contemptuous. A freak of his displayed in the Logic election was repeated on this occasion. He was in the habit of telling candidates that every one of the electing professors was at the beck and call of some great man through whom their vote could be gained. To me he mentioned this fact in a general sort of way; to others of the candidates he named the parties in question. Two of the Chairs -Latin and Civil History - being in the patronage of noblemen, the Duke of Portland and the Marquis of Ailsa, these might be naturally suggested as the medium of influencing the holders of those Chairs. But for the rest who were not dependent on private patrons, he had some distinguished official or politician that was to serve the same purpose. A letter from Dr. Reid to Thomas Clark explained the prospects, to the following effect :-" The election is to take place in three weeks, and Sir David Brewster has threatened that unless he is satisfied with the person elected, he will insist upon a comparative and positive trial of the candidates. There are some old Acts upon the mode of electing professors, in which such modes of testing the merits of professors are mentioned, forming capital subjects for a law-suit. As one at least of the two candidates with whom Sir David has indicated he would be satisfied, stands well with a majority of the electors, I suspect that the electors to avoid all the inconveniences of comparative and positive examinations, especially when they have such a crotchety, litigious and troublesome person to deal with as our worthy Head, will yield to his wishes on this occasion, and give him one of the men he wants. I wish Mr. Bain had been the object of his choice."

It seems that the Senatus had resolved to offer the Chair to Adams of Cambridge, the celebrated discoverer of the planet Neptune,-who, however, declined.

Spalding wrote to Dr. Cruickshank a full account of the causes of failure.

ST. ANDREWS CHAIR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 193

It was on the occasion of this canvass that I made the acquaintance of Professor Ferrier. He was then in his prime, and hard at work on the execution of his philosophical scheme as it appeared in the Institutes of Metaphysic. Among other topics of conversation, he dwelt upon his attempts to understand the system of Hegel, but professed himself unable to comprehend the author's drift in speaking of "being and not-being as the same". The essential relativity of all knowledge, and the necessity of assigning to each proposition affirmed a counter proposition denied, made the very essence and framework of the Institutes; but there was evidently nothing corresponding to this in the Hegelian coupling of the opposites being and not-being, in spite of a certain semblance of agreement. Ferrier, himself a rhetorician of the first order, was greatly impressed by the fine rhetorical strokes that he encountered in Hegel. Some of these he repeated to me; one especially I remember to this effect-Alluding to the displacement of philosophical systems by the constant arrival of fresh competitors, he gave the expression of St. Peter on the death of Ananias, "The feet of them that are to carry thee out also are already at the door". I never met Ferrier again until I went to St. Andrews in 1860, when he had as good as finished his career, his health being utterly wrecked and his end not far off.

On returning from St. Andrews to Rothesay, I spent a night with Nichol at his residence in the Observatory. This was notable from the circumstance that De Quincey came on a visit, which afforded me my only opportunity of meeting him. I had just seen him in Edinburgh walking out of doors; but this interview gave me some definite notion of how he appeared in conversation. It was a winter day, and he had been shown into the drawingroom, which was only pipe-heated. On Nichol fetching him into the snug parlour where we had breakfasted, his

first remark was that the fine drawing-room was a palace of ice. This he said in a deep hollow tone of voice, not devoid of music.

Summer of 1847.

As soon as my lectures were over, I went to London, and remained there until near the end of August; my principal occupation being the Chambers's treatises. I also read the two first volumes of Grote's History, published the previous year. I spent an interesting Sunday at Kew Observatory where Welsh was keeper, and got useful facts in connexion with Electricity, as well as Meteorology. The Astronomy must have been finished during my London stay. In it, I followed the plan given by Auguste Comte in his popular treatise, and made an acknowledgment to that effect in the preface; but, when Dr. Cruickshank saw the book, he told me that he had followed the same plan as regards the geometrical astronomy, and had borrowed it from Brinkley's Astronomy. On the recommendation of Graham, I took Becquerel as my authority for Electricity, and was engaged upon it when I left London in the last week of August. I spent a fortnight at Bowness in Westmoreland, working on the subject, and had for recreation the extremely interesting volume,

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recently translated, of Goethe's correspondence with Schiller. My next destination was Edinburgh in the first week of September, where I took up my abode for nearly three months, occupied with the Chambers's treatises. During that stay, I entered upon a further engagement to write for the Information for the People the numbers Language, Logic, and the Human Mind.

The Chambers connexion led also to some elaborate reviews for the Journal. One, prepared at the same time as the Natural Philosophy treatises, was on a volume of the Ray Society, entitled Oken's Physio-Philosophy. This volume

I examined very minutely as a specimen of the mysticism of an able thinker on physical biological science. It was distinguished by a few brilliant analogical discoveries, including the well-known homologies of the vertebrate skeleton. Long afterwards, at a meeting of the Aristotelian Society, I had to compare it favourably with Hegel's physical speculations, on which a paper was read by Mr. Alexander. My notice appeared in the Journal, on 5th February, 1848.

Early in December, I went to London and paid a visit of a few days to Clark at Rothesay, having no thought of anything in the way of occupation but the Chambers's engagements. My first task was to prepare another article for the Journal on

De Morgan's Formal Logic, to which I devoted a week's study. (Printed 11th March, 1848.) It was, of course, a very valuable contribution to my stock of logical knowledge.

Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, 1847-48.

Towards the end of December, 1847, I was asked by Mr. Edwin Chadwick to examine and digest a number of returns connected with the work of the Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, then recently appointed, and pushed on with Chadwick's peculiar energy. Already he had succeeded in inducing the Government to supersede the old Sewers Commissions of the Metropolis, seven in number, and to nominate a fresh body, which, by a fiction, took the whole into its own hands, Chadwick himself being the virtual leader. The returns that I had to deal with were furnished by the police, and had the character of sanitary evidence, which Chadwick wished to manipulate for his own purpose. I drew up a summary and report of the conclusions that he wanted. I began the operation in my lodgings, going down every afternoon to talk with him at the office of the Commission. Very soon, he asked me to take up my quarters at the office and do the