The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons.
• Chapter I.: 1835–1851.
• Chapter II.: 1851–1854.
• Chapter III.: 1854–1859.
• Chapter IV.: 1859.
• Chapter V.: 1859–1859.
• Chapter VI.: 1863–1863.
• Chapter VII.: 1866–1866.
• Chapter VIII.: 1868–1872.
• Chapter IX.: 1872–1874.
• Chapter X.: 1874–1876.
• Chapter XI.: 1876–1880.
• Chapter XII.: 1880–1882.
• Appendix A.
• Letter From H. R. Grenfell, Esq.
• To H. R. Grenfell, Esq.
• Appendix B.: Mr. Jevons' Writings.

CHAPTER VIII.

1868–1872.

After his marriage Mr. Jevons took a short tour with his wife to several of the cathedral towns in the south-west of England. He had a double attraction in visiting cathedrals, for, besides his enjoyment of the musical services, church architecture was a subject of much interest to him. Early in January they returned to the north, and spent a few weeks at Bowdon in Cheshire, until the house which Mr. Jevons had engaged, No. 36 Parsonage Road, Withington, was ready to receive them.

To his brother Herbert.

Parsonage Road, Withington, Manchester, 18th April 1868.

“We are now pretty well settled in our new house, and are enjoying a quiet Easter holiday at home, than which nothing can be more pleasant We get breakfast about 9 A.M., then I work till 1.30 P.M. dinner; then a little more work till 4 P.M. Then we have a little gardening or a walk out till 6.30, and about 8 P.M. we have a little more work. Harriet does a great quantity of work for me, especially copying and arithmetical work, which relieves and helps me much. Our house satisfies us in nearly every way. It is very convenient and cheerful, and quite large enough. We have also a nice-sized garden, which I have begun to cultivate with considerable vigour. It furnishes me with a kind of exercise I have long wanted.

“I find a great deal to do between the engagements of married life and those of college, in addition to my own work. On the 13th March I gave a lecture to the Royal Institution, London, on the Coal Question, which went off tolerably well, as I am told. I have also given a lecture1 to some Trades' Unionists in Manchester, although very few came. I will, in a little time, send you copies of them.

“Next week I have to go to London to give evidence before the Commission on International Currency, and I am busy getting up a variety of things about coins.”

On the 24th April Mr. Jevons went to London and gave evidence before the Royal Commission on International Coinage; and soon afterwards he read a paper to the Manchester Statistical Society on the “International Monetary Convention, and the Introduction of an International Currency into this Kingdom.” About the same time he was appointed examiner in political economy in the University of London.

To his brother Herbert.

Parsonage Road, Withington, Manchester, 23d June 1868.

“We are now at the end of the session, the distribution [of prizes] taking place on Friday next. … I have been very busily engaged, the last two or three weeks, on my logical machine, having begun a new one altogether. I have now got it to work fairly, and there can be no doubt of my finishing it with success, although many little troubles arise in a new form of mechanism. I am thinking of exhibiting it—with a paper—to the Royal Society next session. The machine works in a few moments any logical problems involving no more than four distinct terms or things. It will be in appearance like a large accordion, or a very small piano, and has twenty-one keys, exactly like white piano keys.”

Early in July, Mr. Jevons took his wife to visit his sister, Lucy (Mrs. Hutton), at Clynnog in North Wales; after spending a week there they went to stay at a farm-house near Beddgelert.

To his sister Lucy.

Castell, Nant Gwynant, Beddgelert, 16th July 1868.

“We have established ourselves here very rapidly and easily, and are well pleased with what we see of the place as yet. The house is on the opposite side of Nant Gwynant to what I expected, but it is delightfully situated, so that Snowdon is straight before our windows. The clouds have cleared sufficiently to let us see the lower slopes, and as far as I can judge as yet, it is one of the most beautiful places we could have met with. The people here consist of a fine old man and a grown-up family of sons, and one daughter. If further acquaintance confirms my first impressions, we shall be lucky. As this is a farm with plenty of grass about, we shall have as much milk and eggs and poultry as we want, and we can send for meat to Beddgelert. A postman calls daily. … There is every prospect of our having a quiet time here.

“It is not easy to describe this place, but it stands among broken hills, some of them covered with woods. The house is just high enough to give us the feeling of being in the open mountain air. There is hardly another house in sight from the windows, but there is a sort of gentleman's house lower down among the woods, and in the bottom of the valley is Plas Gwynant, apparently a handsome residence.

