‘I am plunging into term-work, hurried and distracted as usual; the only comfort is the daily perception of what I have gained by giving up the Professorship. If I can work myself free so as to have a little command of my own time, I think I shall be wiser in future than to mortgage it so far. Quiet reflexion is as necessary as fresh air, and I can scarcely get a breath of it.’
His friend must have smiled as he read this, for he probably knew what such resolutions were worth. Whewell might have said, with Lord Byron—
‘I make A vow of reformation every spring, And break it when the summer comes about’;
for, notwithstanding these promises and many others like them, we shall find that in future years he took upon himself a greater rather than a less amount of work, which he did not merely _get through_ in a perfunctory fashion, but discharged with a thoroughness as rare as it is marvellous.
The Bridgewater Treatise appeared in 1833, a year in which he delivered an address to the British Association, at its meeting at Cambridge; contributed a paper _On the Use of Definitions_ to the Philological Museum; and increased his stock of architectural and geological knowledge by tours with Messrs Rickman, Sedgwick, and Airy. He was now generally recognized as the first authority on scientific language; and we find Professor Faraday deferring to him on the nomenclature of electricity. In 1834 he invented an _anemometer_, or instrument for measuring the force and direction of the wind; it was employed for some time at York, by Professor Phillips, but has since been superseded by more convenient contrivances.
The real meaning of his longing for leisure soon became manifest. In July 1834 he expounds to his friend Mr Jones the plan of the _History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, which he was prosecuting vigorously. This great work occupied him, _almost_ to the exclusion of other matters, for the whole of 1835 and 1836. We say _almost_, because, even at this time, with his usual habit of taking up some new subject just before he had completed an extensive labour on an old one, he was beginning to study systematic morality, and in 1835 published a preface to Sir James Mackintosh’s _Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy_, a subject which he further considered in 1837, when he preached before the University _Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals_. In this year he succeeded Mr Lyell as President of the Geological Society, an office which must have been given to him rather in recognition of his general scientific attainments and the work he had done in the kindred science of mineralogy, than on account of any special publications on geology. He seems to have made an excellent President. Sir Charles Lyell[4] speaks of him with enthusiasm, and points out his sacrifices of time, not only in attending the meetings of the Society, but in supervising the details of its organization. The extra work which the office involved is thus described in a letter to his sister, dated November 18, 1837: