Long before the end of the academic year, I finished Routh’s preliminary tripos course in dynamics and much of the auxiliary mathematics demanded by it, and became quite skilled in solving dynamical problems. I had much difficulty in keeping pace with Routh’s classes, but I succeeded, and Niven was pleased. But I was not pleased; I did not think that I had found there what I had expected to find. In the course of time I discovered that I was not alone in my opinion; many Cambridge men failed to find in tripos drills the stimulating elements of that scientific spirit which leads to original research. I was a goose which groped around in a fog when I came to Cambridge; but, if I had come from an English college as a promising tripos candidate, with my work cut out for me by my superiors and in accordance with old customs and traditions of Cambridge, I should not have discovered that there was in Cambridge at that time an epoch-making movement, the significance of which cannot be overestimated. I shall return to this point later. Many a time during my early experiences in Routh’s drill school I thought of my mother’s words which described the steep and slippery climb which awaited me, and which was leading, as she had expressed it, to real stars from heaven. I felt the steepness of the climb, but I saw no star ahead of me. Routh was a great master of the mathematical technique, but he was not a creative genius; he was a virtuoso but not a composer. His principal concern was to drill his students in the art of solving those conventional problems which usually formed part of tripos examinations. The poetical element of dynamics, which thrills, was absent from his businesslike drills. The only star, I thought, which his students saw ahead of them was a high place in the tripos examinations, and that star did not attract me; recalling my mother’s story, I called it a tin star. I loved Routh and admired him much, but I did not admire the Cambridge tripos method of laying a foundation for mathematical physics. When Niven discovered my state of mind he sympathized, and he gave me a little book called “Matter and Motion” by Maxwell, a very small book written by a very great author. “You are not up to the mathematics of Maxwell’s great electrical treatise,” said Niven, as he handed me the little book, “but you will find no difficulties of that kind in this little book, which covers a very great subject.” It was first published in America in the _Van Nostrand Magazine_. No magazine ever performed a greater educational service. There was not only much poetical beauty and philosophical depth in this tiny and apparently most elementary book on dynamics, but there were also many illustrations of the close connection between this fundamental science and other departments of physical science. Maxwell’s presentation roused, and it also stimulated, the spirit of inquiry. Routh’s elaborate system of clever tripos problems in dynamics