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Practical applied mathematics modelling analysis
approximation Sam Howison Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Sam Howison
ISBN(s): 9780521687256, 052168725X
Edition: draft
File Details: PDF, 1.49 MB
Year: 2006
Language: english
 Practical Applied Mathematics
Modelling, Analysis, Approximation

Sam Howison
OCIAM
Mathematical Institute
Oxford University

August 16, 2004

2
Contents

I Modelling techniques 15
1 The basics of modelling 17
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.2 What do we mean by a model? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3 Principles of modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.3.1 Example: inviscid fluid mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.3.2 Example: viscous fluids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4 Conservation laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2 Units, dimensions and dimensional analysis 27

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2 Units and dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.1 Example: heat flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Electric fields and electrostatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3 Non-dimensionalisation 39
3.1 Nondimensionalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.1.1 Example: advection-diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.1.2 Example: the damped pendulum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.1.3 Example: beams and strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.2 The Navier–Stokes equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2.1 Water in the bathtub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.3 Buckingham’s Pi-theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4 Case studies: hair modelling and cable laying 59

4.1 The Euler–Bernoulli model for a beam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2 Hair modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.3 Cable-laying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.4 Modelling and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.4.1 Boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.4.2 Effective forces and nondimensionalisation . . . . . . . . . 64
4.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

3
4 CONTENTS

5 Case study: the thermistor (1) 71

5.1 Thermistors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.1 A black box model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.2 A simple model for heat flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.2 Nondimensionalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.3 A thermistor in a circuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.3.1 The one-dimensional model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.4 Sources and further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

6 Case study: electrostatic painting 79

6.1 Electrostatic painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.2 Field equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.3 Boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.4 Nondimensionalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

II Mathematical techniques 85
7 Partial differential equations 87
7.1 First-order equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.2 Example: Poisson processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.3 Shocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
7.3.1 The Rankine–Hugoniot conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.4 Nonlinear equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7.5 Second-order linear equations in two variables . . . . . . . . . . . 99
7.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

8 Case study: traffic modelling 107

8.1 Simple models for traffic flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8.2 Traffic jams and other discontinuous solutions . . . . . . . . . . . 109
8.3 More sophisticated models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

9 Distributions 117
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
9.2 A point force on a stretched string; impulses . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
9.3 Informal definition of the delta and Heaviside functions . . . . . 120
9.4 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
9.4.1 A point force on a wire revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
9.4.2 Continuous and discrete probability. . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
9.4.3 The fundamental solution of the heat equation . . . . . . 123
9.5 Balancing singularities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
9.5.1 The Rankine–Hugoniot conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
9.5.2 Case study: cable-laying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
9.6 Green’s functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
9.6.1 Ordinary differential equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
9.6.2 Partial differential equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
9.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
CONTENTS 5

10 Theory of distributions 139

10.1 Test functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
10.2 The action of a test function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
10.3 Definition of a distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
10.4 Further properties of distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.5 The derivative of a distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
10.6 Extensions of the theory of distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
10.6.1 More variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
10.6.2 Fourier transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
10.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

11 Case study: the pantograph 153

11.1 What is a pantograph? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
11.2 The model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
11.2.1 What happens at the contact point? . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
11.3 Impulsive attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
11.4 Solution near a support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.5 Solution for a whole span . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
11.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

III Asymptotic techniques 167

12 Asymptotic expansions 169
12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
12.2 Order notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
12.2.1 Asymptotic sequences and expansions . . . . . . . . . . . 172
12.3 Convergence and divergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
12.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

13 Regular perturbation expansions 177

13.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.2 Example: stability of a spacecraft in orbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
13.3 Linear stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.3.1 Stability of critical points in a phase plane . . . . . . . . . 179
13.3.2 Example (side track): a system which is neutrally stable
but nonlinearly stable (or unstable) . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.4 Example: the pendulum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
13.5 Small perturbations of a boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
13.5.1 Example: flow past a nearly circular cylinder . . . . . . . 182
13.5.2 Example: water waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.6 Caveat expandator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
13.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

14 Case study: electrostatic painting (2) 191

14.1 Small parameters in the electropaint model . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
14.2 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6 CONTENTS

15 Case study: piano tuning 195

15.1 The notes of a piano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
15.2 Tuning an ideal piano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
15.3 A real piano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
15.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

