 left parenthesis normal upper U right parenthesis equals, by parity of reasoning, represents two repetitions of that sentiment. This being granted, we shall have as follows:—

To K. B. Litchfield, Esq.

Glenlair, 23d Sept. 1857.

I have just returned from the remote Highlands, and have met all the Indian news on my way, and found your letter at home. I suppose it is best to say what I think to you, rather than what I feel, for that is confusion. You may well ask “Why?” I myself see a horrible despair waiting for us if we knew or even paid enough attention to things happening continually. Is it merely a reaction from our animal life that makes us comfortable again? or excitement of some other kind? or defective sympathy? No; I think real sympathy is the very thing we want, and we suffer more from want of union than from any other cause. I cannot make the thing clearer either to you or to myself; but as I was coming home and expecting bad news, I thought of dead and absent friends, and how they endeavoured when alive to make themselves known to us, and how the impression they had left in us remained untouched and sacred during their absence. Then I thought of those who had left the clearest impression on me,—how some were dead, and their character never known or proved to the world, and their deeds never done as they would have been if they had lived. But this secret knowledge is strengthening as well as sad, if our brother’s life is an inheritance to us when he falls, and we rise (like Triamond) to fight his battle as well as our own.

Do not understand all this as a theory. I wish to say that it is in personal union with my friends that I hope to escape the despair which belongs to the contemplation of the outward aspect of things with human eyes. Either be a machine and see nothing but “phenomena,” or else try to be a man, feeling your life interwoven, as it is, with many others, and strengthened by them whether in life or in death. You will say that this is what a man writes after a course of healthy exercise and boisterous health, when he suddenly feels a pull on his soul, but his body goes on as before. But though my knowledge of our friend does not reach so far back as yours, there is a great part of all my thoughts which bears the mark of his honest handling, for to me he was most liberal in communication, so that all manner of thought became our common property. When he was ill at Cambridge, my father, who was then rather better, was very much concerned about him, so that afterwards, when he was worse himself, he would speak of him from recollections of what I had told him before. So I used to think of them together,—the one guiding me along by wise plans in the ways of freedom, and the other supplying the energy of speculative honesty and the freshness of a younger mind. And is all gone? Certainly not, look at it as you will. I am not trying to persuade myself into hope. I find I cannot do otherwise. I have been miserable about these very things when there seemed no particular reason at the time, and then, when the time was worst, felt well; but that must be one’s own personal affair. If we can hear the General’s voice we will rise in our tears and go to our places, having conquered ourselves. Long ago I felt like a peasant in a country overrun with soldiers, and saw nothing but carnage and danger. Since then I have learned at least that some soldiers in the field die nobly, and that all are summoned there for a cause.

I am very sorry for India, and for you and poor Mrs. Pomeroy. She had a stake in him that none of us could have.

To Miss Cay.

Glenlair, 28th September 1857.

My dear friend Pomeroy died at Ghazeepore about 1st August, from overwork and forced marches. He was a civilian, and appointed assistant magistrate at Azinghur. He and the rest of the civilians proceeded thither with about 400 men. When they got there they fought about 2000 insurgents in two feet of water, and beat them off three times. Pomeroy volunteered to take in a wounded man (Lieut. Lewis, 65 N. I.) to Ghazeepore, when no one else would venture to go. He stayed there a few days, but was unwell Then he went back to his post at Azinghur for about a week. On the news of the Dinapore mutiny they were all ordered in, and made a forced march on Ghazeepore, forty miles.

He died soon after getting in.

Of all the men I have known he was the most likely to have done something for India, I never knew a man more able to see his way through difficulties, more respected by men of all classes, or more determined that duty should be done whatever might happen. We have one comfort for ourselves, that few men have made themselves more open to their friends, so that many men may receive something of his spirit, though he is cut off before strangers could take example by his deeds.

To E. B. Litchfield, Esq.

Glenlair, 15th October 1857.

I was glad S. sent me the letter. Remember that besides all the danger and distance from friends, there was the fever, of which he had already long experience, and which in such times he knew to be as inconvenient to his friends as himself. But it is no use saying this and that. Some men redeem their characters by their deeds, and we praise them. Those that merely show their character by their deeds should be remembered, not praised; and a complete true man will live longest in the memory, and I cannot but think will be less changed in reality, than one who has doubtfully struggled with duplicity in his constitution, and has walked with hesitation, though along a good path. I know that both do deny and renounce themselves in favour of duty and truth, as they come to see them; and as they come to see how goodness, having the knowledge of evil, has passed through sorrow to the highest state of all, they accept it as a token that they have found their true head and leader, and so, with their eyes on him, they complete the process called the knowledge of Good and Evil, which they commenced so early and so ignorantly.

