Note 4 — PART I. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY—BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

He never lost an opportunity of inspecting manufactures, or of visiting great buildings, ecclesiastical or otherwise, and he impressed the same habit upon his son. The “works” they “viewed” together were simply innumerable, but it will be sufficient to cite one crowning instance. When James Clerk Maxwell was in the midst of his last year’s preparation for the Cambridge Tripos, he proposed to spend the few days of Easter vacation which the pressure of his work allowed to him, in a visit to a friend at Birmingham. His father had seen Birmingham in his youth, and gave him the following instructions, which were mostly carried out:—“View, if you can, armourers, gunmaking and gunproving—swordmaking and proving—Papier-mâché and japanning—silver-plating by cementation and rolling—ditto, electrotype—Elkington’s works—Brazier’s works, by founding and by striking out in dies—turning—spinning teapot bodies in white metal, etc.—making buttons of sorts, steel pens, needles, pins, and any sorts of small articles which are curiously done by subdivision of labour and by ingenious tools—glass of sorts is among the works of the place, and all kinds of foundry works—engine-making—tools and instruments—optical and [philosophical], both coarse and fine. If you have had enough of the town lots of Birmingham, you could vary the recreation by viewing Kenilworth, Warwick, Leamington, Stratford-on-Avon, or such like.” James began with the glassworks.