92 ESSAYS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CHEMICAL 



of the Musical Society ; he also carried off the ' Colquhoun 

 sculls ' for his excellence as an oarsman. In those days 

 the science of Cambridge was fettered by the bonds which 

 Newton had imposed. It is unfortunate, though perhaps 

 natural, that to the advent of a great man a period of 

 stagnation succeeds. It was thus with the Schoolmen, 

 who subsisted for many centuries on the philosophy of 

 Aristotle; and the science of Cambridge, in 1845, was 

 based on the work of Newton, nearly a century and a half 

 old. Indeed, the spirit was that of Timseus, in Plato's 

 dialogue, who said : ' If we wish to acquire any real 

 acquaintance with astronomy, we shall let the heavenly 

 bodies alone/ In fact, Bacon's advice to proceed by way 

 of experiment and induction had been forgotten. Needless 

 to say, this reproach has long been removed, by the labours 

 of Clerk-Maxwell, Rayleigh, Stokes, and J. J. Thomson. 

 In the 'forties Paris was the home of Fourier, Fresnel, 

 Ampere, Arago, Biot, and Regnault, all physicists and 

 mathematicians of the highest rank ; and Thomson spent 

 a year working in Regnault's laboratory, where experiments 

 on water and steam, their densities, pressure, and specific 

 heats, were being carried on with the utmost refinement. 

 During the next year, 1846, the Chair of Natural Philosophy 

 in Glasgow fell vacant, and, to their credit, the Senate of 

 the day advised Queen Victoria to appoint William 

 Thomson, then a youth of twenty- two, as professor. 

 Never was a choice better justified in its results. For 

 Thomson, by example and by precept, trained many 

 students to be a credit to their old university, and carried 

 out in cellars, which served as laboratories, and which 

 were situated almost next door to that in which James 

 Watt invented the condensing engine, almost all his 

 numerous and important investigations. 



Thomson was not what would be called a good lecturer ; 

 he was too discursive. I doubt whether any man with a 



