MAXWELL'S "MATTER AND MOTION" 261 



In the rival elementary works the precipice and the crevasse are not to be seen : 

 there are, however, many pools and ditches ; for the most part shallow, but very dirty. 

 You are confined to the more easily accessible portions of the region. In the better 

 class of such books these are trimly levelled the shrubs and trees are clipped into 

 forms of geometrical (i.e. unnatural) symmetry like a Dutch hedge. Smooth straight 

 walks are laid down leading to old well-known "points of view," and, as in Trinity 

 of former days, undergraduates are warned against walking on the grass-plats. 



These " royal roads " to knowledge have ever been the main cause of the stagnation 

 of science in a country. He would be a bold man indeed who would venture to 

 assert that the country which, in times all but within the memory of many of us, 

 produced such mighty master-minds as Lagrange, Fourier, Ampere, and Laplace, does 

 not now contain many who might well have rivalled the achievements even of men 

 like these. But they have no chance of doing so; they are taught, not by their own 

 struggles against natural obstacles, with occasional slight assistance at a point of 

 unexpected difficulty, but by being started off in groups, "eyes front" and in heavy 

 marching order, at hours and at a pace determined for all alike by an Official of the 

 Central Government, along those straight and level (though perhaps sometimes rough) 

 roads which have been laid down for them ! Can we wonder that, whatever their 

 natural fitness, they don't now become mountaineers? 



It seems appropriate at this point to reproduce parts of the account 

 which Tail gave of the life and work of his life-long friend James Clerk 

 Maxwell. Schoolboys at the same school, contemporaries at Cambridge, 

 profoundly interested in the same great branch of science, and constant 

 correspondents throughout their busy lives, they were the truest of friends 

 knit heart to heart by bonds which only death could sever. Tait had an 

 unstinted admiration for the genius of Maxwell, a deep love for the man, 

 and a keen appreciation of his oddities and humour. In their correspondence 

 they were always brimming over with fun and frolic, and puzzling each other 

 with far-fetched puns, and literary allusions of the most extraordinary kind. 

 I have been able throughout this memoir to give a good deal from Maxwell's 

 letters to Tait. Unfortunately the other side of the correspondence has 

 disappeared. Some lines written to Tait on a half sheet of note-paper 

 whose contents referred to proof corrections are worth preserving as a neat 

 example of Maxwell's power of moralising on physical truth : 



"The polar magnet in his heart of steel 

 Earth's gentle influence appears to feel ; 

 But trust him not ! he's biassed at the core 

 Force will but complicate that bias more, 

 No Power but that of all-dissolving Fire 

 Can quite demagnetize the hardened wire." 



