To those who admire the genius of the bard who sang of The Dee, the Don, Balgownie Brigg’s black wall, the following lines will be welcome from their resemblance to the opening of one of his poems:—

All the public discipline, fines, etc., are arranged and levied at the Public School. The Bajuns, Semis, Tertians, and Magistrands are the four years of men. The Regents are the four Professors—Greek, Nat. Hist., Nat. Phil., and Mor. Phil.

Gaiety is just beginning here again. Society is pretty steady in this latitude,—plenty of diversity, but little of great merit or demerit,—honest on the whole, and not vulgar.... No jokes of any kind are understood here. I have not made one for two months, and if I feel one coming I shall bite my tongue. I shall write as soon as I hear again from you.

To the Same.

129 Union Street, 20th Jan. 1858.

I should have written to thank you for the little book,[204] but I think you will prefer my thanks now that I have read it.

What is the English book that says dasz Wahrheit Offenbarung mache, nicht Offenbarung Wahrheit?

The marrow of the book lies in the man’s being a Fremdling, conscious of the shell that surrounds him and divides him from others, and able neither to live in it nor to break it. But the shell is only the outer surface of a minute drop of fluid, impenetrable because minute, and arising from molecular forces in himself. But he meets with another drop, confined to one spot it is true, but a great deal larger than himself. He coalesces, and both are now larger and more fluid than before. Note that though he was movable and active, she fixed and ill, she knew the Hofrath; he knew no one, unless perhaps his mother. People differ in their need of knowing others, and in their power of conquering that knowledge. I have been reading Lavater and his life. He needed to know people; he was a man of a refined and tender spirit, but it was vigorous, although not very massive or powerful, and he came to know people, made friends, a few enemies, stuck to his work, and lived happy. Other men have lived well and done good without even wishing to burst the shell of separate existence, feeling it like the natural garment of a personal being.

How I find that the transfusive tendency is not identical with personal attraction (using the last two words in anything but their newspaper sense). There are some people whom I feel disposed to love, honour, and obey, though in many things I may dislike them, and may have no wish to have a complete fusion of thought and feeling with them. There are others who are easily sympathised with, and open out willingly, but do not thereby acquire the power and authority which the first have without seeking it. Both is best, but of the two the first is more permanent than the second.

To return to the book, the different sex of the parties is treated as an accident, but by the effect on the man it certainly is not, neither is the effect of it insensible on the lady. She treats his statements with more reverence than is their due, as coming from a man, and, I think, fails entirely in framing a scheme for coalescing, without entering on that state of which marriage is the symbol, even though by accident there may be checks which may enable or compel the parties to stop short. It is not society that does it; it is a law in us. How I must stop, or I shall be teaching my grand-mother to suck eggs.

Let me try my hand on that worthy relative in her professional as well as private capacity, with respect to the Lilleshall sermon. I am sure you will be able, with pains, to put anything you have sure hold of before your hearers; but there are certain subjects which, after being handled by some of our writers, get coated over with language so tenacious that it is difficult to recognise them in plain clothes, so that you become like the “lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice.”

Now it is good to learn wisdom wherever it is to be found, but in teaching it, it must be made light, wholesome, and digestible, by being stripped of all vagueness and wordiness, and refitted with illustrations and conceptions carefully adapted to the hearers. Not but what the other method is pleasant to listen to, and not without profit (if taken with salt); but there are good books, out of which you may preach very bad sermons, with which your people may be as delighted as Mary Anne was with Faraday’s lecture, of which she gave an account to Punch.

I find my principal work here is teaching my men to avoid vague expressions, as “a certain force,” meaning uncertain; may instead of must; will be instead of is; proportional instead of equal....

As to yourself, I do not know whether college or parish work is best for you to be set to. I am not sorry about the rich people. They require you as much as the poor. But you must find out your own spirit, and what you were made for, and not steer by men either towards one man or from another.