“I am going to set to a little work now.

“Friday Morning.—This morning Snowdon is clear of clouds, and looks very fine, although we do not get quite the best view of him. We seem to be surrounded on all sides by peaks of hills; Moel Hebog, Moel Siabod, Iran, Lliwedd, seem to surround us with an infinity of lesser hills.”

To his brother Herbert.

Castell, Beddgelert, 24th July 1868.

“I wrote pretty fully to you from Clynnog a week or two ago, but as I have since got your letter about gold refining, I write again without delay. I may say, first, that just a week ago we left Clynnog after a week's stay, and came to lodgings at a sort of farm-house in Nant Gwynant, four miles from Beddgelert. It is about half a mile off the main road, up the hills opposite to Snowdon, so that we have a splendid view of the mountain just opposite our windows. For miles round the house, too, there is a beautiful succession of hills and rocks, from any of which you get a new and charming view. On the whole, I think this is the most charming place to stay at I ever saw, and I hope we may have four or five weeks here. A day or two ago Harriet and I climbed a high hill, or mountain, two miles or so, at the rear of the house where we were, at the head of the Dolwyddelan valley, and had a grand view, not only of the whole of that valley, but of nearly all the Welsh mountains. This afternoon we walked up Nant Gwynant nearly to Pen y Gwryd. We live here in a somewhat primitive way, chiefly upon milk and eggs and bread. Even our supplies of bread are rather precarious, but our lodgings are comfortable.”

Whilst the afternoons were devoted to long walks or excursions, the mornings were chiefly spent in work. He was engaged in preparing his paper “On the Condition of the Metallic Currency of the United Kingdom,” with the arithmetical work of which he made great progress during his stay at Castell. It was only occasionally that he would give himself a day's holiday. One of these was spent in the ascent of Snowdon, which he thus describes, in a letter dated the 4th August, to his sister Lucy:—

“Last Saturday we carried out our intended ascent of Snowdon, after waiting a good many days for suitable weather. We were very fortunate, for besides a fine view of nearly the whole of North Wales, we saw Ireland very clearly, both the Wicklow mountains and the More mountains to the north, also the Isle of Man. The clouds were also very beautiful at times. We are now planning an expedition to the top of the neighbouring hills to see the sun rise.

“The weather is so intensely hot that we hardly do anything out of doors now but bathe—for which we have a very pretty pool in the river close by. …”

In describing the ascent of Snowdon to his sister, Mr. Jevons did not tell her that, to shorten the descent, he proposed to his wife to return down the side of the mountain opposite to Castell instead of by one of the regular paths. He had so accurately observed the mountain from below that he was sure he could find a way unattended by any difficulty or danger, and the result proved him correct; for, having lingered to watch the sunset, but a short distance from the summit, they reached the foot of the mountain before it was really dark.

Ten days later, this holiday was sadly ended by the sudden death of Mrs. Jevons's eldest sister, which recalled them to Manchester. The next three weeks were spent at home, after which the advisability of a little more change before the college session commenced induced them to pay a brief visit to the Isle of Man.

To his sister Henrietta.

Beach House, Ramsay, IsleofMan, Sunday, 6th September 1868.

“We have now got comfortably settled here for a few days, in a spacious house just on the beach, with wide bay windows, which give a fine view of the sea. When the tide goes down there are beautiful sands in front of the house; a quarter of a mile off fine rocky cliffs begin. There is also a good hill within a mile of the house, and, within three miles, a mountain called North Baroole, quite as high as Gern Didn, which we hope to ascend in a day or two. When we left Liverpool on Friday the weather was exceedingly fine, but out at sea a breeze sprang up with a nasty sea, which made many passengers ill. We got to Douglas about sunset, but preferred coming on to this quieter place, which we reached some time after dark. It is more like Beaumaris than any other place I have seen, but it is perhaps more dirty and irregular, and has not so good an hotel as the Bulkeley Arms. But the shore and the sea are beautifully clean, and very unlike the dirty irregular shore at Beaumaris. The bathing machines are very near the house, and we have both of us had a dip already. … We shall probably go on to the other parts of the island, which promises to be pretty and interesting, though, of course, there is nothing here to compare in grandeur with the neighbourhood of Snowdon.”

