14 JAMES CLEIIK MAXWELL 



wanting the skirt, his neat trill rumpled and torn 

 himself excessively amused by his experiences and 

 showing not the slightest sign of irritation/ 1 



No. 31, Heriot Ko\v, was the house of his widowed 

 aunt, Mrs. Wedderburn, Mr. Maxwell's sister ; and 

 this, with occasional intervals when he was with Miss 

 Cay, was his home for the next eight or nine years. 

 Mr. Maxwell himself, during this period, spent much 

 of his time in Edinburgh, living with his sister during 

 most of the winter and returning to Glenbur for the 

 spring and summer. 



Much of what we know of Clerk Maxwell's life 

 during this period comes from the letters which 

 passed between him and his father. They tell us of 

 the close intimacy and aftection which existed be- 

 tween the two, of the boy's eager desire to please and 

 amuse his father in the dull solitude of Glenlmr, and 

 his father's anxiety for his welfare and progress. 



Professor Campbell was his schoolfellow, and 

 records events of those years in which he shared, 

 which bring clearly before us wfyat Clerk Maxwell 

 w;ts like. Thus he writes * : 



"He came to know Swift ami Dryden, and after a while 

 Ho1>bes, and Butler's 4 Hudibras.' Then, if his father was in 

 Edinburgh, they walked together, es|ecially on the Saturday 

 half-holiday, and 'viewed* Leith Fort, or the preparations for 

 the Granton railway, or the stratification of Salisbury Crags 

 always learning something new, and winning ideas for im- 

 agination to feed ujjon. One Saturday, February 12, 1H42, he 

 had a sjiecial treat, being taken *to see electro-magnetic 

 machines, 1 " 



" Life of J. C. Maxwell," p. 52. 