Now, what the “completion of the process” is I cannot conceive, but I can feel the difference of Good and Evil in some degree, and I can conceive the perception of that difference to grow by contemplating the Good till the confusion of the two becomes an impossibility. Then comes the mystery. I have memory and a history, or I am nothing at all. That memory and history contain evil, which I renounce, and must still maintain that I was evil. But it contains the image of absolute good, and the fight for it, and the consciousness that all this is right.

So there the matter lies, a problem certain of solution....

I am grinding hard at Saturn, and have picked many holes in him, and am fitting him up new and true. I am sure of most of him now, and have got over some stumbling-blocks which kept me niggling at calculations two years.

I am to have some artisans as weekly students this winter.

To the Same.

Lauriston Lodge,
Edinburgh, 25th October 1857.

... As to collecting memorials, that is a thing to do faithfully if at all. No man can write himself down wholly at once, so no one thing will give a complete autograph of the man. As for anecdotes, they are to be tolerated as the roughest way of giving to the public sketches of public men; but they will satisfy no private friend, not even him from whose memory they are drawn.

But if any essays (I know some that were not read aloud to any particular people, but were written by himself for himself) or anything else of his are to be had, they might be given to Mrs. Pomeroy with what explanation we could give, and so (not hastily but) when times occur, she might continue to learn more of him and his honestly fought and thoroughly conquered and well secured path through a land of shadows, where friends and foes seemed to exchange appearances, so that honesty and sincerity had parted with order and reverence, and indecision had passed for conscientiousness, and enquiry after truth had been taken for infidelity. A sad world to seek for truth in under any man’s guiding. The exact point at which this progress has been interrupted may be disputed by men, but they have no jurisdiction, and are ignorant even of their own true faith till something bring it into action.

I could not conceive of any one undertaking to write a memoir. I am fully satisfied of the impossibility of that, with respect to any young man. The journal of voyage, which was meant to be read, is far the best memorial, and it is a very good one indeed for his mother and friends, for it is so wonderfully open-hearted and unaffected. I appreciate these qualities on account of the force which it requires for me to say or do anything according to nature, especially in ordinary circumstances.

This spring I read a great deal of MS. at home, which gave me much light about my father and his dealings with various people. There were journals of travels and adventures from twelve years of age to thirty, and many other things. Well, I have found that reading profitable in making me remember him better, and honour him more, and understand better how he ordered his life, and who were his friends. That is the use and intent of keeping anything belonging to our friends. I do not intend to advertise these things for public sale, for I doubt whether the public would be better, and I would be worse.

Azingurh, July 28, 1857.

My dear Mother—I sit down to write to you in rather a solemn mood, partly owing to my having received yesterday a note from Mrs. W. H. T., which I enclose, and partly because that, in this part of India, and particularly in these outlying stations, with no European soldiers, the lives of Englishmen more clearly lie in God’s hand than on most occasions in our sojourn on earth.

I have told you in former letters that I volunteered to go with any civilians who reoccupied a station in the Benares district. I did this completely of my own responsibility, and whether I was right or wrong God alone knows. I was then in excellent health, and I could not bear to think that I should be absolutely doing nothing in a safe station, when an additional European, who could ride or use firearms, even if he could do nothing else, was not utterly useless to the brave men who were going out in order to make, persuade, or enable the natives to cultivate their fields, during the three important months of the year, and so avoid a famine.

