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



a link between him and them ; . . . and now, after 

 five lustra spent in law chambeA and law courts, 1 

 can look back with undiminished interest to that watch 

 on the " castled crag of Drachenfels," beside one of the 

 purest votaries of Science, to whom she was unfolding 

 every day more and more her wonders and her blessings. 



' On the 26th of June we had finished our studies at 

 Bonn, and proceeded by Gottingen and the Hartz moun- 

 tains to Berlin. At Gottingen our stay was short, but 

 we visited the Professors, especially Blumenbach, and 

 Wohler, the Professor of Chemistry ; while Forbes in- 

 terested himself greatly in the system of management 

 and mode of education followed at the University. We 

 then walked through the forests of the Hartz, examining 

 the geology of that district, sleeping on the Brocken 

 and testing our thermometers in its snowdrifts, and after 

 an interesting visit to the haematite iron mines of Back- 

 burg, we reached Berlin early in July. 



' At Berlin we remained for a fortnight together, pre- 

 serving pretty much the same course of study as we had 

 done at Bonn. Our German lessons were renewed, and 

 we attended lectures on various branches of science, 

 while many of the Professors, among whom I may name 

 Gustav Rosd, Weis, Ehrenberg, and Encke, were most 

 kind and attentive in making us acquainted with all the 

 objects of scientific interest which Berlin could afford. 

 . . . With Professor Encke Forbes was principally 

 charmed. His astronomical and his magnetic observatory 

 the latter a pretty cottage in a garden, charmingly 

 situated at some little distance from the centre of the 

 town supplied my fellow-traveller with two inexhaus- 

 tible sources of pleasure : a splendid telescope by Fraun- 

 hofer, and a spot for swinging his magnetic needles, and 

 continuing the series of delicate observations on the 

 direction and intensity of magnetic force, which he had 

 commenced at Bonn. 



' Always more thoughtful for others than for himself, 

 my dear friend chafed under the notion of keeping me 

 within the walls of a city during the dog-days, and 