Now I sent you a libellous description of our public school here last letter. Last week I was walking with the tune of the “Lörelei” running in my head, and it set itself into a “kind of allegory.” The words are very crude, but that is the way they came together. I profess myself responsible for most things I say, but less for this than for most:—

To the Same.

129 Union Street, 31st January 1858.

Thank you for your letter, so kind and so speedy. Now there are two of us, and I have that knowledge which is better than all advice. Not that I undervalue the advice at all, only the sense of unity between us is the main thing, whether we keep up correspondence or not. And I know that my friends are ipso facto your’s, and your’s mine, so that we are a large and influential body....

But don’t suppose that I intend to make you my confessor. It would not be just to you, for I do not like being confessed to myself; and I think every one should bear his own burden, though willing to lighten that of others. Besides, confession brings into set words and distinct outlines, doubtful suspicions and half-formed thoughts, which would fade at once if they were not stirred up.

To do the thing adequately, without extenuation, voluntary exaggeration, or colouring of any kind, is far beyond human power. The consciousness of the presence of God is the only guarantee for true self-knowledge. Everything else is mere fiction, fancy portraiture,—done to please one’s friends or self, or to exhibit one’s moral discrimination at the expense of character.

---

And now be assured that I feel like Spenser’s “Diamond,” who had “Priamond’s” spirit in him as well as his own. There is another human aid that is with me. The memory of my father is a great help to being practical and active. The more I think of him the better I get on, and I am the less tempted to absurdity and eccentricity in thought.

As for outward act, no one here seems to think me odd or daft. Some did at Cambridge, but here I have escaped. My rule is to avoid the company of young men whom I do not respect, unless I have the control of them.

King’s College has its Senior Wrangler this year. I announced it to my class yesterday morning. Lightfoot has commissioned some more from me to be sent to Trinity.

To E. B. Litchfield, Esq.

129 Union Street,
Aberdeen, 7th February 1858.

When I last wrote I was on my way here. Since then I have been at work, Statics and Dynamics; two days a week being devoted to Principles of Mechanism, and afterwards to Friction, Elasticity and Strength of Materials, and also Clocks and Watches, when we come to the pendulum. We have just begun hydrostatics. I have found a better text-book for hydrostatics than I had thought for,—the run of them are so bad, both Cambridge and other ones,—Galbraith and Haughton’s Manual of Hydrostatics (Longmans, 2s.) There are also manuals of Mechanics and Optics of the same set. There is no humbug in them, and many practical matters are introduced instead of mere intricacies. The only defect is a somewhat ostentatious resignation of the demonstrations of certain truths, and a leaning upon feigned experiments instead of them. But this is exactly the place where the students trust most to the professor, so that I care less about it. I shall adopt the Optics, which have no such defect, and possibly the Mechanics, next year.

My students of last year, to the number of about fourteen, form a voluntary class, and continue their studies. We went through Newton I. II. III., and took a rough view of the Lunar Theory, and of the present state of Astronomy. Then we have taken up Magnetism and Electricity, static and current, and now we are at Electro-magnetism and Ampère’s Laws. I intend to make Faraday’s book the backbone of all the rest, as he himself is the nucleus of everything electric since 1830.

So much for class work. Saturn’s Rings are going on still, but this month I am clearing out some spare time to work them in. I have got up a model to show the motions of a ring of satellites, a very neat piece of work, by Ramage, the maker of the “top.”

For other things—I have not much time in winter for improving my mind. I have read Froude’s History, Aurora Leigh, and Hopkins’s Essay on Geology, also Herschel’s collected Essays, which I like much, also Lavater’s life and Physiognomy, which has introduced me to him pleasantly though verbosely. I like the man very much, quite apart from his conclusions and dogmas. They are only results, and far inferior to methods. But many of them are true if properly understood and applied, and I suppose the rest are worth respect as the statements of a truth-telling man.

Well, work is good, and reading is good, but friends are better. I have but a finite number of friends, and they are dropping off, one here, one there. A few live and flourish. Let it be long, and let us work while it is day, for the night is coming, and work by day leads to rest by night.