Mr. Tucker responded immediately to my volunteering, and appointed me “Assistant Magistrate” of Azingurh, with nearly —— a month. You know the delay in going, and that I was ill during that time. We left (Benares) on the 16th, and arrived here on the 18th. The march, which I performed partly on horseback and partly in my buggy, did not do me any harm, but the fatigue, excitement, and varied feelings caused by an affray with a body of natives, led by Oude Zemindars, in which we were finally victorious, after five hours of half fighting (not that I fought much, but I was on horseback most of the time), rather weakened me. Then there was a wounded man to be taken into Ghazipoor, and of those whose duty it was to accompany him nobody who could be spared could be induced to go, so I volunteered, whereby I pleased him, poor fellow, and his fellow-officers very much, and I believe I was of use to him. I hoped to have got three days rest at Ghazipoor, but the excitement of seeing new faces, and giving all my news over and over again, and trying to soothe angry officers whose corps had been abused, and explaining mistakes, etc. etc., made the rest very ambiguous; and the journey back knocked me up. I was very feverish last night, but Home (the magistrate) took tremendous care of me, put my bed next his, and got me limes and honey, and everything he could get for cough or fever. To-day I am a great deal better, but still on rice-milk and chicken-broth, and as I have no duties but a share in the mess management, I get lots of lying down, but no absolute rest, as the nine of us, civil and military, live in one six-roomed bungalow. Don’t imagine that nine (only) is the number walking about inside: everybody’s bearer except mine and another’s, I believe, walk about like tame dogs, bringing their masters’ slightest wants, for few think of getting anything for themselves, even from across the room.

We have a very grave piece of intelligence from the neighbourhood of Legowlie, the headquarters of the 12th Irregular Cavalry. A native brought a report to a gentleman living 8 miles from Legowlie, that on the 24th of July the men of the 12th who were there left the station, and that the commanding officer (Major Holmes) and his wife, and the Doctor (Gardner), had been killed. This news has at length reached us, whom it concerns nearly, as one hundred of the same regiment are here. On the other side, it is to be said that all the principal native officers were absent from Legowlie, two being here now, and one elsewhere, so that the mutiny may not spread, and we have no treasure here to tempt them, and the Hindu Sepoys are not likely to join them, though their hatred of Musselmans has two or three times given way to their desire for plunder or love of Christian blood. Our position is precarious, but I can look it straight in the face, and in four days or less the crisis will, I hope, have passed.

Herne is a Poole man, with an uncle there of the name of Biddel. His wife is in the hills, and he hears from her now pretty often, but there is a month’s interval between the departure and arrival of her letters. He is a decidedly religious man of a very genuine stamp. He read us last Sunday that grand sermon the Bishop of Calcutta preached towards the end of June. You should get it if it is to be had in England.

We are daily expecting to hear of the safety of Lucknow. Poor Mrs. Cooper! She and her children must have been living in cellars for the last month, to be out of the way of cannon balls: and to live in a cellar in India must be dreadfully trying. If any children survive it will be a mercy,—a mercy indeed if they escape the awful, horrible fate of the ladies of Cawnpore. Mrs. Cave, whom I mentioned in my Journal, was, I fear, at the latter place. As a Madras fusilier said to me (in a broad Irish accent), “I don’t care what they do to the likes of me—but the women—and Ladies too!”

Poor T—— writes me letters intended to be cheery, but really awfully dismal. She bears up bravely, and thinks no one sees her sorrow.

We have a picture in the house that belonged to some one who fled from this on the 3d June. It is called “Woman’s Mission.” You must have seen it in the print-shop windows,—two Scutari volunteer nurses attending a wounded man. A pathetic picture suits our feelings. All but two, I believe, have either wife or lover to think of; but sorry should I or any be that any woman should be with us. Poor Batty married a very short time ago, and had to part from his Bride almost immediately, and send her to Calcutta. He, too, has lost a Brother.

I hope the English papers will have better and truer accounts than the Indian generally have; but you cannot follow events without some good map, like Allen’s £2: 2s. one. So don’t try; it will only puzzle you, and the Times will give you the pith of the matter. The fire is now really being extinguished, though it will be long before stray points cease to flare up and burn those within their range.

There are two hundred of the King of Nepaul’s Goorkas on the march to form part of our garrison, and on those we think we can really depend. They are very brave, and more than a match for Sepoys, and are more different in race and manners from the Hindus than we are, and very different in religion.

Urgent requisitions have been sent to Ghazipoor and Benares for Europeans, which may now at length be answered.

With regard to Mrs. T——, whom I was nearly forgetting in my egotism, I hope—if she has by the time this reaches you visited Cheltenham—that you have seen her. What a comfort it must be to her, poor thing, to think that she made him face those thoughts he had shunned and shirked so long. She left by last mail, so she will have been a fortnight in England or Ireland when this reaches you. I hope to write you a letter by Bombay and Marseilles of a later date, and to Editha by Calcutta and Marseilles; so that this letter, which I confess is an alarmist one, will not arrive till you know the Event. I have written what I have that you may see I know my danger, and have, I hope, right feelings under it.—I remain, my very dear mother, your most affectionate son,

Robert Henry Pomeroy.

