AND MODERN PHYSICS. 53 



statements/ breaking off with sorao quirk of ironical 

 humour/' 



But teaching is not all dono by lecturing. His 

 books and papers are vast storehouses of suggestions 

 and ideas which the ablest minds of the past twenty 

 years have been since developing. To talk with him 

 for an hour was to gain inspiration for a year's work ; 

 to see his enthusiasm and to win his praise or 

 commendation were enough to compensate for many 

 weary struggles over some stubborn piece of apparatus 

 which would Jiot go right, or some small source of 

 error which threatened to prove intractable and 

 declined to submit itself to calculation. The sure 

 judgment of posterity will confirm the verdict that 

 Clerk Maxwell was a great teacher, though lecturing 

 to a crowd of untrained undergraduates was a task 

 for which others were better fitted than he, 



