May 4, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



361 



scientific genius live to a mature old age, will 

 alwaj-s be considered important ones. 



Maxwell was fortunate in possessing a father 

 who earlj^ perceived the genius of his son, and 

 directed his mind toward the stud.y of mathe- 

 matics and physics. He was also fortunate in 

 springing from a race in which ability seemed 

 to be hereditary. ' The Clerks ' for two centu- 

 ries had been associated with all that was most 

 distinguished in the northern kingdom, from 

 Drummond of Hawthornden to Sir Walter 

 Scott. John Clerk, the father of James Clerk 

 Maxwell, the subject of the present sketch, 

 succeeded to the property of Middlebie, which 

 descended to liini from his grandmother, Doro- 

 thea, Lady Clerk Maxwell, and assumed the 

 name of Maxwell. It is related of him, that 

 he took the greatest interest in science, es- 

 pecially in practical science. In a letter to his 

 son, then at Cambridge, who proposed to spend 

 the Easter holidaj's at Birmingham, he wrote, 

 " View, if you can, armorers, gun-making and 

 gnn-proving, sword-making and proving, pa- 

 pier-mache and japanning, silver plating by 

 cementation and rolling, ditto electrotype, Elk- 

 ington's works, braziers' works bj' founding 

 and by striking out in dies, turning, spinning 

 teapot bodies in white metal, making buttons 

 of sorts, steel pens, needles, pins, and any sorts 

 of small articles which are cunningl}' done by 

 subdivision of labor and by ingenious tools. 

 Glass of sorts is among the works of the place, 

 and all kinds of foundr}'- works, engine-making, 

 tools and instruments, optical and [philosoph- 

 ical], both coarse and fine." 



His acme of festivit3' was to go with a boon 

 friend to a meeting of the Edinburgh ro^'al 

 society. It is said by those who knew both 

 parents, that the element of praeticalitv entered 

 verj' largely into their natures. The fine spirit 

 of genius, the great imaginati^'e powers, were 

 not especially evident in them. Perhaps if the 

 father had had the speculative mind of the son, 

 he might have turned him toward philosophy 

 and literature. The possession, in the father, 

 of great interest in practical and useful pro- 

 cesses, doubtless influenced the son's future. 



At an early age Maxwell showed that he in- 

 herited the curiosity of his father in regard to 

 machines and the phenomena of nature. It is 

 related, that, when he was two years and ten 

 months old, "he has great works with door- 

 locks, kej-s, etc. ; and ' Show me how it doos ' 

 is never out of his mouth." Throughout his 

 childhood his constant question was, ' What's 

 the go o' that? ' He was espeeialh'' interested 

 in colors. 'That (sand) stone is red; this 

 (whin) stone is blue.' — ' But how d'ye know 



it's blue? ' His aunt, Miss Caj', was heard to 

 remai'k "that it was humiliating to be asked 

 so many questions one could not answer, hj a 

 child like that." The picture given of the bo3''s 

 pursuits — his great activity- of bodj'' and mind ; 

 his delight in nature's moods ; his love for the 

 deep brown of the brook, the shifting play of 

 light -on the foliage, the colors of the wander- 

 ing clouds ; his moods of lying on his back, 

 watching the clouds, and ' wondering ' — shows 

 the boy as father of the man. On stormy da^'s 

 he read voraciously everj- book within his reach, 

 or spent his time in drawing, or inventing 

 curious combinations of colors. The speci- 

 mens of his earlj' drawings show that he had 

 an accurate eye, which might have made him an 

 artist of fair talent. At the age of ten his 

 tutor pronounced him slow to learn, probably 

 judging him by old scholastic methods, which 

 were ill fitted to bring out the child's tastes ; 

 and his father accordingh^ placed him at the 

 academy' in Edinburgh. Here the boy, who 

 had been brought up apart from other boj's, 

 and had been accustomed to ' gang his own 

 gate ' with youthful fancies unridiculed by 

 the average uupoetical schoolboy, was much 

 persecuted at first by his school-fellows, who 

 were amused hy his singular clothes and broad 

 accent. He gradually made a place for him- 

 self, however, and discovered that Latin was 

 worth learning, and Greek very interesting. It 

 is related that he took the foremost place in 

 Scripture biographj- and in English. In arith- 

 metic, as well as in Latin, his comparative 

 want of readiness kept him down. At the age 

 of thirteen he remarks in a letter, "I have 

 made a tetralredron and a dodecahedron, and 

 two otlier hedrons whose names I don't know." 

 At this time he had not begun geometrj- ; ^-et 

 he had discovered for himself the nature of the 

 five regular solids, and had also constructed out 

 of pasteboard other symmetrical polyhedra. 



His sense of humor is early apparent. In 

 one of his letters, written at the age of eleven, 

 he writes concerning his place in the class, 

 " Talking about places, I am fourteen to-day, 

 but I hope to get up. Ovid prophesies ver^' well 

 when the thing is over, but lately he has proph- 

 esied a victory which never came to pass." 

 He enjoyed writing letters with c:urious illus- 

 trations drawn with pen on the margins, and 

 subscribed himself -Jas. Alex. McMerkwell. 

 an anagram of his name. In one of these 

 letters there is the first inkling of his poetic 

 taste : "I made four lines of Latin one week. 

 . . . But I am not going to try for the prize, 

 as, when I lithp in numberth, it ith but a 

 lithp, for the numberth do not come. . . . 