To Rev. Lewis Campbell.

129 Union Street,
Aberdeen, 17th February 1858.

... I have not been reading much of late. I have been hard at mathematics. In fact I set myself a great arithmetical job of calculating the tangential action of two rings of satellites, and I am near through with it now. I have got a very neat model of my theoretical ring, a credit to Aberdeen workmen. Here is a diagram, but the thing is complex and difficult to draw:—

Two wheels turning on parallel parts of a cranked axle; thirty-six little cranks of same length between corresponding points of the circumferences; each carries a little ivory satellite.[205]

To Miss Cay.

129 Union Street,
18th February 1858.

Dear Aunt—This comes to tell you that I am going to have a wife.

I am not going to write out a catalogue of qualities, as I am not fit; but I can tell you that we are quite necessary to one another, and understand each other better than most couples I have seen.

Don’t be afraid; she is not mathematical; but there are other things besides that, and she certainly won’t stop the mathematics. The only one that can speak as an eyewitness is Johnnie, and he only saw her when we were both trying to act the indifferent. We have been trying it since, but it would not do, and it was not good for either.

So now you know who it is, even Katherine Mary Dewar (hitherto). I have heard Uncle Robert speak (second-hand) of her father, the Principal. Her mother is a first-rate lady, very quiet and discreet, but has stuff in her to go through anything in the way of endurance.... So there is the state of the case. I settled the matter with her, and the rest of them are all conformable.

I hope some day to make you better acquainted. I can hardly admit that Johnnie saw her at all,—not as he will when she appears in a true light.... For the present you must just take what I say on trust. You know that I am not given to big words. So have faith and you shall know.

... I don’t write separately to Uncle Robert, seeing he is with you, and I am very busy, and just now I should just write the same thing over again, and I have not a copying press. So good-bye.—Your affectionate nephew.

To E. B. Litchfield, Esq.

129 Union Street,
Aberdeen, 5th March 1858.

My “lines” are so pleasant to me that I think that everybody ought to come to me to catch the infection of happiness. This college work is what I and my father looked forward to for long, and I find we were both quite right—that it was the thing for me to do. And with respect to the particular college, I think we have more discipline and more liberty, and therefore more power of useful work, than anywhere else. It is a great thing to be the acknowledged “regent” of one’s class for a year, so as to have them to one’s self except in mathematics and what additional classes they take. Then the next year I get those that choose to come, which makes a select class for the higher branches. They have all great power of work.

In Aberdeen I have met with great kindness from all sects of people, and you now know of my greatest achievement in the way of discovery, namely, the method of converting friendship and esteem into something far better. We are following up that discovery, and making more of it every day; getting deeper and deeper into the mysteries of personality, so as to know that we ourselves are united, and not merely attracted by qualities or virtues, either bodily or mental.—(Don’t suppose we talk metaphysics.) ...

You will easily see that my “confession of faith” must be liable to the objection that Satan made against Job’s piety. One thing I would have you know, that I feel as free from compulsion to any form of compromised faith as I did before I had any one to take care of, for I think we both believe too much to be easily brought into bondage to any set of opinions.

With respect to the “material sciences,” they appear to me to be the appointed road to all scientific truth, whether metaphysical, mental, or social. The knowledge which exists on these subjects derives a great part of its value from ideas suggested by analogies from the material sciences, and the remaining part, though valuable and important to mankind, is not scientific but aphoristic. The chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don’t, Nature at once tells you you are wrong. Now, every stage of this conquest of truth leaves a more or less presentable trace on the memory, so that materials are furnished here more than anywhere else for the investigation of the great question, “How does Knowledge come?”

I have observed that the practical cultivators of science (e.g., Sir J. Herschel, Faraday, Ampère, Oërsted, Newton, Young), although differing excessively in turn of mind, have all a distinctness and a freedom from the tyranny of words in dealing with questions of Order, Law, etc., which pure speculators and literary men never attain.