During their stay at Ramsay Mr. Jevons completed, and read to his wife, three articles, in which he pointed out some of the inconsistencies and contradictions which occur between different parts of Mill's System of Logic. These articles were sent to the editor of one of the leading magazines, and on his declining to publish them, Mr. Jevons laid them aside to be made use of on a future occasion.

To his brother Herbert.

Parsonage Road, Withington, Manchester, 20th November 1868.

“… I have just been one of my journeys to London, to read a paper to the Statistical Society on the Gold Currency. It is the result of a rather elaborate inquiry during the past nine months, which has proved rather successful, and is likely to prove useful, I think. I have some hope that when Mr. Gladstone is Premier, with a great majority at his back, he may give some attention to the subject.

“… These journeys rather knock me up. I had three classes on Monday afternoon and evening, went to London on Tuesday morning, read the paper in the evening, and back on Wednesday for two classes in the evening. Now, a thing of this sort knocks me up for the rest of the week.

“About a month ago I gave two lectures, on successive evenings, at Newcastle, on coal, with fair audiences, but this thoroughly knocked me up. I cannot say my health is bad, but I have to take great care of myself, drink port wine occasionally, and take things as easily as possible. I never hear any complaints from you now, and hope that your health is stronger.

“I cannot tell you how happy Harriet and I are together … so that I am altogether better off than I had any right to expect in this world.”

In this paper on the condition of the Metallic Currency Mr. Jevons adopted a novel and ingenious method of estimating the amount of gold coinage in circulation in the United Kingdom, and his estimate was at once accepted as probably the most accurate that had been ever made. He also strongly pointed out the need for a re-coinage, owing to the defective weight of so many of the sovereigns and half-sovereigns. The paper was illustrated by two large diagrams which he had drawn himself.

After his marriage Mr. Jevons was not quite so averse to going into society as he had previously been, but he had neither inclination nor time to spare for much of it. He liked far better to have a friend or two at his own house for a quiet talk on some of the many subjects which interested him. He was a very good listener, and always gave attentive consideration to any objections raised by a companion to his own view of whatever subject they were discussing.

The evening classes at Owens College occupied two evenings a week during the winter, and when he needed recreation, what he most enjoyed was to attend one of Hallé's delightful concerts. In February and March 1869 he gave a course of lectures on political economy to working men at Hyde, near Manchester. Some influential gentlemen of that neighbourhood desired that a course of such lectures should be given, and when they asked Mr. Jevons' help he would not refuse it, for no one felt more strongly than he did the need of extending the teaching of political economy to the working classes. But these evening lectures once a week, at such a distance from home, in addition to his evenings at Owens College, proved an unwise tax upon his strength.

Having been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the pressure of taxation upon different classes of the people, Mr. Jevons sent to him, on the 13th March, a report, which he had prepared with much care. The result of his inquiries was, that the artisan, with only a moderate use of beer and tobacco, was less heavily taxed than the classes above or below him, but that the labourer, if he only moderately indulged in stimulants, was rather the most heavily taxed of any class in proportion to his income. Mr. Jevons therefore recommended the repeal of the remaining duty of a shilling a quarter upon corn, which he believed formed an appreciable burden of about one per cent of income upon the very poorest class on the borders of pauperism. He was gratified to find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer concurred in this opinion, and proposed the repeal of the duty in his next budget.

During the winter of 1868–69 Mr. Jevons' thoughts were much occupied with logic. He had already planned a large portion of his great work, The Principles of Science, and it was in 1868 that he decided upon the title of the book; but as such an undertaking could not be completed for some years, he decided to present at once a sketch of his fundamental doctrine. This he did in a small book entitled The Substitution of Similars, The True Principle of Reasoning, Derived from a Modification of Aristotle's Dictum. In the preface he thus explains the purpose of the book: “In this small treatise I wish to submit to the judgment of those interested in logical science a notion which has often forced itself upon my mind during the last few years. All acts of reasoning seem to me to be different cases of one uniform process, which may, perhaps, be best described as the substitution of similars. This phrase clearly expresses that familiar mode in which we continually argue by analogy from like to like, and take one thing as a representative of another. The chief difficulty consists in showing that all the forms of the old logic, as well as the fundamental rules of mathematical reasoning, may be explained upon the same principle; and it is to this difficult task I have devoted the most attention. … Should my notion be true, a vast mass of technicalities may be swept from our logical text-books, and yet the small remaining part of logical doctrine will prove far more useful than all the learning of the Schoolmen.”