16 Boundary layers 205

16.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
16.2 Functions with boundary layers; matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
16.2.1 Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
16.3 Examples from ordinary differential equations . . . . . . . . . . . 209
16.4 Cable laying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
16.5 Examples for partial differential equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
16.5.1 Large Peclet number heat flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
16.5.2 Traffic flow with small anticipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
16.5.3 A thin elliptical conductor in a uniform electric field . . . 216
16.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

17 Case study: the thermistor (2) 221

17.1 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

18 ‘Lubrication theory’ analysis: 225

18.1 ‘Lubrication theory’ approximations: slender geometries . . . . . 225
18.2 Heat flow in a bar of variable cross-section . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
18.3 Heat flow in a long thin domain with cooling . . . . . . . . . . . 228
18.4 Advection-diffusion in a long thin domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
18.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

19 Case study: continuous casting of steel 239

19.1 Continuous casting of steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

20 Lubrication theory for fluids 247

20.1 Thin fluid layers: classical lubrication theory . . . . . . . . . . . 247
20.2 Thin viscous fluid sheets on solid substrates . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
20.2.1 Viscous fluid spreading horizontally under gravity: intu-
itive argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
20.2.2 Viscous fluid spreading under gravity: systematic argument251
20.2.3 A viscous fluid layer on a vertical wall . . . . . . . . . . . 253
20.3 Thin fluid sheets and fibres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
20.3.1 The viscous sheet equations by a systematic argument . . 255
20.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

21 Case Study: eggs 267

21.1 Incubating eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
21.2 Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
21.3 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
CONTENTS 7

22 Methods for oscillators 273

22.1 The Poincaré–Linstedt method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
22.2 The method of multiple scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
22.3 Relaxation oscillations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
22.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

23 Ray theory and other ‘exponential’ approaches 283

23.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
23.2 Classical WKB theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
23.3 Geometric optics and ray theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
23.4 Kelvin’s ship waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
23.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
8 CONTENTS
Notes to typeset-
ter/copyeditor/publisher

1. There is some trouble with bold greek fonts. My macro

\BGx

for example, does not seem to produce bold ξ (nor does

\mathbf{\xi}

which gives ξ, the same as the ordinary ξ). There is a smiliar problem
with σ.
2. I need a nice curly D for the space of distributions on page 141.
3. I also need bold calligraphic font for vector distributions on page 149.

4. I would appreciate help with Fig 15.1.

5. Need to think about separating the ‘colemanballs’ from the end of the
preceding exercises, maybe a line or a bit of graphics?
6. The table in exercise 1 of ‘Other exercises’ in Ch 2 has a missing vertical
line, I do not know why.
7. I try to be sparing with commas.

9
10 CONTENTS
Preface

This book is born out of my fascination with applied mathematics as a place

where the physical world meets the mathematical structures and techniques
that are the cornerstones of most applied mathematics courses. I am interested
largely in human-sized theatres of interaction, leaving cosmology and particle
physics to others. Much of my research has been motivated by interactions
with industry or by contact with scientists in other disciplines. One immediate
lesson from these contacts is that it is a great asset to an interactive applied
mathematician to be open to ideas from any direction at all. Almost any physical
situation has some mathematical interest, but the kind of mathematics may vary
from case to case. We need a strong generalist streak to go with our areas of
technical expertise.
Another thing we need is some expertise in numerical methods. To be honest,
this is not my strong point. That is one reason why the book does not contain
much about these methods. (Another is if it had, it would have been half as long
again and would have taken 5 more years to write.) In the modern world, with its
fast computers and plethora of easy-to-use packages, any applied mathematician
has to be able to switch into numerical mode as required. At the very least, you
should learn to use packages such as Maple and Matlab for their data display and
plotting capabilities, and for the built-in software routines for solving standard
problems such as ordinary differential equations. With more confidence, you
can write your own programs. In many cases, a quick and dirty first go can
provide valuable information, even if it is not the finished product. Explicit
finite differences (remember to use upwind differencing for first derivatives) and
tiny time steps will get you a long way.

