CHAP. VII.] BACHELOR-SCHOLAR. 199 



hold him long from searching into the more hidden 

 things of Matter in Motion. Thus, in his letter to 

 his father of May 15, 1855, after describing a suc- 

 cessful exhibition of the Top and extemporary state- 

 ment of his optical theories before the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society, he adds : "I am reading 

 Electricity and working at Fluid Motion." And on 

 May 23 " I am getting on with my electrical cal- 

 culations every now and then, and working out any- 

 thing that seems to help the understanding thereof/ 

 Some days earlier, May 5, he had written : " I am 

 working away at Electricity again, and have been 

 working my way into the views of heavy German 

 writers. It takes a long time to reduce to order all 

 the notions one gets from these men, but I hope to 

 see my way through the subject, and arrive at some- 

 thing intelligible in the way of a theory." These brief 

 notices obviously refer to the studies which led up to 

 his important paper on Faraday's Lines of Force, 

 which was put into shape in the winter of 1855-6. 



The "vassals" were not forgotten by him even 

 when most occupied at Cambridge. The choice and 



colours." His theory on this subject was gradually formed through 

 an immense number of ingeniously arranged observations. 



His interest in Faraday's investigations must have dated from a 

 very early time, certainly before 1849. And now he sought to give 

 to these speculations, at which his imaginative mind had long been 

 working, precise mathematical expression. I wish I could recall the 

 date (1857 ?) of a drive down the Vale of Orr, during which he described 

 to me for the first time, with extraordinary volubility, the swift, invis- 

 ible motions by which magnetic and galvanic phenomena were to be 

 accounted for. It was like listening to a fairy-tale. For the substance 

 of it see his papers in the Philosophical Magazine for 1861-2. 