Now, I am going to put down something on my own authority, which you must not take for more than it is worth. There are certain men who write books, who assume that whatever things are orderly, certain, and capable of being accurately predicted by men of experience, belong to one category; and whatever things are the result of conscious action, whatever are capricious, contingent, and cannot be foreseen, belong to another category.

All the time I have lived and thought, I have seen more and more reason to disagree with this opinion, and to hold that all want of order, caprice, and unaccountableness results from interference with liberty, which would, if unimpeded, result in order, certainty, and trustworthiness (certainty of success of predicting). Remember I do not say that caprice and disorder are not the result of free will (so called), only I say that there is a liberty which is not disorder, and that this is by no means less free than the other, but more.

In the next place, there are various states of mind, and schools of philosophy corresponding to various stages in the evolution of the idea of liberty.

In one phase, human actions are the resultant (by p a r Superscript normal m, of forces) of the various attractions of surrounding things, modified in some degree by internal states, regarding which all that is to be said is that they are subjectively capricious, objectively the “Result of Law,”—that is, the wilfulness of our wills feels to us like liberty, being in reality necessity.

In another phase, the wilfulness is seen to be anything but free will, since it is merely a submission to the strongest attraction, after the fashion of material things. So some say that a man’s will is the root of all evil in him, and that he should mortify it out till nothing of himself remains, and the man and his selfishness disappear together. So said Gotama Buddha (see Max Müller), and many Christians have said and thought nearly the same thing.

Nevertheless there is another phase still, in which there appears a possibility of the exact contrary to the first state, namely, an abandonment of wilfulness without extinction of will, but rather by means of a great development of will, whereby, instead of being consciously free and really in subjection to unknown laws, it becomes consciously acting by law, and really free from the interference of unrecognised laws.

There is a screed of metaphysics. I don’t suppose that is what you wanted. I have no nostrum that is exactly what you want. Every man must brew his own, or at least fill his own glass for himself, but I greatly desire to hear some more from you, just to get into rapport.

As to the Roman Catholic question, it is another piece of the doctrine of Liberty. People get tired of being able to do as they like, and having to choose their own steps, and so they put themselves under holy men, who, no doubt, are really wiser than themselves. But it is not only wrong, but impossible, to transfer either will or responsibility to another; and after the formula have been gone through, the patient has just as much responsibility as before, and feels it too. But it is a sad thing for any one to lose sight of their work, and to have to seek some conventional, arbitrary treadmill-occupation prescribed by sanitary jailors....

With respect to the class, I send you the paper they did last week. Five floored it approximately, two first-rate. I got half-a-dozen correct answers to questions on the effects of mixtures of ice and steam in various proportions, and on the effect of heating and cooling on the thrust of iron beams (numerical). From the higher class I have essay on Vision (construction of eye, spectacles, stereoscopes, etc.) So the work done is equivalent to the work spent.

To Rev. Lewis Campbell.

Aberdeen, 15th March 1858.

When we had done with the eclipse to-day, the next calculation was about the conjunction. The rough approximations bring it out early in June....

The first part of May I will be busy at home. The second part I may go to Cambridge, to London, to Brighton, as may be devised. After which we concentrate our two selves at Aberdeen by the principle of concerted tactics. This done, we steal a march, and throw our forces into the happy valley, which we shall occupy without fear, and we only wait your signals to be ready to welcome reinforcements from Brighton.... Good night.—Your affectionate friend.

J. C. Maxwell.

N.B.—We are going to do optical experiments together in summer. I am getting two prisms, and our eyes are so good as to see the spot on the sun to-day without a telescope.

To Prof. J. C. Maxwell from Prof. Forbes.

Edinburgh, 16th March 1858.

I was much obliged to you for your letter, and the announcement of your marriage, which I have not the smallest doubt will add to your happiness, while at the same time I do not fear its abstracting you from science.