Who should read this book? Many people, I hope, but there are some
prerequisites. I assume that readers have a good background in calculus up to
vector calculus (grad, div, curl) and elementary mechanics of particles. I also
assume that they have done an introductory (inviscid) fluid mechanics course,
and a first course in partial differential equations, enough to know the basics of
the heat, wave and Laplace equations (where they come from, how to solve them
in simple geometries). Linear algebra, complex analysis and probability put in
an occasional appearance. High-school physics is an advantage. But the most
important prerequisite is an attitude: to go out and apply your mathematics,
to see it in action in the world around you, and not to worry too much about
what you can and can’t do.
Another way to assess the technical level of the book is to position it relative
to the competition. From that point of view it can be thought of as a precursor

11
 12 CONTENTS

to the books by Tayler [55] and Fowler [18], while being more difficult than, say,
Fowkes & Mahoney [17] or Fulford & Broadbridge [21]. The edited collection [37]
is another book at the same general level, but it is organised along different lines.

Organisation. The book is organised, roughly, along mathematical lines.

Chapters are devoted to mathematical techniques, starting in Part I with some
ideas about modelling, moving on in Part II to differential equations and distri-
butions, and concluding with asymptotic (systematic approximation) methods
in Part III. Interspersed among the chapters are case studies, descriptions of
problems that illustrate the techniques; they are necessarily rather open-ended
and invite you to develop your own ideas. The case studies run as strands
through the book. You can ignore any of them without much impact on the
rest of the book, although the more you ignore the less you will benefit from the
remainder. There are long sections of exercises at the ends of the chapters; they
should be regarded as an integral part of the book, and at least read through if
not attempted.

Conventions. I use ‘we’, as in ‘we can solve this by a Laplace transform’,

to signal the usual polite fiction that you, the reader, and I, the author, are
engaged on a joint voyage of discovery. ‘You’ is mostly used to suggest that you
should get your pen out and work though some of the ‘we’ stuff, a good idea
in view of my fallible arithmetic, or do an exercise to fill in some details. ‘I’ is
associated with authorial opinions and can mostly be ignored if you like.
I have tried to draw together a lot of threads in this book, and in writing it
I have constantly wanted to point out connections with something else, or make
a peripheral remark. However, I don’t want to lose track of the argument. As
Marginal notes are usually di- a compromise, I have used marginal notes and footnotes1 with slightly different
rectly relevant to the current purposes.
discussion, often being used to
fill in details or point out a fea-
ture of a calculation. Acknowledgements. I have taken examples from many sources. Some ex-
amples are very familiar and I do not apologise for this: the old ones are often
the best. Much the same goes for the influence of books; if you teach a course
using other people’s books and then write your own, some impact is inevitable.
Among the books that have been especially influential are those by Tayler [55],
Fowler [18], Hinch [26] and Keener [32]. Even more influential has been the
contribution of colleagues and students. Many a way of looking at a problem
can be traced back to a coffee-time conversation or a Study Group meeting.2
There are far too many of these collaborators for me to attempt the invidious
task of thanking them individually. Their influence is pervasive. At a more
local level, I am immensely grateful to the OCIAM students who got me out of
computer trouble on various occasions and found a number of errors in drafts of
1 Footnotes
are more digressional and can, in principle, be ignored.
2 Study
Groups are week-long intensive meetings at which academics and industrial re-
searchers get together to work on open problems from industry, proposed by the industrial
participants. Over the week, heated discussions take place involving anybody who is inter-
ested in the problem, and a short report is produced at the end. The first UK Study Group
was held in Oxford in 1968, and they have been held every year since, in Oxford and other
UK universities. The idea has now spread to more than 15 countries on all the habitable
continents of the world. Details of forthcoming events, and reports of problems studied at
past meetings, can be found on their dedicated website www.mathematics-in-industry.org.
CONTENTS 13

the book. Any remaining errors are quite likely to have been caused by cosmic
ray impact on the computer memory, or perhaps by cyber-terrorists. I will be
happy to hear about them.
The book began when I was asked to give some lectures at a summer school
in Siena, and was continued at a similar event a year later in Pisa. I am most
grateful for the hospitality extended to me during these visits. I would like
to thank the editors and technical staff at Cambridge University Press for their
assistance in the production of the book. Lastly I would like to thank my family
for their forbearance, love and support while I was locked away typing.