He had also been engaged upon the completion of his logical machine, which was sufficiently finished to work correctly before the Substitution of Similars was published (June 1869).

At Easter 1869 Mr. Jevons and his wife spent a few days at Ludlow, where Mr. and Mrs. John Hutton were then living; afterwards they stayed a week or two at Church Stretton in the same county, where Mr. Jevons enjoyed daily walks over the hills.

In June, as soon as the session ended at Owens College, he went with his wife to London for two or three weeks, to fulfil his duties as examiner in political economy, at the University of London. He took lodgings in the neighbourhood of the British Museum Library, where a good deal of his spare time was passed.

To his brother Herbert.

18 Keppel Street, Russell Square, London, 7th July 1869.

“… My sovereign research has been more successful than I expected. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has adopted the notion, and quoted some of my figures in the House of Commons lately; and he has had a report prepared partly based upon my figures. I do not know whether he will succeed in carrying any change through, but I should not wonder if he makes some attempt next session. At present the Irish Church stops the way. I was much pleased to get the return of New Zealand sovereigns which you prepared.”

A day or two after this letter was written, Mr. Jevons and his wife went abroad intending to go by the Rhine to Switzerland, and after a short stay in the Engadine, to proceed to the Tyrol and Vienna. His health was far from satisfactory. In addition to overwork he had suffered much during the spring from private anxieties, and a complete change of scene and rest from work seemed desirable; but the proposed route proved an ill-advised one. The weather became intensely hot just before they left London, and on the Rhine it was almost unbearable. By the time they reached Heidelberg Mr. Jevons was rendered quite ill by it, and for several days could not proceed farther. They then went on to the Engadine; but though the cool bracing air did him good, he was so weak and unfit for the exertion of much travelling, that the visit to the Tyrol and Vienna was reluctantly abandoned, and they decided to return home, travelling slowly, and spending a few days at more than one place en route.

To his sister Lucy.

Withington, Sunday, 15th August 1869.

“… I think I wrote to you last from Linththal. After spending several pleasant days there we went back to Z¨rich; thence by the lake of Zug to the Rigi mountain, at the top of which we spent one night We were disappointed in the view of the Alps; but there was a great quantity of clouds about, and frequent lightning. From the Rigi we proceeded to Lucerne, and stayed there three days, rowing about the lake, hearing the organs, and making the round of the lake in the steamboat. We stayed at the Englischer Hof. We returned by way of France, stopping one night at Mul-house, and then reaching Paris. As we found the weather quite cool and pleasant, we decided to stay a day or two, in order that Harriet might see the Louvre and some of the sights of Paris. We did not do very much, but still had a pleasant time, living at the Hôtel Meurice. We were landed at Dover at 3 A.M. yesterday, and had to spend three hours walking about the pier and stations until the train left at 6 A.M.”

To his sister Lucy.

Withington, 1st September 1869.

“… We shall only be going to Llandudno for a few days near the end of this month, so that we are in reality settled at home for the session. Travelling does not agree with me, on account of the irregularity of meals and exertion. This next session I am only going into town three days a week. …

“I have been working chiefly at my logical machine since I came home; and it is now as good as finished, and works nicely. It is something like a cross between a small piano and one of the old barrel organs.

“We are spending my birthday in a very quiet way at home, reading, writing, touching up the machine, and especially mowing our grass, which is a perpetual occupation here.”

To his brother Tom.

Withington, Manchester, 10th October 1869.

“… I am in better spirits about my health; the distressing giddiness seems to be going away, and I can do work again with comfort. …

“I have quite finished my paper for the Royal Society on the machine, and have it ready to post. The machine itself is gone to be French polished and have a travelling case made, and with a few last touches will be quite done. I think, however, that it is quite as likely to be laughed at as admired.

“My garden is improving by degrees, and becoming very interesting; and as I now only go into town three days a week, I have time to spend upon it, and the exercise is very healthy.”

Mr. Jevons had the pleasure of being appointed president, for the winter session 1869–70, of the Manchester Statistical Society, and in October he gave his inaugural address, “On the Work of the Society in Connection with the Questions of the Day. I. Stagnation of Trade. II. Commercial Fluctuations. III. Pauperism, and the Means of decreasing it. IV. Medical and other Charities.”

In January 1870 he went to London to read a paper On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference” before the Royal Society, and to exhibit to them his logical machine.

