154 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VI. 



May, and wrote an account of it to his father, which 

 has been lost. 



The " viewing " of the Crystal Palace, although a 

 thing to be done, was made less exciting than it would 

 otherwise have been by the constant habit of visiting 

 all manufactures according to opportunity. Maxwell 

 disclaims all " fanaticism " on the subject, and his 

 father writes that while a fortnight would be required 

 to see it properly, a great deal of it must be already 

 familiar to them both. 



In the October term he joined the "team" of 

 Hopkins, the great private tutor, as a fifteenth pupil. 



He also became a regular attendant of Professor 

 Stokes's lectures, and commenced his lifelong friend- 

 ship with one whose original investigations were so 

 closely akin to some of his own. 



Professor Stokes's kindness was greatly valued even 

 in those old days, and much more afterwards. The 

 young man's happiness in all ways at Trinity is mani- 

 fested by the reappearance of the poetic vein, about 

 the time of the junior sophs' examination, in the Lay 

 of King Nwma, dated 13th December 1851. 



To this sketch of his first year at college there 

 must be appended one more reminiscence of Glenlair. 

 We met there in the autumn of that year, and I 

 remember that either then or in the previous year, 

 he put into my hands Carlyle's translation of Goethe's 

 Wilhelm Meister, remarking that it was a book to be 

 read with discretion. 



In the autumn of 1850 the neighbouring estate of 