Your notice of Saturn will be very acceptable. But it should not run to too great a length, as the 19th will probably be our last meeting, and is always a crowded billet. Give me an idea of the least time requisite to give an idea of your subject; and more particularly try to send me a piece of the MS., so that I may legally hold it as a MS. delivered, and take precedence of some trivial communications of which I stand rather in dread.

I duly received the Top. I suppose it is all right, but my energies have been absorbed in Electrical experiments merely for lecture, and which have been very heavy upon me. I ought to have paid for the Top ere now, but I will soon.

We saw the Eclipse very badly, and it seems that in England it was no better. I had arranged to give a telegraphic account to R. Soc. last night, from no less than 3 points on the central line....

To Rev. Lewis Campbell.

Glenlair, Springholm,
Dumfries, 28th April 1858.

... I wish you great joy, now and always! I hope to certify myself ere long what sort of “friend’s wife” I am to have. I have faith already, but sight is better, and you will have some pleasure in getting my verdict, though you don’t need anything of the kind.

I have been very happy in observing the very admirable frame of mind in which all my friends seem disposed to regard my affairs, and yet I would rather that their opinions and sentiments had a more distinct basis of observation. But I suppose they observe me, and see I am “all right and no mistake.” ...

I tell you this ... because you are our friend for better for worse.

I shall bring you a small pen-wiper that Katherine made for you the last day I was in Aberdeen. If you are careful in using it as it ought to be used, you will get rid of all the “odium theologicum” and other bitter principles sometimes occurring in parsons’ ink, and your heart will indite good matter with the pen of a ready writer....

To C. J. Monro, Esq.

Glenlair, 29th April 1858.

... I displayed my model of Saturn’s Ring at the Edinburgh Royal Society on the 19th. The anatomists seemed to take most interest in the construction of it. We are going to do some experiments on colour this summer, if my prisms turn out well. I have got a beautiful set of slits made by Ramage, to let in the different pencils of light at the proper places, and of the proper breadths.

To Miss K. M. Dewar.

2d May 1858.

Now you must remember that all I say about texts and matters of that sort is only a sort of help to being together when we read, for I am not skilful to know what is the right meaning of anything so as to tell other people, only I have a right to try to make it out myself, and what I say to myself I may say to you.

To the Same.

6th May 1858.

Isaiah LI. and Gal. V. I. suppose the leaven in V. 9 is the little bit of Judaism that they were going to adopt on the plea that it is “safer” to do and believe too much than too little, and yet these little things altered the character of the whole of their religion by making it a thing of labour and wages, instead of an inward growth of faith working by love, which purifies the heart now, and encourages us to wait for the hope of righteousness. But still the desire of the spirit is contrary to the desire of the flesh, the one tending towards God, and the other towards the elements of the world, so that we are kept stretched as it were, and this is our training in this life. Our flesh is God’s making, who made us part of His world; but then He has given us the power of coming nearer to Himself, and so we ought to use the world and our bodies as means towards the knowledge of Him, and stretch always as far as our state will permit towards Him. If we do not, but wilfully seek back again to the elements as the Israelites to Egypt, then we are not like infants or even brutes, but far worse, as recoiling from God and His blessedness. Here are manifest the works of the flesh, which are not only not those of righteousness, but opposed to them; but the fruit of the spirit comes when, like good trees, we stretch our best affections upwards till we see the sun, and breathe the air and drink the rain, and receive all free gifts, instead of sending our branches after our roots, down among things that once had life but now are decaying, and seeking there for nourishment that can only be had from above.

See the order of ripening of the fruit. How, love brings joy to ourselves, and this, peace with others, and this, long-suffering of their attacks, for why should we be angry? Gentleness is a higher degree of this, being active. Goodness is used in a less general sense than we use it. It seems something like “good nature,” only better and more manly, and refers to the good disposition of a man among men. Faith is put in here as the result of good living; which is true, for it is nourished thereby. Then see what comes of adding faith to a good disposition,—meekness, which we cannot afford to have without faith; and lastly, temperance or moderation, which is also founded on faith, and is a virtue that can never be perfect till all the rest are so.