During this winter he sent several contributions to Nature; but he was chiefly engaged in the preparation of his Elementary Lessons in Logic for Macmillan's series of science class-books. He found a recreation in his leisure hours in making a series of experiments on the movements of particles suspended in liquids; and on the 25th January he contributed to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society a brief paper “On the so-called Molecular Movement of Microscopic Particles.” To the same society he also read, about that time, a more elaborate paper “On a General System of Numerically-Definite Reasoning.”

On the 5th April 1870 he went to London to give a lecture on Industrial Partnerships, delivered under the auspices of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. He had undertaken with much pleasure to prepare the lecture, because, to use his own words, he became “more and more convinced of the extreme importance of the Industrial Partnership principle to the peace and well-being of the kingdom.”

These hurried visits to London were a great tax upon his strength, for he was so scrupulous that other engagements should not interfere with his lectures at college that he would go through almost any amount of fatigue rather than fail to meet his class at the appointed time. At Easter he took a brief holiday, which he spent with his wife at Baslow, a little village at the higher end of Chatsworth Park, in Derbyshire.

In the spring of 1870 Mr. Thomas E. Jevons was married to Miss Seton of New York, and he spent the summer with his wife in England, so that the brothers had the pleasure of being a good deal together. Mr. Jevons again stayed two or three weeks in London at the time of the examinations for the M.A. degree, and the rest of the long vacation was spent partly at home and partly at the seaside, and in visiting friends. In September he had the honour of being President of Section F (Economic Science and Statistics) of the British Association, and it was an additional pleasure to him that the meeting took place in Liverpool, his native town.

In October the Elementary Lessons in Logic appeared, and it was at once generally adopted as a text-book. It is now so well known as hardly to need description. As it was designed for a class-book, he “throughout devoted more attention to describing clearly and simply the doctrines in which logicians generally agree than to discussing the points in which there is a difference of opinion.”

In December Mr. Jevons aided in drawing up a memorial to the Home Secretary as to uniformity in the census of 1871, a committee having been formed for this purpose at the meeting of the statistical section of the British Association in Liverpool.

During the winter of 1870–71, in addition to his classes at Owens College, he delivered, by request, a course of lectures on logic to ladies, the class meeting once a week. For the last three or four years Mr. Jevons' thoughts had been mainly occupied with logic, but during this winter he returned with renewed interest to political economy, and devoted himself entirely to the writing of The Theory of Political Economy. The work was of such absorbing interest to him that he made rapid progress with it, to the detriment of his health, as it afterwards proved.

From the time when he had played his grandfather's organ as a boy, Mr. Jevons had availed himself of every opportunity of playing on the organ, and he now fulfilled the wish that he had long had of possessing one of his own. On the 14th February 1871 he thus describes it to his sister Lucy: “I am much occupied with my new organ, which is a charming instrument. It has two rows of keys, with pedals, and separate pedal pipes, seven stops, four in the swell organ and three in the other, with three coupling stops for connecting the several parts together at will. It is to cost £133, which is not much for so complete a little organ. I hope I may keep it the rest of my life, as I need something to distract my mind from logic.”

When the census took place, on the 1st April 1871, Mr. Jevons volunteered to collect the papers in one of the poorest districts in Manchester. He was anxious to see for himself how much the people comprehended the purpose of the census papers, and he was glad also to have an opportunity of visiting many of their houses.

By the time Easter came he felt the need of a little holiday, and he went with his wife to Clapham, in Yorkshire, a neighbourhood which he had previously visited, and which he had enjoyed so much that he desired to show it to his wife. The bracing air did him good, and they made the ascent of Ingleborough. He always went by choice to a hilly country, and climbed to the highest points in the neighbourhood whenever his strength permitted it.

It was in his budget of this year that Mr. Lowe, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed the match tax, which was received with such an indignant outcry by the press and the people that it was abandoned. In June Mr. Jevons published a pamphlet—“The Match Tax; a Problem in Finance”—in which he calmly considered the most important objections raised to the tax, pointing out how many of them had been unreasonable, and proving that even to the very poor the match tax would have been less than one-third the burden which the shilling corn duty, repealed in 1869, had been.

At the beginning of the long vacation Mr. Jevons paid his annual visit to London, combining some reading at the British Museum with his duties as examiner at the University of London. He attended the meeting of the Statistical Society, which took place whilst he was in town, and to this the following letter refers.

