iS53 HIS HABITS II3 



this), but that I was glad to be able to say that I had so much 

 unpublished material as to make me hopeful of one day dimin- 

 ishing the debt. I then said, " The Government of this country, 

 of this great country, has been two years debating whether it 

 should grant the three hundred pounds necessary for the pub- 

 lication of these researches. I have been too long used to strict 

 discipline to venture to criticise any act of my superiors, but 

 I venture to hope that before long, in consequence of the exer- 

 tions of Lord Rosse, of the President of the British Association, 

 and the goodwill, which I gratefully acknowledge, of the present 

 Lord of the Admiralty, I shall be able to lay before you some- 

 thing more worthy of to-day's award." 



I had my doubts how the nobs would take it, but both Lord 

 Rosse and Sabine warmly commended my speech and regretted 

 I had not said even more upon the subject. 



Some light is thrown upon his habits at this time by 

 the following, part of his letter to Forbes of November 

 19:— 



I have frequent visits from -. He is a good man, but 



direfuUy argumentative, and in that sense to me a bore. Be- 

 sides that, the creature will come and call upon me at nine or 

 ten o'clock in the morning before I am out of bed, or if out of 

 bed, before I am in possession of my faculties, which never 

 arrive before twelve or one. 



This morning incapacity was of a piece with his hatred 

 of the breakfast-party of the period. To go abroad from 

 home or to do any work before breakfasting ensured him a 

 headache for the rest of the day, so that he never was one 

 of those risers with the dawn who do half a day's work be- 

 fore the rest of the world is astir. And though necessity 

 often compelled him to do with less, he always found eight 

 hours his proper allowance of sleep. 



But in the end of 1853 we hear of a reform in his ways, 

 after a bad bout of ill-health, when he rises at eight, goes to 

 bed at twelve, and eschews parties of every kind as far as 

 possible, with excellent results as far as health went. 



After his marriage, however, and indeed to the begin- 

 ning of his last illness, he always rose early enough for an 

 eight o'clock breakfast, after which the working day began, 

 lasting regularly from a little after nine till midnight. 



