xii.] LIFE IN ST. ANDREWS. 435 



so well, and the effort of conversation is plainly in- 

 jurious. . . . 



' I was much obliged to you for sending the " Comptes 



I us." I have read the greater part of the Pascal 



papers and controversy with attention. It is a question 



of some magnitude and importance. The niass of con- 



j'orary documents in M. Charles' possession is evi- 

 dently very large. It would be worth no one's while to 

 forge all those. My conclusion would be provisionally, 

 of course that some possessor of the mass of genuine 

 contemporary correspondence, to give it piquancy and 

 value, has forged a number of Pascal's notes on gravita- 



. and probably all of those bearing Newton's signature. 

 I cannot believe that Newton would write in French 

 instead of Latin. Sir David, I see, makes the same re- 

 mark. The exact masses of the planets, and, above all, 



exact flattening of the earth given by Pascal appear 

 to me incredible. ... It is all very strange and bewilder- 

 ing. Photographic fac-similes of Newton's letters ought 

 to be asked for by competent authority.' 



When Forbes entered on his duties as Principal, it was 

 with high hopes of what might be done to make of the 

 United St. Salvator's and St. Leonard's a College which 

 should be a model of its kind : and with this view he 

 took the whole thing more in hand and threw himself 

 more earnestly upon it than perhaps any Principal ever 

 before had done. If the results he achieved fell far short 

 of his first hopes, this was not from any lack of zeal or 

 energy on his part. It is no more than Avhat hefalls most 

 men in their ideal aims. Of newly appointed Bishops 

 some one has said that they must spend the first years of 

 r office in learning how little power the law has left 

 in tli. ir hands. The same may, perhaps, be said of Prin- 

 ith lii> eea livil \ , i'mmd this ; 



he |. of that experience wlucb Herodotus 



i.-ssrd ami Arnold so often <|U<>ted i^Qta-Tr) oSvt*) 

 iro\\a <f>poi>fot>Ta firjSevct Kparteiv that diiv.-t ]>ain, to 

 ln\ thoughts and no power to realize them. 



2 



