liv 



the shape of a paper before it is worth speaking of ; and after that it is 

 astonishing how fast I forget it again ; so that I have to read up again 

 and again my own recent communications, and may well fear that, as regards 

 others, I do not do them justice. However, I try to avoid such subjects 

 as other philosophers are working at, and for that reason have nothing im- 

 portant in hand just now. I have been working hard, but nothing of value 

 has come of it." 



Two months later he writes to Professor Schonbein from Brighton : — 

 " I am here sleeping, eating, and lying fallow, that I may have sufficient 

 energy to give half a dozen juvenile Christmas lectures. The fact is, I 

 have been working very hard for a long time to no satisfactory end. All 

 the answers I have obtained from nature have been in the negative ; and 

 though they show the truth of nature as much as affirmative answers, yet 

 they are not so encouraging ; and so for the present I am quite worn out. 

 I wish I possessed some of your points of character ; I will not say which, 

 for I do not know where the list might end, and you might think me simply 

 absurd, and, besides that, ungrateful to providence." 



ML 61 (1853). 



Early in the year he gave a Friday discourse on observations on the Mag- 

 netic Force, and he gave the last lecture of the season on MM. Boussingault, 

 Fremy, and Becquerel's experiments on oxygen. 



He gave five reports to the Trinity House — on a comparison of the French 

 lens and Chance's lens ; on the lightning-rods at Eddystone and Bishop's 

 Lighthouses ; on the ventilation of St. Catherine and the Needles Light- 

 houses, and that at Cromer ; and on fog-signals. A Company was formed 

 to carry out Watson's electric light, but no trial of it took place. 



In June he sent to the Athenseum an experimental investigation of table- 

 moving. At the end he says, " I must bring this long description to a 

 close. I am a little ashamed of it, for I think in the present age and in 

 this part of the world it ought not to have been required. Nevertheless I 

 hope it may be useful. There are many whom I do not expect to convince, 

 but I may be allowed to say that I cannot undertake to answer such objec- 

 tions as may be made. I state my own convictions as an experimental 

 philosopher, and find it no more necessary to enter into controversy on this 

 point than on any other in science (as the nature of matter, or inertia, or 

 the magnetization of light) on which I may differ from others. The world 

 will decide sooner or later in all such cases, and I have no doubt very soon 

 and correctly in the present instance." 



A month later he writes to Professor Schonbein : — 



" I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon the table- 

 turners. Nor should I have done that, but that so many inquiries poured 

 in upon me that I thought it better to stop the inpouring flood by letting 

 all know at once what my views and thoughts were. What a weak, cre- 

 dulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a 