Colemanballs At the end of each section of exercises is what would normally

be a wasted space. Into each of these I have put a statement made by a real
live applied mathematician in full flow. In the spirit of scientific accuracy, they
are wholly unedited. They are mostly there for their intrinsic qualities (and it
would be a miserable publisher who would deny me that extra ink), but they
make a point. Interdisciplinary mathematics is a collaborative affair. It involves
discussions and arguments, the less inhibited the better. We all have to go out
on a limb, in the interests of pushing the science forwards. If we are wrong, we
try again. And if the mind runs ahead of the voice, our colleagues won’t take
it too seriously (nor will they let us forget it). Here is one to be going on with,
from the collection [28] of the same title:

“If I remember rightly, cos π2 = 1.”

Oxford, May 2004.

14 CONTENTS
 Part I

Modelling techniques

15
Chapter 1

The basics of modelling

1.1 Introduction
This short introductory chapter is about mathematical modelling. Without
trying to be too prescriptive, we discuss what we mean by the term modelling,
why we might want to do it, and what kind of models are commonly used.
Then, we look at some very standard models which you have almost certainly
met before, and we see how their derivation is a blend of what are thought of as
universal physical laws, such as conservation of mass, momentum and energy,
with experimental observations and, perhaps, some ad hoc assumptions in lieu
of more specific evidence.
One of the themes that run through this book is the applicability of all kinds
of mathematical ideas to ‘real-world’ problems. Some of these arise in attempts
to explain natural phenomena, for example models for water waves. We will
see a number of these models as we go through the book. Other applications
are found in industry, which is a source of many fascinating and non-standard
mathematical problems, and a big ‘end-user’ of mathematics. You might be sur-
prised to know how little is known of the detailed mechanics of most industrial
processes, although when you see the operating conditions — ferocious temper-
atures, inaccessible or minute machinery, corrosive chemicals — you realise how
expensive and difficult it would be to carry out detailed experimental investi-
gations. In any case, many processes work just fine, having been designed by
engineers who know their job. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: so where does math-
ematics come in? Some important uses are in quality control and cost control
for existing processes, and simulation and design of new ones. We may want to
understand why a certain type of defect occurs; or what is the ‘rate-limiting’
part of a process (the slowest ship, to be speeded up); how to improve efficiency,
however marginally; or whether a novel idea is likely to work at all and if so,
how to control it.
It is in the nature of real-world problems that they are large, messy and
often rather vaguely stated. It is very rarely worth anybody’s while producing
a ‘complete solution’ to a problem which is complicated and whose desired
outcome is not necessarily well specified (to a mathematician). Mathematicians
are usually most effective in analysing a relatively small ‘clean’ subproblem
where more broad-brush approaches run into difficulty. Very often, the analysis

17
18 CHAPTER 1. THE BASICS OF MODELLING

complements a large numerical simulation which, although effective elsewhere,

has trouble with this particular aspect of the problem. Its job is to provide
understanding and insight in order to complement simulation, experiment and
other approaches.
We begin with a chat about what models are and what they should do for
us. Then we bring together some simple ideas about physical conservation laws,
and how to use them together with experimental evidence about how materials
behave to formulate closed systems of equations; this is illustrated with two
canonical models for heat flow and fluid motion. There are many other models
embedded elsewhere in the book, and we deal with these as we come to them.

1.2 What do we mean by a model?

There is no point in trying to be too precise in defining the term mathematical
model: we all understand that it is some kind of mathematical statement about
a problem that is originally posed in non-mathematical terms. Some models are
explicative: that is, they explain a phenomenon in terms of simpler, more basic
processes. A famous example is Newton’s theory of planetary motion, whereby
the whole complex motion of the solar system was shown to be a consequence of
‘force equals mass times acceleration’ and the inverse square law of gravitation.
However, not all models aspire to explain. For example, the standard Black–
Scholes model for the evolution of prices in stock markets, used by investment
banks the world over, says that the percentage difference between tomorrow’s
stock price and today’s is a normal random variable. Although this is a great
simplification, in that it says that all we need to know are the mean and variance
of this distribution, it says nothing about what will cause the price change.
All useful models, whether explicative or not, are predictive: they allow us
to make quantitative predictions (whether deterministic or probabilistic) which
can be used either to test and refine the model, should that be necessary, or
for use in practice. The outer planets were found using Newtonian mechanics
to analyse small discrepancies between observation and theory,1 and the Moon
missions would have been impossible without this model. Every day, banks make
billions of dollars worth of trades based on the Black–Scholes model; in this case,
since model predictions do not always match market prices, they may use the
latter to refine the basic model (here there is no simple underlying mechanism
to appeal to, so adding model features in a heuristic way is a reasonable way to
proceed).
Most of the models we discuss in this book are based on differential equa-
tions, ordinary or partial: they are in the main deterministic models of con-
tinuous processes. Many of them should already be familiar to you, and they
are all accessible with the standard tools of real and complex analysis, partial
differential equations, basic linear algebra and so on. I would, however, like to
mention some kinds of models that we don’t have the space (and, in some cases
I don’t have the expertise) to cover.
1 This is a very early example of an inverse problem: assuming a model and given ob-

