46 JAMES CLEHK MAXWELL 



he bad applied for the post. He knew the old man 

 would be glad to see him the occupant of a Scotch 

 chair. He hoped, too, to be able to live with his 

 father at Glenlair for one half the year; but this was 

 not to bo. No doubt the laboratory and the freedom 

 of the post, when compared with the routine work 

 of preparing men for the Tripos, had their induce- 

 ments ; still, it may bo doubted if the choice was 

 a wise one for him. The work of drilling classes, 

 composed, for the most part, of raw untrained lads, 

 in the elements of physics and mechanics was, as 

 Niven says in his preface to the collected works, not 

 that for which he was best fitted; while at Cambridge, 

 had ho stayed, lie must always have had among his 

 pupils some of the best mathematicians of the time ; 

 and he might have founded some ten or fifteen years 

 before he did that Cambridge School of Physicists 

 which looks back with so much pride to him as their 

 master. 



Leave-taking at Trinity was a sad task. Ho 

 writes* thus, June 4th, to .Air. K. H. Litchtield: 



44 On Thursday evening I tike the North- Western route to 

 the North. I atn busy looking over immense rubbish of 

 papers, etc., for some things not to 1x3 burnt lie among much 

 combustible matter, and some is soft and good for packing. 



"It is not pleasant to go down to live solitary, but it would 

 not be pleasant to stay up either, when all one had to do lay 

 elsewhere. The transition state from a man into a Don must 

 come at last, and it must be painful, like gradual outrootingof 

 nerves. When it is done there is no more pain, but occasional 

 reminders from some surkers, tap-roots, or other remnants of 

 the old nerves, just to sliuw what wjis there and what might; 

 have been." 



* Ufu of J. C. Maxwell," i>. 250, 