To Prof. Maxwell from Prof. G. G. Stokes.

School of Mines,
Jermyn Street, 7th November /57.

I have just received your papers on a dynamical top, etc., and the account of experiments on the perception of colour. The latter, which I missed seeing at the time when it was published, I have just read with great interest. The results afford most remarkable and important evidence in favour of the theory of three primary colour-perceptions, a theory which you, and you alone, so far as I know, have established on an exact numerical basis.

To Prof. J. C. Maxwell from Prof. Faraday.

Albemarle Street,
7th November 1857.

I have just read and thank you heartily for your papers. I intended to send you copies of two of mine. I think I have sent them, but do not find them ticked off. So I now send copies, not because they are assumed as deserving your attention, but as a mark of my respect, and desire to thank you in the best way that I can.

To Prof. J. C. Maxwell from Prof. Tyndall.

Royal Institution,
7th November 1857.

I am very much obliged to you for your kind thoughtfulness in sending me your papers on the Dynamical Top and on the Perception of Colour, as also for your memoir on Lines of Force, received some time ago. I never doubted the possibility of giving Faraday’s notions a mathematical form, and you would probably be one of the last to deny the possibility of a totally different imagery by which the phenomena might be represented.[201]

To Prof. Maxwell from Prof. Faraday.[202]

Albemarle Street, London,
13th November 1857.

If on a former occasion I seemed to ask you what you thought of my paper, it was very wrong; for I do not think any one should be called upon for the expression of their thoughts before they are prepared, and wish to give them. I have often enough to decline giving an opinion because my mind is not ready to come to a conclusion, or does not wish to be committed to a view that may by further consideration be changed. But having received your last letter, I am exceedingly grateful to you for it, and rejoice that my forgetfulness of having sent the former paper on conservation has brought about such a result. Your letter is to me the first intercommunication on the subject with one of your mode and habit of thinking. It will do me much good, and I shall read and meditate it again and again.

I daresay I have myself greatly to blame for the vague use of expressive words. I perceive that I do not use the word “force” as you define it, “the tendency of a body to pass from one place to another.” What I mean by the word is the source or sources of all possible actions of the particles or materials of the universe; these being often called the powers of nature when spoken of in respect of the different manners in which their effects are shown. In a paper which I have received at the moment from the Phil. Mag., by Dr. Woods, they were called the “forces, such as electricity, heat, etc.” In this way I have used the word “force” in the description of gravity which I have given as that expressing the received idea of its nature and source; and such of my remarks as express an opinion or are critical apply only to that sense of it. You may remember I speak to labourers like myself, experimentalists on force generally, who receive that description of gravity as a physical truth, and believe that it expresses all, and no more than all, that concerns the nature and locality of the power. To these it limits the formation of their ideas, and the direction of their exertions, and to these I have endeavoured to speak; showing how such a thought, if accepted, pledged them to a very limited and probably erroneous view of the cause of the force, and to ask them to consider whether they should not look (for a time at least) to a source in part external to the particles. I send you two or three old printed lines marked, relating to this point. To those who disown the definition or description as imperfect, I have nothing to urge, as there is then probably no real difference between us.

I hang on to your words because they are to me weighty, and where you say, “I for my part can not realise your dissatisfaction with the law of gravitation, provided you conceive it according to your own principles,” they give me great comfort. I have nothing to say against the law of action of gravity. It is against the law which measures its total strength as an inherent force that I venture to oppose my opinion; and I must have expressed myself badly (though I do not find the weak point) or I should not have conveyed any other impression. All I wanted to do was to move men (not No. I. but No. II.) from the unreserved acceptance of a principle of physical action which might be opposed to natural truth. The idea that we may possibly have to connect repulsion with the lines of gravitation force (which is going far beyond anything my mind would venture on at present, except in private cogitation), shows how far we may have to depart from the view I oppose.