servations of the solution, determine certain model parameters, in this case the unknown
positions of Uranus and Neptune. A more topical example is the problem of constructing an
image of your insides from a scan or electrical measurements from electrodes on your skin.
Unfortunately, such problems are beyond the scope of this book; see [14].
1.3. PRINCIPLES OF MODELLING 19

• Statistical models.

Statistical models can be both explicative and predictive, in a probabilistic

sense. They deal with the question of extracting information about cause and
effect or making predictions in a random environment, and describing that ran-
domness. Although we touch on probabilistic models, for a full treatment see a
text such as [49].

• Discrete models of various kinds.

Many, many vitally important and useful models are intrinsically discrete: think,
for example of the question of optimal scheduling of take-off slots from LHR,
CDG or JFK. Discrete mathematics is a vast area with a huge range of tech-
niques, impinging on practically every other area of mathematics, computer
science, economics and so on. Space (and my ignorance) simply don’t allow me
to say any more.

• ‘Black box’ models such as neural nets or genetic algorithms, and ‘lumped
parameter’ models.

The term ‘model’ is often used for these techniques, in which, to paraphrase, a
‘black box’ is trained on observed data to predict the output of a system given
the input. The user need never know what goes on inside the black box (usually
some form of curve fitting and/or optimisation algorithm), so although these
algorithms can have some predictive capacity they can rarely be explicative.
Although often useful, this philosophy is more or less orthogonal to that behind
the models in this book, and if you are interested see [22]. Lumped parameter
models are somewhat in the same spirit; a complex system is represented by
a much simpler set of ad hoc descriptions, as for example when a complicated
mechanical system is modelled by a simple spring-dashpot combination.

1.3 Principles of modelling: physical laws and

constitutive relations
Many models, especially ones based on mechanics or heat flow (which includes
most of those in this book), are underpinned by physical principles such as
conservation of mass, momentum, energy and electric charge. We may have to
think about how we interpret these ideas, especially in the case of energy which
can take so many forms (kinetic, potential, heat, chemical, . . . ) and be converted Work is heat and heat is work:
from one to another. Although they are in the end subject to experimental the First Law of
Thermodynamics, in
confirmation, the experimental evidence is so overwhelming that, with care in mnemonic form.
interpretation, we can take these conservation principles as assumptions.2
However, this only gets us so far. We can do very simple problems such as
mechanics of point particles, and that’s about it. Suppose, for example, that
we want to derive the heat equation for heat flow in a homogeneous, isotropic,
continuous solid. We can reasonably assume that at each point x and time t
2 So we are making additional assumptions that we are not dealing with quantum effects, or

matter on the scale of atoms, or relativistic effects. We deal only with models for human-scale
systems.
 20 CHAPTER 1. THE BASICS OF MODELLING

there is an energy density E(x, t) such that the internal (heat) energy inside
any fixed volume V of the material is
Z
E(x, t) dx.
V

We can also assume that there is a heat flux vector q(x, t) such that the rate of
heat flow across a plane with unit normal n is
q·n
per unit area. Then we can write down conservation of energy for V in the form
Z Z
d
E(x, t) dx + q(x, t) · n dS = 0,
dt V ∂V

