Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/60

 is surrounded by designs emblematic of his principal labors; there is a scroll on which are inscribed certain quaternion equations, a portrait of Newton, a thermo-electric diagram, a deep-sea thermometer, a Crookes' radiometer, and a profusion of knots. There are 63 signatures to the address which reads as follows:

"Dear Professor Tait: We need hardly tell you how deeply we share the universal feeling of regret with which the announcement of your resignation of the chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh has been received. Your tenure of the chair has extended over a most momentous period in the advance of knowledge; and no small part of the progress of physical science, which has been so characteristic of that period, has been the result of your own work. By your investigations and writings you have placed the whole scientific world in your debt, and have added prestige to a chair already rendered illustrious by your distinguished predecessors. The many thousands who have gained from your direct personal teaching a real insight with the processes of nature, and a training in accuracy of thought and of language, will always recall with pleasure and pride that you were their teacher. We whose privilege it was to come into closer touch with you in classroom or in laboratory, have had our life-work in many cases determined and in all cases influenced by the inspiration and guidance received there; and no words can fully express the feelings of reverence and affection which we entertain towards you. Yet, however feeble the expression, we ask you to accept it as our tribute of appreciation and of gratitude for all you have been to us as an intellectual stimulus and as a moral force. Your retirement is an irreparable loss to the University; but if, by relieving you from the arduous duties of the chair, it enables you to devote yourself more entirely to investigation and research, the world will without doubt have the greater gain. We wish you many years of health and strength both for the enjoyment of a well-earned leisure and for the further exercise of an unusually fruitful scientific activity."

But it was not to be.