XI.] 



FAILURE OF HEALTH. 



381 



shrinking humanity whereof you speak. I have striven 

 to pierce with sharpened eyesight the deep abyss. I 

 wonder, has your subtler and more exercised spirit 

 penetrated farther than mine, and can you communicate 

 any share of the insight which I fancy you may have 

 attained ? I never wrote thus to any one before : and I 

 feel confident that you will trust, or at least forgive me. 

 There are few whose thoughts on such subjects would 

 be worth possessing. I feel as if there must be given to 

 you, in compensation for your greater trials, more know- 

 ledge than others. 



'But I shall say no more of this. Let me rather 

 thank you for your kind, and to me always valuable 

 present of a paper of yours, however short. In a work 

 of some labour and anxiety which has absorbed the 

 major part of my small intellectual activity for a long 

 time past a sketch of the history of science of the 

 last 75 years I have gratified myself more than once 

 by citing you, (1) in connection with Gregory, (2) on 

 probabilities, (3) about higher order of forces. ... I have 

 been lecturing regularly all this winter, and on the whole 

 feel in better health than for four winters previously. 

 li care I suppose I may weather some years more, 

 and do some little work yet ; but hard thinking is as 

 much beyond me- as hard walking. I feel very deeply 

 for Dr. Whewell. He wrote me a manly and touching 

 letter two days after his wife's death.' 



From R. LESLIE ELLIS, ESQ. 



' MY DEAR FORBES, ' ANSTET HALL, March 26<A, 1659. 



' You have heard enough of me since October to 

 be willing to excuse my silence. I wonder often, and 

 perhaps you would if you knew all, that I think as much 

 as I do of the subjects in which we used both to take an 



rest But this is part of the, to me, great wonder 

 how my life has lasted so long, with probably almost 



ry organ diseased, and in a stale which makes the 

 conditions of health impossible. Fix a man as immove- 

 ably as Prometheus for four or five years, keep him 



