3*76 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XII. 



And yet some may wish that these precious years 

 had been given rather to the unimpeded prosecution 

 of his own original researches. 1 



At my last meeting with him, it was in his house 

 at Cambridge, in the year 1877, in the midst of 

 some discursive talk, he took the MS. of this book out 

 of a cabinet, and began showing it to me and dis- 

 coursing about it in the old eager, playful, affectionate 

 way, just as with the magic discs in boyhood, or the 

 register of the colour-box observations at a later time, 

 in the little study at Glenlair. " And what," I said, 

 " of your own investigations in various ways ?" "I 

 have to give up so many things," he answered, with a 

 sad look, which till then I had never seen in his eyes. 

 Even before this, as it now appears, he had felt the 

 first symptoms of the inexorable malady, which in 

 the spring of 1879 assumed a dangerous aspect, and 

 killed him in the autumn of that year. 



LETTERS, 1871 TO 1879 MT. 39-48. 

 FROM C. J. MONRO, Esq. 



Hadley, Barnet, 3d March 1871. 



The Hon. J. W. Strutt, son of Lord Kayleigh, and 

 senior wrangler in 1865, has been meddling with your 

 colours, and has given occasion also to me to do so again. 

 I send a selection of Natures containing him and me, and 

 my old contributions of last year, which, or one of which, 

 you say met Mr. Benson's approval. Strutt's last letter 

 ends with a sentence which obliged me to write to him 



1 An unfinished fragment of a new work on Electricity, in which 

 he treads more closely than ever in the steps of Faraday, has been 

 edited since his death by Mr. Garnett and published in 1881. 



