324 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XI 



former years. In particular he remembers how, on 

 one occasion, Maxwell spent the whole time during a 

 walk of several miles over the hill from Glenlair to 

 Parton, " giving one example after another to explain 

 by illustration the principle of virtual velocities." . . . 

 " The feeling I had," says Mr. Cay, " was that before 

 I got to the bottom of one example he had rushed off 

 to another." 



And the reader will find in the correspondence 

 two of Maxwell's letters to my friend Charles Hope 

 Cay, and in another letter a few words of bright de- 

 scription of him. He died in 1869, at the early age of 

 twenty-eight, the most devoted of teachers, one of the 

 purest-hearted and most amiable of men. If he could 

 have listened to his cousin's gentle warnings against 

 excessive zeal, perhaps his services to Clifton College, 

 if less vividly remembered, might have been continued 

 longer. But who knows ? " They whom the gods 

 love die young." 



Maxwell's retirement was not by any means un- 

 broken. There was a visit to London in the spring of 

 every year. And in the spring and early summer of 

 35. 1867 he made a tour in Italy with Mrs. Maxwell. 

 They had the misfortune to be stopped for quarantine 

 at Marseilles, and his remarkable power of physical 

 endurance and of ministration were felt by all who 

 shared in the mishap. True to the associations of his 

 early days (see above, pp. 28, 121), he became the 

 general water-carrier, and in other ways contributed 

 greatly to the alleviation of discomforts that were by 

 no means light. 



