CHAP. III.] "OLD 31" -EDINBURGH ACADEMY. 53 



Mr. Clerk Maxwell was much more like an elder 

 brother than a "governor" to James, and there was 

 nothing the boy could not or did not tell him, none 

 of his whimsical vagaries in which the father did not 1842-43. 

 take delight. And when "his papaship" was alone ^' 10 ~ 12 ' 

 at Glenlair, James would strive to cheer him in his 

 solitude by concocting the wildest absurdities, invent- 

 ing a kind of cypher to communicate some airy 

 nothing, illuminating his letters after the fashion of 

 his school copy-books, and adding sketches of school- 

 life (e.g. the class-room in the absence of the teacher), 

 et cetera. This series of letters is so curious that it has 

 been thought worth while to reproduce one of the 

 least elaborate of them in facsimile. Some of those 

 omitted are still more interesting, as showing his 

 love of drawing complicated patterns and arranging 

 colours, and as marking the early and spontaneous 

 development of " the habit of constructing a mental 

 representation of every problem," l which was in some 

 degree an hereditary proclivity. In order, however, to 

 judge fairly of these enfantittages, the reader mu'st take 

 into account the boy's affectionate solicitude to amuse 

 his father, who was accustomed to receive whimsical 

 familiarities from his young relatives in " Old 3 1." 2 



1 Professor Tait. In the letter of January 18, 1840 (above, p. 33), 

 in his ninth year, when, in speaking of his amusement of seal-engraving 

 he says, " I made a bird and a beast," the words " bird " and " beast " 

 are each accompanied with a sort of hieroglyphic representing the 

 figure he had made upon the seal. 



2 This is clearly proved by a set of delightful rhyming epistles 

 addressed to him by his niece, Isabella Wedderburn, afterwards Mrs. 

 Mackenzie, then a bright young girl, between the years 1825 and 

 1827. 



