“The Government of this country, of this great country, has been two years debating whether it should grant the three hundred pounds sterling necessary for the publication of these researches.  I have been too long used to strict discipline to venture to criticise any act of my superiors, but I venture to hope that before long, in consequence of the exertions of Lord Rosse, of the President of the British Association, and the goodwill, which I gratefully acknowledge, of the present Lord of the Admiralty, I shall be able to lay before you something more worthy of to-day’s award.”

I had my doubts how the nobs would take it, but both Lord Rosse and Sabine warmly commended my speech and regretted I had not said even more upon the subject.

[Some light is thrown upon his habits at this time by the following, part of his letter to Forbes of November 19:—­]

I have frequent visits from —.  He is a good man, but direfully argumentative, and in that sense to me a bore.  Besides that, the creature will come and call upon me at nine or ten o’clock in the morning before I am out of bed, or if out of bed, before I am in possession of my faculties, which never arrive before twelve or one.

[This morning incapacity was of a piece with his hatred of the breakfast-party of the period.  To go abroad from home or to do any work before breakfasting ensured him a headache for the rest of the day, so that he never was one of those risers with the dawn who do half a day’s work before the rest of the world is astir.  And though necessity often compelled him to do with less, he always found eight hours his proper allowance of sleep.

But in the end of 1853 we hear of a reform in his ways, after a bad bout of ill-health, when he rises at eight, goes to bed at twelve, and eschews parties of every kind as far as possible, with excellent results as far as health went.

After his marriage, however, and indeed to the beginning of his last illness, he always rose early enough for an eight o’clock breakfast, after which the working day began, lasting regularly from a little after nine till midnight.

4 Upper York Place, St. John’s Wood, February 6, 1853.

Many thanks, my dearest sister, for your kind and thoughtful letter—­it went to my heart no little that you, amidst all your trials and troubles, should find time to think so wisely and so affectionately of mine.  Though greatly tempted otherwise, I have acted in the spirit of your advice, and my reward, in the shape of honours at any rate, has not failed me, as the Royal Society gave me one of the Royal medals last year.  It’s a bigger one than I got under your auspices so many years ago, being worth 50 pounds sterling, but I don’t know that I cared so much about it.