420 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIII. 



Easter. Term without apprehending anything worse than 

 transient ill -health. He had taken with him Professor 

 Clifford's Lectures and Essays which he had been asked to 

 review. He had read them with close attention for the 

 purpose, and had then, at some time in the summer, prepared 

 to write his criticism. It was a difficult and delicate task, 

 he said, for " there were many things in the book that wanted 

 trouncing, and yet the trouncing had to be done with 

 extreme care and gentleness, Clifford was such a nice fellow." 

 As soon as he tried to begin, his brain refused its office, and 

 he found himself incapable of composition ; and then he 

 knew that his illness had become serious. 



Something, I forget what, led the conversation to the 

 perilousness of strong religious excitement in early youth, on 

 account of the spiritual exhaustion and permanent religious 

 insensibility that are apt to follow the dying-out of the 

 original fervour, and that derive a plausible justification 

 from the premature and fallacious experience. He spoke 

 with thankfulness of his own escape from a similar danger. 

 " The ferment," he said, " about the Free Church movement 

 had one very bad effect. Quite young people were carried 

 away by it ; and when the natural reaction came, they 

 ceased to think about religious matters at all, and became 

 unable to receive fresh impressions. My father was so 

 much afraid of this, that he placed me where I should be 

 under the influence of Dean Ramsay, knowing him to be a 

 good and sensible man. 



" My father was an advocate. This added much to his 

 usefulness in the country. He was always fond of inventing 

 plans for country houses ; his note-books shew that he did 

 this as early as when he was twelve years old. He wanted 

 to build his house on a scale suited to what he thought he 

 would require as sheriff, and had so built a small part of it 

 when he died. We afterwards completed it, as far as pos- 

 sible according to his idea, but on a much smaller scale. 

 He had wished me to be an advocate ; but I never attended 

 law classes, as by that time it had already become apparent 

 that my tastes lay in another direction. Moreover, he looked 



