16 IH HUN TTNIVERSITY 



and literary circles, and offer to him those graceful hospitalities for 

 which the Irish metropolis has been justly celebrated. His life may 

 henceforward be regarded under two aspects, — the official and the sci- 

 entific. Let the reader "look on this picture and on this:" they are 

 widely different, yet they each convey to us a true representation, not 

 of the external condition, but of that which is unseen, and which con- 

 stitutes the real life of man. 



The letters to his father during 1835, 1836, 1837, are numerous, and 

 many of them contain complaints of Castle work. His duty there would 

 appear to have been particularly arduous or unpleasant, for he states 

 that he had offered a sum of money as an inducement to any of the 

 other clerks in the office to exchange with him, and they had all re- 

 fused. Nor was he more successful in his application to the Under- 

 Secretary, for that gentleman said the duty was so well done he must 

 refuse to make any change. The most real and tangible hardship, so 

 far as is apparent from the letters, arose from a stranger having been 

 appointed, in 1835, to the head clerkship of the office, — thus extin- 

 guishing the hope which Ball had entertained of ultimate advancement. 

 Amid all this occupation Natural History still made her way to him, 

 and soothed many a weary hour. His zoological knowledge was be- 

 coming more generally recognised, and for months not a day passed 

 during which specimens were not submitted to him for examination. 

 He did not, however, allow "the voice of the charmer" to interfere 

 with what was prescribed by that sterner monitor, public duty. In one 

 letter he uses the remarkable words (under date January 19, 1837) : — 

 " "Whatever may be my inertness and inattention to private affairs, I 

 can most conscientiously declare that I have been the most zealous public 

 servant I know, and have rendered really very important services, and 

 never neglected any duty intrusted to me, or involved the Government 

 in difficulty." 



Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, and dissatisfied at the 

 remuneration paid for his labours, he looked with complacency on every 

 project that promised an escape from desk -work, and an energetic, in- 

 dependent career of usefulness. It is not strange, therefore, that at 

 times there flitted before him a vision of New Zealand, and that for 

 years after this period his thoughts turned towards its proffered freedom. 

 In one letter (9th February, 1839), in speaking of the colonization and 

 improvement of that country, he says: — "I am physically and men- 



