166 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VI. 



letter of June 12, graced with the unusual addition 

 of a Scripture text " I trust you will be as discreet 

 when Major as you have been while Minor (Prov. 

 x. I 1 )." 



The six months from .December 1852 to June 1853 

 were a time of great and varied mental activity. When 

 1853. the Tripos work became most exacting, he seemed to 

 have the most spare energy. No part of the rich 

 mental life of Trinity failed to touch and stimulate 

 him from the Moral Philosophy of the Master, to 

 undergraduate discourses upon whist and chess. When 

 most burdened with analytical book- work, he yearned 

 the more deeply after comprehensive views of Nature 

 and Life, and found refreshment in metaphysical 

 discussion, and occasionally in theological contro- 

 versy. Even the " occult " sciences, in the contem- 

 porary shapes of electro-biology and table-turning, had 

 their share of ironical attention. 



His relations with the dons, " scientific" and other- 

 wise, whatever may have been their first impression of 

 him, 2 were, for the most part, smooth, but a humorous 

 passage of arms between him and the Senior Dean was 

 long remembered in Trinity. The lines to J. A. Frere, 

 although somewhat personal, are too well known to be 

 omitted from his collected poems, and anything in 

 them which might give offence at the time is more 

 than redeemed by the large humanity of the conclud- 



1 " A wise son maketh a glad father." 



2 It is said that on the first occasion of his reading in chapel after 

 gaining his scholarship, his delivery of his first lesson (from the Book 

 of Job) in tones which, perhaps from nervousness, were unusually 

 broad, upset the gravity of every one, from the Master downwards. 



