RETURN TO OAKFIELD. I43 



career, but which, by confirming" his naturally retiring dis- 

 position, deterred him from taking the prominent place in 

 the republic of science, which the recognition of his work 

 was now beginning to thrust upon him. 



Holding no office or post which necessitated his exerting 

 himself, he had only his experimental work to divert his 

 attention from his loss, and this he seems to have been 

 unable to pursue for more than a year. He gave up his 

 house in Acton Square, and returned with his children to 

 his father's house, Oakfleld, on October 19th, to reside. 

 At his father's house he had the society of his brochers. 

 Writing to the author, Mr. B. St. J. B. Joule says : 

 " The death of his wife affected my brother very much, 

 but when he had left the house and rejoined us at 

 Oakfield, his previous condition was pretty well regained." 

 Greatly as this complete retirement of Joule was to be 

 regretted, it could not prevent the rapid growth of his 

 fame. 



In 1855 Joule's discoveries were already before the elect 

 of science. Rankine, Thomson, and Clausius had virtually 

 completed their development of the mathematical theory of 

 Thermo-dynamics and its application to the principal 

 problems in physics and heat engines, and their papers, 

 together with Joule's, in the transactions of the several 

 societies, were published all over the world. Rankine's 

 article "Heat, the Mechanical Action of," in Nichols' 

 Encyclopedia, the first formal treatise on Thermo-dynamics, 

 was already written. Clausius and Boltzman had com- 

 menced the development of the modern dynamical theory 

 of gases from Joule's extension of Herapath's theory. 



Honours are now beginning to fall thick on Joule, who 



was elected Hon. Member of the Cambridge Philosophical 