There is one thing I would be glad to ask you. When a mathematician engaged in investigating physical actions and results has arrived at his conclusions, may they not be expressed in common language as fully, clearly, and definitely as in mathematical formulæ? If so, would it not be a great boon to such as I to express them so?—translating them out of their hieroglyphics, that we also might work upon them by experiment. I think it must be so, because I have always found that you could convey to me a perfectly clear idea of your conclusions, which, though they may give me no full understanding of the steps of your process, give me the results neither above nor below the truth, and so clear in character that I can think and work from them. If this be possible, would it not be a good thing if mathematicians, working on these subjects, were to give us the results in this popular, useful, working state, as well as in that which is their own and proper to them?

To H. P. Droop, Esq.

129 Union Street, Aberdeen,
14th November 1857.

I am very busy with Saturn on the top of my regular work. He is all remodelled and recast, but I have more to do to him yet, for I wish to redeem the character of mathematicians, and make it intelligible. I have a large advanced class for Newton, physical astronomy, the electric sciences, and high optics. What is your department by the way?

I have also a mechanics’ class in the evening, once a week, on mechanical principles, such as doctrine of lever work done by machines, etc. So I have 15 hours a week, which is a deal of talking straight forward.

I am getting several tops (like the one I had at Cambridge) made here for various parties who teach rigid dynamics.

To C. J. Monro, Esq.

127 Union Street, Aberdeen,
26th November 1857.

The enclosed letters came from Mrs. Pomeroy to me. I think they are, one of them at least, yours. I doubt of the smaller one, but you will know. They seem dropping in still on poor Mrs. Pomeroy. Even ordinary returned letters are strange things to read again, as if you had been talking on when everybody had gone away.

I got your letter of the 6th. I have been grinding so hard ever since I came here that I left many letters unanswered. When I have time I shall write to you, and meanwhile only thank you for your letter.

I am at full college work again. A small class with a bad name for stupidity, so there was the more field for exciting them to more activity. So I have got into regular ways, and have every man viva voce'd once a week, and the whole class examined in writing on Tuesdays, and roundly and sharply abused on Wednesday morning; and lots of exercises which I find it advantageous to brew myself overnight.

Public Opinion here says that what our colleges want is inferior professors, and more of them for the money. Such men, says P. O., would devote their attention more to what would pay, and would pay more deference to the authority of the local press than superior or better paid men. Therefore, although every individual but one who came before the Commission was privately convinced that the best thing in itself would be to fuse our two institutions into one, with one staff of teachers, yet they all agreed that the public opinion of the whole was the opposite of the private opinion of each, and that more harm than good would result from adopting the course which seemed good to the members, but not to the body, of the public. So the battle rages hot between Union (of Universities only) and Fusion (of classes and professors). Almost all the professors in Arts are fusionists, and all the country south of the Dee, together with England and the rest of Europe and the world, but Aberdeen (on the platform), is Unionist, and nothing else is listened to at public meetings, though perhaps a majority of those present might be fusionists. Such is Public Opinion; but we are all quiet again now, and I am working at various high matters, for I have a very good class for Physical Astronomy, Electricity, and Undulations, etc., and I want to do them justice.

I have had a lot of correspondence about Saturn’s Rings, Electric Telegraph, Tops, and Colours. I am making a Collision of Bodies’ machine, and a model of Airy’s Transit Circle (with lenses), and I am having students’ teas when I can. Also a class of operatives on Monday evening, who do better exercises than the University men about false balances, Quantity of Work, etc.

To Miss Cay.

129 Union Street, Aberdeen,
28th Nov. 1857.

I had a letter from Willy to-day about jet pumps to be made for real drains, but not saying anything about the Professorship of Engineering.

I have been pretty steady at work since I came. The class is small and not bright, but I am going to give them plenty to do from the first, and I find it a good plan. I have a large attendance of my old pupils, who go on with the higher subjects. This is not part of the College course, so they come merely from choice, and I have begun with the least amusing part of what I intend to give them. Many had been reading in summer, for they did very good papers for me on the old subjects at the beginning of the month. Most of my spare time I have been doing Saturn’s Rings, which is getting on now, but lately I have had a great many long letters to write,—some to Glenlair, some to private friends, and some all about science.... I have had letters from Thomson and Challis about Saturn—from Hayward of Durham University about the brass top, of which he wants one. He says that the Earth has been really found to change its axis regularly in the way I supposed. Faraday has also been writing about his own subjects. I have had also to write Forbes a long report on colours, so that for every note I have got I have had to write a couple of sheets in reply, and reporting progress takes a deal of writing and spelling....

