The celebration of the jubilee of Lord Kelvin (even now
better known to the older generation as Sir William Thomson) as Professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow University, has taken place this week in Glasgow, and has produced a perfect flood of the heartiest congratulations from the scientific men of all parts of the world. Never was there a greater unanimity of sincere and eager admiration, from England, from all parts of Europe, from the United States, and eveu from Japan, where his pupils and admirers abound. But perhaps the most striking feature of the jubilee was the perfect modesty and even humility of Lord Kelvin's own speech on Tuesday in reply to the Lord Provost's congratulations. " One word," he said, " characterises the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly through fifty-five years ; that word is failure ; I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether, electricity, and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as Professor. Something of sadness must come of failure." True; bat there is something of sublimity in the confession, as well as in the elevation of Lord Kelvin's conception of what success would have meant, when he regards such a scientific career of constant and fertile discovery as has attracted the admiration and almost the veneration of all the world, as nothing better than failure in disguise.
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