CHAP. XIII.] PROFESSOR HORT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 419 



The testimony of his unshaken faith to Christian truth was, 

 I venture to think, of exceptional value on account of his 

 freedom from the mental dualism often found in distinguished 

 men who are absorbed chiefly in physical inquiries. It 

 would have been alien to his whole nature to seclude any 

 province of his beliefs from the free exercise of whatever 

 faculties he possessed ; and in his eyes every subject had its 

 affinities with the rest of the universal truth. His strong 

 sense of the vastness of the world not now accessible to 

 human powers, and of the partial nature of all human modes 

 of apprehension, seemed to enlarge for him the domain of 

 reasonable belief. Thus in later years it was a favourite 

 thought of his that the relation of parts to wholes pervades 

 the invisible no less than the visible world, and that be- 

 neath the individuality which accompanies our personal life 

 there lies hidden a deeper community of being as well as of 

 feeling and action. But no one could be less of a dreamer, 

 or less capable of putting either fancies or wishes in the 

 place of sober reality. In mind, as in speech, his veracity was 

 thorough and resolute : he carried into every thought a 

 perfect fidelity to the divine proverb which hung beside yet 

 more sacred verses on the wall of his private room, " The 

 lip of truth shall be established for ever." 



During Maxwell's last illness I had the privilege of 

 enjoying two conversations with him ; and not long after- 

 wards I put on paper a short and desultory record of some 

 of his words. These notes contain nothing that might not 

 with propriety be brought under other eyes, and therefore I 

 venture to quote them here. Most of what passed on these 

 two occasions presented nothing worthy of remark, unless it 

 be the cheerful naturalness with which Maxwell spoke on all 

 the varied topics that happened to come up before us. His 

 thoughts had evidently been mainly taking a retrospective 

 direction; and every interest of life seemed to be hallowed 

 and brightened by the probable nearness of the Divine sum- 

 mons to a new form of existence. 



He told me briefly the story of his illness ; how he had 

 been ailing all the year, but had gone northward after 



