68 TEE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP 



has only strengthened my ardour of pursuit, and refreshed 

 by an ample period of relaxation I have renewed with 

 zeal my studies, which were never wholly interrupted, 

 and at this moment feel myself so entirely happy, alike 

 removed from turbid excitement and monotonous dul- 

 ness, that I should be ungrateful to God and to my kind 

 friends, and a traitor to myself, did I not acknowledge 

 myself so. ... I have mastered about two- thirds of 

 Boucharlat's Differential and Integral Calculus ; and the 

 study of some parts of this most amazing branch of 

 human inquiry has, I confess, astonished and delighted 

 me, and given me new views of the wonderful powers 

 which have been confided to man. Of nothing am I 

 more assured at present than this, that a suitable ac- 

 quaintance with the higher analysis is the strict basis of 

 real scientific inquiry in the present day ; and when we 

 see everything as we do reduced to the popular scale, 

 knowledge diffused but not deepened, and all severe 

 mental labour received with disgust, this is the time, if 

 any, to lay deep the foundations of those acquirements to 

 which there opens no royal road. Both from inclination 

 and expediency 1 therefore resolve to pursue my mathe- 

 matical studies, always keeping the application strictly 

 in view, and acting upon them in the course of my other 

 pursuits. 



* It has long been Dr. Brewster's particular desire to 

 engage me in some field of original research, to which I 

 might devote my whole attention ; and that which is 

 every way most agreeable to me, and which seems most 

 fitted for my exertions, is Heat, in the widest sense of the 

 word, opening a field of the widest interest. . . . ' 



This winter too saw his entry into the Koyal Society 

 of Edinburgh, from which only his youth had kept him 

 hitherto, and of which for more than twenty years he 

 was a main stay. 



With the coming of spring 1831 he left Edinburgh 

 with his sisters on a visit to London. Being well 

 furnished with letters and introductions, he at once 



