Soon after his return to Cambridge in February 1856 (after seeing his father comfortably established in Edinburgh), Maxwell heard from his old friend Professor Forbes that the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, was vacant, and he shortly afterwards became a candidate. He had never contemplated a life of entire leisure, but it may seem strange that Cambridge, where besides his lectureship he had various philanthropic interests, should not have afforded him a sufficient field for regular work. He foresaw that the Scotch appointment would please his father, and that the arrangement of session and vacation time would enable him to spend the whole summer uninterruptedly at Glenlair. Some expressions in his letters also seem to indicate that he rather shrank from the prospect of becoming a Cambridge “Don.” He had observed the narrowing tendencies of college life, and preferred the rubs of the world.

His letters to his father and others at this time sufficiently explain the course of his candidature, in which the point most deserving notice is the generous way in which he speaks of his rivals. While treating the whole matter with his usual grave irony, he seems to have conducted his part of it with considerable sagacity, and when he returned to Edinburgh about the middle of March everything was well in train.