412 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIII. 



complaining tone. In the midst of them his thoughts and 

 consideration were rather for others than for himself. 



Neither did the approach of death disturb his habitual 

 composure. Before leaving Glenlair he had learnt from 

 Prof. Sanders that he had not more than about a month 

 to live. A few days before his death he asked me (Dr. 

 Paget) how much longer he could last. The inquiry was 

 made with the most perfect calmness. He wished to live 

 until the expected arrival from Edinburgh of his friend and 

 relative Mr. Colin Mackenzie. His only anxiety seemed to 

 be about his wife, whose health had for a few years been 

 delicate, and had recently become worse. He had been 

 to her for some time the most tender and assiduous of 

 nurses. An hour only before his death, when, through 

 extreme bodily weakness, his voice was reduced to a whisper 

 so feeble that it could be heard only when the ear was held 

 close to his mouth, the words whispered to Dr. Paget related 

 not to himself but to Mrs. Maxwell. 



His intellect also remained clear and apparently unim- 

 paired to the last. While his bodily strength was ebbing 

 away to death, his mind never once wandered or wavered, 

 but remained clear to the very end. No man ever met 

 death more consciously or more calmly. 1 



On November 5 he gently passed away. 



1 Dr. J. W. Lorraine of Castle-Douglas, in a letter addressed to Dr. 

 Paget, and dated 5th October 1879, remarks as follows concerning his 

 patient : " I must say he is one of the best men I have ever met, and 

 a greater merit than his scientific attainments is his being, so far as 

 human judgment can discern, a most perfect example of a Christian 

 gentleman." This remark, Dr. Paget observes, " is a very unusual one 

 in a letter from one physician to another." Dr. Paget also says in 

 writing to Mr. Garnett : " There is a deep interest in the fact of 

 how such a man as Maxwell met the trials of sickness, and the 

 approach of death. They are severe tests of amiability and unselfish- 

 ness, and of the genuineness of religious convictions. It is some- 

 thing to say of a man that his unselfishness and composure remained 

 undisturbed, and it is interesting physiologically and psychologically, 

 that in the very extremity of bodily weakness, when the nourishment 



