120 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES. CHAP* 



upon my professorship in the autumn of 1857 con- 

 tained a popular statement of the work of the great 

 Manchester physicist and experimentalist Joule, in so 

 far as it related to the determination of the mechanical 

 equivalent of heat. 1 One of the chief pleasures to 

 which I looked forward in coming to Manchester was 

 that I should have Joule as a friend, and I think there 

 were few persons, with the exception perhaps of Sir 

 William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and the late Dr. 

 Schunck, who were more intimate with Joule than I 

 had the good fortune to become. Owing to his extreme 

 shyness and reserve, I suppose, not many men came 

 into close relation with him, and the reverses of fortune 

 he met with rendered him still more of a recluse. 

 He frequently dined with me, and once he came to 

 stay with us in the summer when we lived at the 

 Lakes. I much desired that the Owens College 

 should have the honour of enrolling his name on its 

 staff of professors, but on approaching him with this 

 object in view I found he was unwilling to accept even 

 an honorary position on the staff. He became, how- 

 ever, a member of the court and council, but he 

 never took a very active part in the management 

 of the institution. In his latter days, like his 

 contemporary Faraday, Joule suffered from mental 

 weakness, and I remember a somewhat pathetic 

 meeting between him and Helmholtz. The latter, who 

 was staying with us in Victoria Park with his wife, 

 expressed a great desire to see Joule, whom he had 

 never met. So I drove him over to Sale, where 

 Joule then lived, and where a bust to his memory 

 has lately been placed. It was in no sense a satis- 

 factory interview, and Helmholtz expressed his 

 Sorrow at Joule's inability to talk on scientific subjects. 



1 See portrait-photograph by Lady Roscoe. 