on the assumption that no heat is converted into other forms of energy. Next,
we use Green’s theorem on the surface integral and, as V is arbitrary, the ‘usual
argument’ (see below) gives us
∂E
+ ∇ · q = 0. (1.1)
∂t
At this point, general assumptions fail us, and we have to bring in some exper-
imental evidence. We need to relate both E and q to the temperature T (x, t),
by what are called constitutive relations. For many, but not all, materials, the
internal energy is directly proportional to the temperature, written
E = ρcT,
where ρ is the density and c is a constant called the specific heat capacity. Like-
wise, Fourier’s law states that the heat flux is proportional to the temperature
Ask yourself why there is a gradient,
minus sign. The Second Law q = −k∇T.
of Thermodynamics in
mnemonic form: heat cannot Putting these both into (1.1), we have
flow from a cooler body to a
hotter one. ∂T
ρc = k∇2 T
∂t
as expected. The appearance of material properties such as c and k is a sure
sign that we have introduced a constitutive relation, and it should be stressed
that these relations between E, q and T are material-dependent and experimen-
tally determined. There is no a priori reason for them to have the nice linear
form given above, and indeed for some materials one or other may be strongly
nonlinear.3
Another set of models where constitutive relations pay a prominent role is
models for solid and fluid mechanics.

1.3.1 Example: inviscid fluid mechanics

‘Oiler’, not ‘Yewler’. Let us first look at the familiar Euler equations for inviscid incompressible fluid
3 It is an experimental fact that temperature changes in most materials are proportional to

energy put in or taken out. However, both c and k may depend on temperature, especially if
the material gradually melts or freezes, as for paraffin or some kinds of frozen fish. Such ma-
terials lead to nonlinear versions of the heat equation; fortunately, many common substances
have nearly constant c and k and so are well modelled by the linear heat equation.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the most deeply are often the least capable of expressing their
feelings, and a speechless tongue is with them the result of a full
heart. Besides, you are sure to be repaid for a good action at some
time or another. Like seed sown in the Nile, “the bread cast upon the
waters,” it may not come back to you for many days, but come back
at last it most certainly will. Would you like your change in silver or in
gold? Will you have it in a few graceful, well-chosen expressions, or
in the sterling coin of silent love with its daily thoughts and nightly
prayers; or, better still even than these, will you waive your claim to it
down here, and have it carried to your account above? I am
supposing yours is not one of those natures which have arrived at
the highest, the noblest type of benevolence, and give their gold
neither for silver nor for copper, but freely without return at all. To
these I can offer no encouragement, no advice. Their grapes are
ripened, their harvest is yellow, the light is already shining on them
from the golden hills of heaven.
 CHAPTER VI
A DAY THAT IS DEAD

