of Wordsworth? I remember William Laidlaw whispering to me, one night, when their ‘wrapt talk’ had kept the circle round the fire until long after the usual bed-time of Abbotsford--‘Gude preserve us! This is a very superior occasion! Eh, sirs!’ he added, cocking his eye like a bird, ‘I wonder if Shakspeare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk other up?’” In spite of the many calls upon his time and energies entailed by his duties as President, he still found opportunity to work in his laboratory, and one outcome of his labours was a paper “On the magnetic phenomena produced by electricity,” published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1821--the sequel of a letter addressed to Wollaston and also printed in the Transactions. This memoir was followed a few months later by a communication “On the Electrical phenomena exhibited _in vacuo_.” These papers, together with one on a New Phenomenon of Electro-Magnetism, published in 1823, are interesting in relation to the development of Oersted’s great discovery, and in connection with the subsequent work of Faraday. With that power of generalisation which is one of the distinguishing marks of his genius, he shows the possible connection of the facts he had observed with the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. He concludes his first paper by asking “whether the magnetism of the earth may not be owing to its electricity, and the variation of the needle to the alterations in the electrical currents of the earth, in consequence of its motions, internal changes, or its relations to solar heat; and whether the luminous effects of the auroras at the poles are not shown, by these new facts, to depend on electricity. This is evident, that if strong electrical currents be supposed to follow the apparent course of the sun, the magnetism of the earth ought to be such as it is found to be.”