Part 1 — CHAPTER X. ABERDEEN—MARRIAGE—1857 TO 1860, Æt. 26-29.

THE Glenlair letters of 1857 (see last chapter) sufficiently indicate, Maxwell’s mental condition in the interval between his first and second sessions at Aberdeen. His expansive sociable spirit is putting forth fresh feelers, and he has made a new beginning in his observation of man in society. But he has not yet recovered from the loss of the preceding year, and those who read between the lines cannot fail to trace here and there a touch of sadness peering from beneath the habitual buoyancy of his style.

In September of this year another loss renewed the feeling of desolation which had haunted him since his father’s death. His friend Pomeroy, whom he had nursed in illness, and of whose career in India he had augured so highly, was carried off by a second attack of fever, caused by a hurried journey during the first outbreak of the Mutiny. Maxwell’s letters to Mr. Litchfield show how keenly he felt this blow, and what deep thoughts on human life and destiny were once more stirred up in him.

His original work on electricity was now for a while interrupted by another laborious task, which absorbed his best energies for more than a year. The examiners for the Adam’s Prize, given by St. John's College in honour of the discovery of Neptune,[198] had set as a subject, “The Structure of Saturn's Ring.” To frame and test an hypothesis which should account for the observed phenomena was a problem of no ordinary complexity, and one to which the speculative imagination and mathematical ingenuity of Clerk Maxwell were particularly adapted. It appears to have completely fascinated him for the time. The essay by which he gained the prize, and which he published after elaborately revising it, is well known to students, and the allusions to the subject in his letters at this time will be read with interest.

Such was the strain of feeling, and such the chief intellectual interest, with which he returned to Aberdeen, where he seems to have been once more destined, though in his native country, to understand more than he was understood; and in his letters, together with the deepening earnestness and the unfailing humour, there is now and then mingled for the first time a grain of bitterness, or what may be taken for such. But it is rather the cry of a spirit hungering for completion. And the phase of disharmony quickly passes off, and is followed by a song of triumph.

Of his new acquaintances at Aberdeen he had become most intimate with the family of Principal Dewar of Marischal College, and he was a frequent visitor at their house. His deep and varied knowledge, not only of his own and kindred subjects, but of history, literature, and theology, his excellence of heart, and the religious earnestness which underlay his humorous “shell,” were there appreciated and admired. He had been asked to join them in their annual visit to Ardhallow, the home of the Principal’s son-in-law, Mr. M‘Cunn, in the neighbourhood of Dunoon, and had accepted the invitation. The time of his stay there in September 1857 is marked by letters which, unlike some others of this period, reflect his brightest mood.

In February 1858 he announced his betrothal to Katherine Mary Dewar, and they were married early in the following June. In May he had made a journey to the south of England to visit me in my parish of Milford, in Hampshire, and to act as “best man” on the occasion of our marriage, which took place at Brighton. My wife and I found our way to Aberdeen in time to be present at the wedding there, and were shortly afterwards entertained at Glenlair.

The correspondence of these months and the poems then written contain the record of feelings which in the years that followed were transfused in action and embodied in a married life which can only be spoken of as one of unexampled devotion.[199]

He remained for two more sessions at Aberdeen. But in 1860 came the fusion of the colleges, and the Professorship of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College was one of those suppressed. In the same winter his old friend Professor James D. Forbes, after struggling for eight years against ill-health, resigned his Chair, and Maxwell became a candidate for the vacant post. It is enough to have alluded once for all[200] to the contest, which ended in the appointment of Professor Tait. It only remains to say that Maxwell’s relations with that eminent man, who had been his companion both in Edinburgh and at Cambridge, always continued to be of the most friendly kind; and their correspondence, often of the quaintest description, would of itself fill a volume of very entertaining reading for those possessed of a clue to the labyrinth of science, learning, wit, and frolicsome allusion, which it contains. The two men looked over proof-sheets of each other’s writings, and when they most differed, Maxwell’s criticism condensed in humorous verse was always understood and welcomed by the Edinburgh Professor. In the summer of 1860 the ex-professor of Aberdeen was appointed to the vacant Professorship of Natural Philosophy in King’s College, London.

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 = “Under the sea,” so that , by parity of reasoning, represents two repetitions of that sentiment. This being granted, we shall have as follows:—

The Song of the Atlantic Telegraph Company.

Receive, etc.

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.

The following letter from Pomeroy to his mother, of which a copy was found in Maxwell’s handwriting, throws further light on the character of the man whose loss was felt so deeply:—

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.

I send you a description of the Murtle Lecture delivered in our Public School:—

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 , 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.

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