148 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



versary of my father's death : sinae that event I have 

 advanced one vast irretrievable step towards the grave. 

 I have great doubts whether I shall ever form earthly 

 attachments closer than those I at present possess/ 



It may be worth while here to note a piece of prac- 

 tical counsel as to the observing of the Sunday rest 

 which he offered to his students in the lecture with which 

 he opened the session of 1839-40 : 



' By earnestness in your studies during the week, I 

 advise you to reap the enjoyment of that beneficent 

 provision of the Almighty, and by a sedulous abstinence 

 in thought, as well as in act, from your ordinary occu- 

 pations, to restore the tone of your minds and the capa- 

 city for vigorous exertion. None who have not made a 

 strong effort are aware of the admirably tranquillizing 

 influence of twenty-four hours studiously separated from 

 the ordinary current of thought. Monday morning is the 

 epoch of a periodic renovation/ 



Sir Andrew Agnew, who at that time was prominent 

 as a defender of the religious observance of Sunday, was 

 so much pleased with these words that he applied to Pro- 

 fessor Forbes for leave to publish them. Forbes replied 

 that as they had been publicly spoken they were public 

 property, but that if they were printed he should prefer 

 their being given as a report of part of his lecture, 

 rather than as a communication made directly by himself. 

 For this would argue a love of notoriety from which he 

 rather shrank. 



Just before the close of the session, in April 1840, his 

 eldest sister, Eliza, died at Dean House, and left him 

 with only one home companion, his sister Jane. 



The summer of 1840 was spent at home, and then for 

 the first time we meet with allusions to his own health. 

 In the retrospective journal written in 1850 he writes 

 that he was very ill all the summer of 1840, and we hear 

 of his consulting Dr. Chambers when he visited London 

 and Cambridge in the June of that year. 



In August he made with his sister Jane a tour through 



