xxiv HIS METHOD OF WORK 



441 



of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. 

 The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and 

 grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it 

 often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything — look, 

 gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, care- 

 less of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless 

 the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory or what- 

 ever else — he had simplicity. The force was in the thought 

 and the diction, and he needed no other. The voice was rather 

 deep, low, but quite audible, at times sonorous, and always full. 

 He used the chest-notes. His manner here, in the presence of 

 this selectand rather limited audience — for the theatre of the 

 Royal Institution holds, I think, less than a thousand people — 

 was exactly the same as before a great company whom he ad- 

 dressed at (Liverpool), as President of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. I remember going late to 

 that, and having to sit far back, yet hearing every word easily ; 

 and there too the feeling was the same, that he had mastered 

 his audience, taken possession of them, and held them to the 

 end in an unrelaxing grip, as a great actor at his best does. 

 There was nothing of the actor about him, except that he knew 

 how to stand still, but masterful he ever was. 



Up to the time of his last illness, he regularly break- 

 fasted at eight, and avoided, as far as possible, going out 

 to that meal, a " detestable habit " as he called it, which put 

 him off for the whole day. He left the house about nine, 

 and from that time till midnight at earliest was incessantly 

 busy. His regular lectures involved an immensity of labour, 

 for he would never make a statement in them which he 

 had not personally verified by experiment. In the Jermyn 

 Street days he habitually made preparations to illustrate 

 the points on which he was lecturing, for his students had 

 no laboratory in which to work out the things for them- 

 selves. His lectures to working-men also involved as much 

 careful preparation as the more conspicuous discourses at 

 the Royal Institution. 



This thoroughness of preparation had no less effect on 

 the teacher than on the taught. He writes to an old pupil : — 



It is pleasant when the " bread cast upon the water " returns 

 after many days ; and if the crumbs given in my lectures have 



