His statement, which has been so often quoted, that after fifty-five years of constant study he knew little more of electricity and magnetism than he did at the beginning of his career, is not to be taken as a confession of failure. It was, like Newton's famous declaration, an indication of his sense of the vastness of the ocean of truth and the manifoldness of the treasures which still lie within its "deep unfathomed caves." Like Newton, he had merely wandered along the shore of that great ocean, and here and there sounded its accessible depths, while its infinite expanse lay unexplored. And also like Newton--indeed like all great men--he stood with deep reverence before the great problems of the soul and destiny of man. He believed that Nature, which he had sought all his life to know and understand, showed everywhere the handiwork of an infinite and beneficent intelligence, and he had faith that in the end all that appeared dark and perplexing would stand forth in fulness of light. FOOTNOTES: [1] Lord Kelvin's address on his installation as Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, November 29, 1904. [2] Successor of Dr. Dick, the Professor of Natural Philosophy who induced the Faculty to grant a workshop to James Watt when the Corporation of Hammermen prevented him from starting business in Glasgow, and for whom Watt was repairing the Newcomen engine when he invented the separate condenser. [3] A model steam-engine which he made in his youth was carefully preserved by his brother in the Natural Philosophy Department. It was homely but accurate in construction: the beam was of wood, and the piston was an old thick copper penny! [4] Proceedings on the occasion of the Presentation to the University of Glasgow of the Portrait of Emeritus Professor G. G. Ramsay. November 6, 1907. [5] Apparently for a short time in 1841, when Dr. Meikleham was laid aside by illness. [6] The C.U.M.S. began as a Peterhouse society in 1843, and after a first concert, which was followed by a supper, and that by "certain operations on the chapel roof," the Master would only give permission to hold a second concert in the Red Lion at Cambridge, there being no room in College, on condition that the society called itself the University Musical Society. The new society was formed in May 1844; the first president was G. E. Smith, of Peterhouse, the second was Blow, also of Peterhouse, a violin player and 'cellist, and the third was Thomson. [See _Cambridge Chronicle_, July 10, 1903, and _The Cambridge Review_, Feb. 20, 1908.]