252 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



(4) The Senate house is a place to write in, to graduate in, and to vote in. The 

 Public Orator I believe can speak in it provided he employs the Latin tongue. What 

 those venerable walls would say if the vernacular were sounded within them I dare 

 not even think. If you have a good audience there will not be much echo from 

 Geo. II or Pitt, and if you erect a lofty platform, the light spot on the screen and 

 the under side of your table may be seen by all. 



(5) If you do your @H as you did your Quaternions to the British Asses you 

 will do very well, always remembering that to speak familiarly of a 2nd Law, as of 

 a thing known for some years, to men of culture who have never even heard of a 

 ist Law, may arouse sentiments unfavourable to patient attention 



Both Moral and Intellectual Entropy are noble subjects, though the dictum of 

 Pecksniff concerning the idea of Todgers be unknown to me and not easily verified. 



I do not know much about reversible operations in morals. The science or 

 practice depends chiefly on the existence of singular points in the curve of existence 

 at which influences, physically insensible, produce great results. The man of tact 

 says the right word at the right time, and a word spoken in due season how good 

 is it ? The man of no tact is like vinegar upon natron when he sings his songs to 

 a heavy heart. The ill timed admonition only hardens the conscience, and the good 

 resolution, made just when it is sure to be broken, becomes macadamized into pavement 

 for the abyss. 



Yrs ^ 

 df 



In the early seventies the Director of the Museum of Science and Art 

 in Edinburgh, now the Royal Scottish Museum, arranged courses of scientific 

 lectures to the Industrial Classes. Courses were given by Dr Buchan, 

 Professor Tait, Professor Crum Brown, Dr (afterwards Professor) McKen- 

 drick on special branches of their respective sciences. Tail's lectures on 

 Cosmical Astronomy were delivered during January 1874, the titles of the 

 successive lectures being (i) Our sources of information as to bodies non- 

 terrestrial, (2) Their dimensions and distances, (3) Their masses and rates of 

 motion, (4) Their composition and modes of aggregation, (5) Their mutual 

 action, (6) Their ultimate state. When preparing these lectures, Tait took 

 the opportunity of fulfilling a promise to Dr Norman Macleod, the editor of 

 Good Words, and contributed a corresponding series of articles to that popular 

 magazine. 



At the British Association Meeting in Glasgow in 1876, Professor 

 Andrews was President ; and Tait out of a feeling of loyalty to his old friend 

 and colleague agreed to give one of the evening lectures. The subject was 

 " Force," and its main scientific features were a strong demand for accuracy in 

 scientific language, and a demonstration that force in the strictly Newtonian 