I have been burning old letters to-night; their ashes are fluttering in
the chimney even now; and, alas! while they consume, fleeting and
perishable like the moments they record, “each dying ember” seems
to have “wrought its ghost” upon my heart. Oh! that we could either
completely remember or completely forget. Oh! that the image of
Mnemosyne would remain close enough for us to detect the flaws in
her imperishable marble, or that she would remove herself so far as
to be altogether out of sight. It is the golden haze of “middle
distance” that sheds on her this warm and tender light. She is all the
more attractive that we see her through a double veil of retrospection
and regret, none the less lovely because her beauty is dimmed and
softened in a mist of tears.
Letter after letter they have flared, and blackened, and shrivelled
up. There is an end of them—they are gone. Not a line of those
different handwritings shall I ever see again. The bold, familiar
scrawl of the tried friend and more than brother; why does he come
back to me so vividly to-night? The stout heart, the strong arm, the
brave, kind face, the frank and manly voice. We shall never tread the
stubble nor the heather side by side again; never more pull her up
against the stream, nor float idly down in the hot summer noons to
catch the light air off the water on our heated faces; to discourse, like
David and Jonathan, of all and everything nearest our hearts. Old
friend! old friend! wherever you are, if you have consciousness you
must surely sometimes think of me; I have not forgotten you. I
cannot believe you have forgotten me even there.
And the pains-taking, up-and-down-hill characters of the little child
—the little child for whom the angels came so soon, yet found it
ready to depart, whose fever-wasted lips formed none but words of
confidence and affection, whose blue eyes turned their last dim,
dying looks so fondly on the face it loved.
 And there were letters harder to part with than these. Never mind,
they are burnt and done with; letters of which even the superscription
once made a kind heart leap with pleasure so intense it was almost
pain; letters crossed and re-crossed in delicate, orderly lines, bearing
the well-known cipher, breathing the well-known perfume, telling the
old, false tale in the old, false phrases, so trite and worn-out, yet
seeming always so fresh and new.
The hand that formed them has other tasks to occupy it now; the
heart from which they came is mute and cold. Hope withers, love
dies—times are altered. What would you have? It is a world of
change. Nevertheless this has been a disheartening job; it has put
me in low spirits; I must call “Bones” out of his cupboard to come and
sit with me.
“What is this charm,” I ask him, “that seems to belong so
exclusively to the past?—this ‘tender grace of a day that is dead’?
and must I look after it down the gulf into which it has dropped with
such irrepressible longing only because it will never come back to
me? Is a man the greater or wiser that he lived a hundred years ago
or a thousand? Are reputations, like wine, the mellower and the more
precious for mere age, even though they have been hid away in a
cellar all the time? Is a thing actually fairer and better because I have
almost forgotten how it looked when present, and shall never set
eyes on it again? I entertain the greatest aversion to Horace’s
laudator temporis acti, shall always set my face against the
superstition that ‘there were giants in those days’; and yet wherever I
went in the world previous to my retirement here that I might live with
you, I found the strange maxim predominate, that everything was
very much better before it had been improved!
“If I entered a club and expressed my intention of going to the
Opera, for instance, whatever small spark of enthusiasm I could
kindle was submitted to a wet blanket on the spot. ‘Good heavens!’
would exclaim some venerable philosopher of the Cynic and
Epicurean schools, ‘there is no opera now, nor ballet neither. My
good sir, the thing is done; it’s over. We haven’t an artist left. Ah! you
should have seen Taglioni dance; you should have heard Grisi sing;
you should have lived when Plancus was consul. In short, you
should be as old as I am, and as disgusted, and as gouty, and as
disagreeable!’
“Or I walked into the smoking-room of that same resort, full of
some athletic gathering at Holland Park, some ’Varsity hurdle-race,
some trial of strength or skill amongst those lively boys, the
subalterns of the Household Brigade; and ere I could articulate
‘brandy and soda’ I had Captain Barclay thrown body and bones in
my face. ‘Walk, sir! You talk of walking?’ (I didn’t, for there had been
barely time to get a word in edgeways, or my parable would have
exhausted itself concerning a running high leap.) ‘But there is
nothing like a real pedestrian left; they don’t breed ’em, sir, in these
days: can’t grow them, and don’t know how to train them if they
could! Show me a fellow who would make a match with Barclay to-
day. Barclay, sir, if he were alive, would walk all your best men down
after he came in from shooting. Ask your young friends which of ’em
would like to drive the mail from London to Edinburgh without a
greatcoat! I don’t know what’s come to the present generation. It
must be the smoking, or the light claret, perhaps. They’re done,
they’re used up, they’re washed out. Why, they go to covert by
railway, and have their grouse driven to them on a hill! What would
old Sir Tatton or Osbaldeston say to such doings as these? I was at
Newmarket, I tell you, when the Squire rode his famous match—two
hundred miles in less than nine hours! I saw him get off old Tranby,
and I give you my honour the man looked fresher than the horse!
Don’t tell me. He was rubbed down by a couple of prize-fighters
(there were real bruisers in those days, and the best man used to
win), dressed, and came to dinner just as you would after a five-mile
walk. Pocket Hercules, you call him—one in a thousand? There were
hundreds of such men in my day. Why, I recollect in Tom Smith’s
time that I myself——’
“But at this point I used to make my escape, because there are
two subjects on which nobody is so brilliant as not to be prolix, so
dull as not to be enthusiastic—his doings in the saddle and his
adventures with the fair. To honour either of these triumphs he blows
