202 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VII. 



the behoof of Willy, the eldest, who was by this time 

 a student in Edinburgh. 



Maxwell continued his contributions to the 

 "Apostle" Essay Club, and on May 5, 1855, he 

 read to them in his own rooms a paper on Morality, 

 in which he summed up the principles and tendencies 

 of the chief existing systems of moral philosophy, so 

 resuming another thread of his earlier thought. 1 



This essay appears to have been promised early in 

 the year, to judge from an allusion to the subject of 

 it in a letter to C. J. Monro of February 7, which may 

 be quoted here as showing also by what home cares 

 his intellectual energies were interrupted or diversified. 

 The reader of what precedes will not be misled by the 

 light way in which he speaks of things which touched 

 his heart so nearly. 



I am at present superintending a course of treatment 

 practised on my father, for the sake of relieving certain 

 defluxions which take place in his bronchial tubes. These 

 obstructions are now giving way, and the medico, who is a 

 skilful bellowsmender, pronounces the passages nearly clear. 



However, it will be a week or two before he is on his 

 pins again, so would you have the goodness to tell Freeman 

 to tell Mrs. Jones to tell those whom it may concern, that I 

 cannot be up to time at all. ... I may be up in time to 

 keep the term, and so work off a streak of Mathematics, 

 which I begin to yearn after. At present I confine myself 

 to Lucky Nightingale's line of business, except that I have 

 been writing descriptions of Platometers for measuring plane 

 figures, and privately by letter confuting rash mechanics, 

 who intrude into things they have not got up, and suppose 

 that their devices will act when they can't. I hope that 



1 Supra, p. 114. 



