MEMOIR OF THE LATE ROBERT BALL, LL.D. 
7 
quence of a Return called for in Parliament. I have been for weeks 
together working twelve hours a day.” 
In December he was made Assistant Librarian and Keeper of Re¬ 
cords:—“This, I hope, will be more instructive than my present occu¬ 
pation ; my duty being to read, index, and make minutes of the several 
papers submitted to Government; and will afford opportunity for acquir¬ 
ing a very considerable knowledge of the State. Reing an improver 
and inventor of the index, has probably put me in for this.” 1832. “ I 
have not yet made up my mind about the College affair; it would cost 
me over £100 to enter as a Fellow-commoner and to take rooms in 
College. As I cannot muster that sum, this course cannot be taken, 
and it would take me several months’ preparation to enter as a Pen¬ 
sioner.” “I have credit in the new office as a clever machinist, hav¬ 
ing suggested a copying machine on a construction, I believe, entirely 
new; I obtained leave to have two of them made.” 
“As I have received no reward for extra labour, I have determined 
not to undertake more than my neighbours; I shall then have more 
time to myself, which. I may dispose of usefully in acquiring a profes¬ 
sion. J. W. is just about to sail for India as a surgeon to an Indiaman; 
this, though no great speculation, yet as possessing manly enterprise, 
and affording room for acquisition of knowledge, would be to me far 
preferable to drudging away life at a desk, for merely the means of 
existence.” 
In this year a consolidation of the different branches of the Chief 
Secretary’s Office took place, and to his surprise he found himself at the 
bottom of the new office, having eleven placed between him and a certain 
amount of salary, where only one had been before. This was a grievous 
injury, and he waited on Sir William Gosset, Under Secretary, who 
acknowledged the hardship, but said that a compensation for imme¬ 
diate injury was given by the better ultimate prospect of £800 per an¬ 
num. Thus he was again dissuaded from seeking a professional 
education. 
Neither office-work nor official vexations could quite chill his efforts. 
The mind would be at work; and a letter addressed to the very Rev. 
the Dean of St. Patrick’s contains the expression of opinions, which, 
though generally received now, were, a quarter of a century ago, re¬ 
garded as questionable. 
“I have often thought how much the cause of true religion would 
be strengthened by the support of science, in such cases as it is appli¬ 
cable to it, leaving the portions of Revelation that are beyond human 
reasoning to themselves. And much have I felt how it has suffered 
by attempts to make demonstrably true science bow to the letter , not the 
spirit of Scripture; a practice which I believe has often made the youth¬ 
ful philosopher an infidel, for, satisfied that his teacher is wrong in 
some instances, he is too apt to presume that he is wrong in all.” 
A letter to a relative (1833) says, in speaking of Kirby and Spence’s 
“Entomology:”—“The two first volumes may be read with interest even 
by that diseased creature , a novel-reader, provided the malady be not 