To the Same.

Milford, Lymington (Hants),
9th May 1858.

To-day we were called at seven; were down soon thereafter, and had everything leisurely and comfortably till ten, when we went to school. I had a class of youths just beginning to read, and some of them knew not what swine were, still less what a herd was. At eleven to church—Lewis read prayers and lessons very well and distinctly, and Chester preached on James I. 15. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. He showed up sin as the universal poison, and showed how it might be seen working death in several instances, and also in all, good and bad, in this life, and then turned to the next, and finally indicated the remedy, though not so clearly as Paul in Rom. VIII. 2, which he should have read.

In the afternoon Chester read prayers and Lewis preached on “Ye must be born again,” showing how respectable a man it was addressed to, and how much he, and all the Jews, and all the world, and ourselves, needed to be born from above (for that is the most correct version of the word translated again). Then he described the changes on a man new-born, and his state and privileges. I think he has got a good hold of the people, and will do them good and great good.

To the Same.

10th May 1858.

Eph. III. 19.—Paul can express no more, but read the last two verses and you will see this is not the crown, but only what can be asked or thought. What a field for ambition there is,—for climbing up, or rather, being drawn up, into Christ’s love, and receiving into our little selves all the fulness of God. Let us bless God even now for what He has made us capable of, and try not to shut out His spirit from working freely.

To the Same.

13th May 1858.

I have been reading again with you Eph. VI. Here is more about family relations. There are things which have meanings so deep that if we follow on to know them we shall be led into great mysteries of divinity. If we despise these relations of marriage, of parents and children, of master and servant, everything will go wrong, and there will be confusion as bad as in Lear’s case. But if we reverence them, we shall even see beyond their first aspect a spiritual meaning, for God speaks to us more plainly in these bonds of our life than in anything that we can understand. So we find a great deal of Divine Truth is spoken of in the Bible with reference to these three relations and others.

To the Same.

16th May 1858.

Phil. III.—There is great wisdom in V. 13. Never look back with complacency on anything done, or attained, or possessed. See the description of those who mind earthly things, and let us depart from their ways. Conversation in V. 20 means going backwards and forwards, and refers to the walking of the preceding verses. What a description of the power of Christ in the last verse, over “all things,” and our vile bodies among the rest, and what a day it will be when He has done all His work and is satisfied.

I think the more we enter together into Christ’s work He will have the more room to work His work in us. For He always desires us to be one that He may be one with us. Our worship is social, and Christ will be wherever two or three are gathered together in His name.

I have been vexed that I could not speak better to ——. I had a long walk with him, talking of what people have believed, and what was necessary to be believed. I hope we may come to understand each other, but more that he may come to the clear light. I wish I could speak to him wise words. He is so anxious to hear, and I to speak, and then the words are all wind after all.

To Prof. J. C. Maxwell from Vernon Lushington, Esq.

Ockham, 31st May 1858.

Next Wednesday is your second of June, after which we shall no longer be able to think of you as one of ourselves—the youthful wanderers and seekers of the earth. So how can I better employ the end of this Sunday evening than by bidding you Farewell and God speed?...

When Wednesday comes I hope I shall think of you.

I like thinking of you,—what you were, what you are, and what you may be. All happiness be with you and yours!

To C. J. Monro, Esq.

Glenlair, 24th July 1858.

... We are no great students at present, preferring, various passive enjoyments, resulting from the elemental influences of sun, wind, and streams. This week I have begun to make a small hole into Saturn, who has slept on his voluminous ring for months.

To Mrs. Maxwell.

16th September 1859.

Mrs. Sabine learnt mathematics of her husband after she was married, so she was not married for it. Murchison knew no geology when he was married, but his wife did a little; and there was a fall of a cliff in the morning early, and her maid told her of it, so she was for up;[206] so Murchison got up too, and there were the great hones of an Icthyosaurus in the broken cliff, and he was interested and took to geology. Before that he was an idle young officer.