I have had two students’ teas, at which I am becoming expert. I have also indulged in long walks, and have seen more of the country. The evenings are beautiful at this season. There have been some very fine waves on the cliffs south of the Dee.

To the Rev. L. Campbell.

(On taking Priest's Orders).

129 Union Street, Aberdeen,
22d Dec. 1857.

I take for granted that sometime on Sunday last you entered the second of the ecclesiastical transformations. May your life and doctrine set forth God’s glory, and be the means of setting forward the salvation of all men! Some of my friends think that the separation to a “holy function” puts a man into an artificial position with respect to the conduct of his thoughts, words, and acts, and that he is immersed in a professional atmosphere,—a world, in fact, differing from the world of business or of fashion only in the general colouring of its scenery. It has always seemed to me that men who have fallen into this “religious world” have completely failed in getting into the Church, seeing that the Church professes to be an escape from the world, and the only escape. And what holds of the Church ought to hold of the clergy preeminently. So far my theory of the Church not being a clerical world. How I believe it not only as a theory, but as a fact, that a man will find the thing so if he will try it himself.

The restraints and professional stiffness of sentiment are not made for lawful members, but for those whom the truth has not yet made entirely free. I have to tell my men that all they see, and their own bodies, are subject to laws which they cannot alter, and that if they wish to do anything they must work according to those laws, or fail, and therefore we study the laws. You have to say that what men are and the nature of their actions depends on the state of their wills, and that by God’s grace, through union with Christ, the contradictions and false action of those wills may be settled and solved, so that one way lies perfect freedom, and the other way bondage under the devil, the world, and the flesh, and therefore you entreat them to give heed to the things which they have heard.

How, no man accuses me of being stiff, because I try to make what I say precise. Everybody knows that I believe it, whether I am stating a well-established law or only a half-verified conjecture. And I think that you have fully more right to be respected, inasmuch as the nature of your message implies the duty of preaching it, and the convictions that may be arrived at are as cogent, being more clear, if less distinct, than scientific truths.

I have been reading Butler’s Analogy again, specially with reference to obscurities in style and language, and also to distinguish the merits of the man, and what habits of thought they depended on. Also Herschel’s Essays, of which read that on Kosmos, and Froude’s History. One night I read 160 pages of Buckle’s History of Civilisation—a bumptious book, strong positivism, emancipation from exploded notions, and that style of thing, but a great deal of actually original matter, the true result of fertile study, and not mere brain-spinning. The style is not refined, but it is clear, and avoids fine writing. Froude is very good that way, though you can see the sort of pleasure that a University man takes in actually realising what he has talked over at Hall about showing what England was in the middle ages, and transfusing himself, style and all, thereinto, that his friends may see. A solitary student never does that sort of thing, nor can he appreciate the graces of imitation. I wish Froude would state whether he translates, and from what language, in each document.

I am still at Saturn’s Rings. At present two rings of satellites are disturbing one another. I have devised a machine to exhibit the motions of the satellites in a disturbed ring; and Ramage is making it, for the edification of sensible image worshippers. He has made four new dynamical tops, for various seats of learning.

I have set up a model of Airy’s Transit Circle, and described it to my advanced class to-day. That institution is working well, with a steady attendance of fourteen, who have come of their own accord to do subjects not required by the College, and the dryest first.

To the present time we have been on Newton’s Principia (that is, Sects, I. II. III., as they are,—and a general view of the Lunar Theory, and of the improvements and discoveries founded on such inquiries). Now we go on to Magnetism, which I have not before attempted to explain.

The other class is at two subjects at once. Theoretical and mathematical mechanics is the regular subject, but two days a week we have been doing principles of mechanism, and I think the thing will work well. We now go on to Friction, Elasticity, and Breakage, considered as subjects for experiment, and as we go on we shall take up other experimental subjects germane to the regular course. I am happy in the knowledge of a good tinsmith, in addition to a smith, an optician, and a carpenter. The tinsmith made the Transit Circle.

College Fusion is holding up its head again under the fostering care of Dr. David Brown (father to Alexander of Queen’s).[203] Know all men I am a Fusionist, and thereby an enemy of all the respectable citizens who are Unionists (that is, unite the three learned faculties, and leave double chairs in Arts). But there is no use writing out their theory to you. They want inferior men for professors—men who will find it their interest to teach what will pay to small classes, and who will be more under the influence of parents and the local press than more learned or better paid men would be in a larger college.