AND MODERN PHYSIOS. 33 



few, but believe me they come from the heart You know, 

 brethren, with what an eager pride we follow the fortunes of 

 those whom we have loved and reverenced in our under- 

 graduate days. We may soe them but seldom, few letters may 

 pasa between us, but their names are never common names. 

 They never l>ecomo to us only what other men are. When 

 I came up to Trinity twenty-eight years ago, James Clerk 

 Maxwell was just beginning his second year. His position 

 among us I apeak in the presence of many who rememl>er 

 that timewas unique. He was the one acknowledged man 

 of genius among the undergraduates. We understood even 

 then that, though barely of age, he was in his own line of 

 inquiry not a beginner but a mister. His name was already 

 n familiar niimo to men of science. If he lived, it was certain 

 that he was one of that urn all but nacre* ! band to whom it 

 would bo given to enlarge the bounds of human knowledge. 

 It was a position which might have turned the head of a 

 smaller man ; but the friend of whom wo were all so proud, 

 and who seemed, as it were, to link us thus early with the 

 great outaide world of the pioneers of knowledge, had one of 

 those rich and lavish natures which no prosperity can im- 

 poverish, and which make faith in goodness easy for others. I 

 have often thought that those who never knew the grand old 

 Adam Sedgwick and the then young and ever-youthful Clerk 

 Maxwell had yet to learn the largeness and fulness of the 

 moulds in which some choice natures are framed. Of the 

 scientific greatness of our friend we were most of us unable to 

 judge ; but anyone could see and admire the boy-like glee, the 

 joyous invention, the wide reading, the eager thirst for truth, 

 the subtle thought, the perfect temper, the unfailing reverence, 

 the singular absence of any taint of the breath of worldliness 

 in any of its thousand forms. 



44 Brethren, you may know such men now among your college 

 friend*, though there can be but few in any year, or indeed in 

 any century, that possess the rare genius of the man whom wo 

 deplore. If it be so, then, if you will accept the counsel of a 

 stranger, thank God for His gift. Believe mo when I tell you 

 that few such blessings will come to you in later life. There 