To Hyde Clarke, Esq.

13 Montague Street, Russell Square, W.C., 24th June 1871.

“I have only just received your note, forwarded from Manchester. The remarks you mention are, I presume, those concerning the distribution of the Celtic population which prevailed towards the west and north-west. Isaac Taylor, in his interesting book, Words and Places, gave, as perhaps you know, a good deal of information on the point, and I think you would find some correspondence with your own results concerning intellectual ability. I should think that the difference between the East and West of Scotland, remarked at the meeting, would be due to the same circumstances.

“If there is time for you to add a note or paragraph to your paper, you had perhaps better verify independently what I have said, as it was only just on the spur of the moment the remark occurred, and I should prefer not to be responsible for it

“The comparison of races is no doubt an invidious task, which might sometimes lead to trouble, but I do not see that in statistical inquiries you can suppress plain facts. I think that in legislation relating to different parts of the United Kingdom it is always well to be reminded that there may be distinctly different races to be dealt with, and the more the mixture of races can be promoted the better.”

For the latter part of his holiday Mr. Jevons had planned a tour in Ireland with his wife. He had never been there, and much desired to visit the country, but he felt so unwell that he disliked the exertion of travelling, and the month was spent quietly in North Wales instead. When he returned to Manchester at the commencement of the session his health had somewhat improved, though it was not fit for the hard work which he proposed for himself during the winter.

In October 1871 The Theory of Political Economy was published. In this treatise he had fully developed the theory, the chief points of which had been sketched ten years before in the paper read at the British Association meeting at Cambridge in 1862, and published in the journal of the Statistical Society in 1866.

The theory was purely mathematical in character. To Mr. Jevons it seemed perfectly clear that “economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical one … simply because it deals in quantities. Wherever the things treated are capable of being more or less in magnitude, there the laws and relations must be mathematical in nature.” To quote his own words again: “The theory consists in applying the differential calculus to the familiar notions of wealth, utility, value, demand, supply, capital, interest, labour, and all the other notions belonging to the daily operations of industry. As the complete theory of almost every other science involves the use of that calculus, so we cannot have a true theory of political economy without its aid.” In all Mr. Jevons' previous statistical writings he had done what was in his power towards making political economy an exact science. In a later part of the Introduction he says: “I know not when we shall have a perfect system of statistics, but the want of it is the only insuperable obstacle in the way of making political economy an exact science. In the absence of complete statistics the science will not be less mathematical, though it will be infinitely less useful than if, comparatively speaking, exact. A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.”

Mr. Jevons had already at intervals made some progress in writing The Principles of Science; he now intended to devote himself entirely to its completion, to the exclusion of other work, except that attached to his professorship. His mornings were always spent at home, and he had at least three hours' work in his study. Directly after lunch, on three days in the week, he went to Owens College, and gave lectures during the afternoon. On two days in the week he lectured in the evening also. As he lectured with only notes before him, he always felt the hour's lecture a considerable effort and he used to say that he envied the professors of the physical sciences, who could occupy a part of their time in showing experiments to their students. But the evening lectures were those from which he suffered most. He was very susceptible to close, hot rooms, and in the old house in Quay Street, which Owens College occupied until its present buildings were completed in 1873, the rooms were imperfectly ventilated, and by the time evening came, with the addition of gas, they were almost unbearable to him. This winter the evening lectures tried him more than they had done in previous years. One of his friends, who lectured at the college on the same evening, remarked that he often seemed perfectly exhausted at the close of them, but he would not give in. The class that fatigued him most of all was a large and somewhat unruly class of pupil teachers from the elementary schools in Manchester; for when the Cobden professorship of political economy was endowed, it had been arranged that free teaching was to be given by the professor to a class of pupil teachers. There were a few really good pupils amongst them, but as the majority did not care to learn, it required great effort to keep their attention fixed during the hour's lesson. What made the evening work particularly bad for him, was that any over fatigue or excitement at night prevented his sleeping, so that he was not really fit for his morning's work next day.

Until Christmas, however, he continued his usual amount of work, and made considerable progress with his Principles of Science. He contributed a paper during this winter to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, “On the Inverse or Inductive Logical Problem;” he also gave a course of lectures to ladies on political economy, and he was quite unaware, till the close of the year, how much his health was giving way.

[1]A lecture on “Trade Societies, their Objects and Policy,” delivered by request of the Trades' Unionists' Political Association.