354 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XII. 



the apparatus remaining the property of the Asso- 

 ciation, and subject to the control of the Committee. 



While the Laboratory was thus gradually made 

 available, the other work of the professorship went on 

 uninterruptedly from the first. Maxwell gave annual 

 courses of lectures on the subjects prescribed in his 

 commission, 1 commencing with October 1871, when 

 he delivered his inaugural lecture. This and the 

 lecture "On Colour Vision," given at the Eoyal In- 

 stitution shortly after his appointment in the preceding 

 spring, are perhaps the happiest of his literary efforts. 

 Philosophic grasp, scientific clearness, and poetic 

 imagination could hardly be more successfully com- 

 bined. 



The Cambridge lecture (October 1871) sets forth 

 in luminous outline the meaning and tendency of the 

 moment in the evolution of the University of Cam- 

 bridge, which was marked by the institution of the 



1 Throughout the tenure of his Cambridge Chair Maxwell annually 

 delivered a course of lectures on Heat and the Constitution of Bodies 

 during the October Term ; on Electricity in the Lent Term ; and on 

 Electro-Magnetism in the Easter Term. The character of these lectures 

 very much resembled that of the early chapters in the Elementary 

 Treatise on Electricity, which he wrote before taking the Cavendish 

 papers in hand, and which was published in a fragmentary form by 

 the Delegates of the Clarendon Press in October 1881. During the 

 first four or five years that Maxwell lectured in Cambridge, candi- 

 dates for the Ordinary or Poll Degree were compelled to attend pro- 

 fessors' lectures, and not unfrequently they would appear at the 

 Cavendish Laboratory. Maxwell's lectures were the delight of those 

 who could follow him in his brilliant expositions and rapid changes of 

 thought. 