a trumpet-note loud and long in proportion to the antiquity of the
annals it records. Why must you never again become possessed of
such a hunter as Tally-Ho? Did that abnormal animal really carry you
as well as you think, neither failing when the ground was deep nor
wavering when the fences were strong? Is it strictly true that no day
was ever too long for him? that he was always in the same field with
the hounds? And have not the rails he rose at, the ditches he
covered so gallantly, increased annually in height and depth and
general impossibility ever since that fatal morning when he broke his
back, under the Coplow in a two-foot drain?
“You can’t find such horses now? Perhaps you do not give them
so liberal a chance of proving their courage, speed, and endurance.
“On the other topic it is natural enough, I dare say, for you to ‘yarn’
with all the more freedom that there is no one left to contradict.
People used enormous coloured silk handkerchiefs in that remote
period, when you threw yours with such Oriental complacency, and
the odalisques who picked it up are probably to-day so old and stiff
they could not bend their backs to save their lives. But were they
really as fond, and fair, and faithful as they seem to you now? Had
they no caprices to chill, no whims to worry, no rivals on hand, to
drive you mad? Like the sea, those eyes that look so deep and blue
at a distance, are green and turbid and full of specks when you come
quite close. Was it all sunshine with Mary, all roses with Margaret, all
summer with Jane? What figures the modern women make of
themselves, you say. How they offend your eye, those bare cheek-
bones, those clinging skirts, those hateful chignons! Ah! the cheeks
no longer hang out a danger-signal when you approach; the skirts
are no more lifted, ever such a little, to make room for you in the
corner of the sofa next the fire; and though you might have had locks
of hair enough once to have woven a parti-coloured chignon of your
own, it would be hopeless now to beg as much as would make a
finger-ring for Queen Mab. What is it, I say, that causes us to look
with such deluded eyes on the past? Is it sorrow or malice,
disappointment or regret? Are our teeth still on edge with the sour
grapes we have eaten or forborne? Do we glower through the
jaundiced eyes of malevolence, or is our sight failing with the shades
of a coming night?”
 Bones seldom delivers himself of his opinion in a hurry. “I think,”
he says very deliberately, “that this, like many other absurdities of
human nature, originates in that desire for the unattainable which is,
after all, the mainspring of effort, improvement, and approach
towards perfection. Man longs for the impossible, and what is so
impossible as the past? That which hath vanished becomes
therefore valuable, that which is hidden attractive, that which is
distant desirable. There is a strange lay still existing by an old
Provençal troubadour, no small favourite with iron-handed, lion-
hearted King Richard, of which the refrain, ‘so far away,’ expresses
very touchingly the longing for the absent, perhaps only because
absent, that is so painful, so human, and so unwise. The whole story
is wild and absurd to a degree, yet not without a saddened interest,
owing to the mournful refrain quoted above. It is thus told in the
notes to Warton’s History of English Poetry:—
“‘Jeffrey Rudell, a famous troubadour of Provence, who is also
celebrated by Petrarch, had heard from the adventurers in the
Crusades the beauty of a Countess of Tripoli highly extolled. He
became enamoured from imagination, embarked for Tripoli, fell sick
on the voyage through the fever of expectation, and was brought on
shore at Tripoli, half-expiring. The countess, having received the
news of the arrival of this gallant stranger, hastened to the shore and
took him by the hand. He opened his eyes, and at once overpowered
by his disease and her kindness, had just time to say inarticulately
that having seen her he died satisfied. The countess made him a
most splendid funeral, and erected to his memory a tomb of porphyry
inscribed with an epitaph in Arabian verse. She commanded his
sonnets to be richly copied and illuminated with letters of gold, was
seized with a profound melancholy, and turned nun. I will endeavour
to translate one of the sonnets he made on his voyage, “Yret et
dolent m’en partray,” etc. It has some pathos and sentiment. “I
should depart pensive but for this love of mine so far away, for I
know not what difficulties I may have to encounter, my native land
being so far away. Thou who hast made all things and who formed
this love of mine so far away, give me strength of body, and then I
may hope to see this love of mine so far away. Surely my love must
be founded on true merit, as I love one so far away. If I am easy for a
moment, yet I feel a thousand pains for her who is so far away. No
other love ever touched my heart than this for her so far away. A
fairer than she never touched any heart, either so near or so far
away.’”
“It is utter nonsense, I grant you, and the doings of this love-sick
idiot seem to have been in character with his stanzas, yet is there a
mournful pathos about that wailing so far away which, well-worded,
well-set, and well-performed, would make the success of a drawing-
room song.
“If the Countess of Tripoli, who seems also to have owned a
susceptible temperament, had been his cousin and lived next door,
he would probably not have admired her the least, would certainly
never have wooed her in such wild and pathetic verse; but he gave
her credit for all the charms that constituted his own ideal of
perfection, and sickened even to death for the possession of his
distant treasure, simply and solely because it was so far away!
“What people all really love is a dream. The stronger the
imagination the more vivid the phantom that fills it; but on the other
hand, the waking is more sudden and more complete. If I were a
woman instead of a—a—specimen, I should beware how I set my
heart upon a man of imagination, a quality which the world is apt to
call genius, with as much good sense as there would be in
confounding the sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil with the blacksmith
himself. Such a man takes the first doll that flatters him, dresses her
out in the fabrications of his own fancy, falls down and worships, gets
bored, and gets up, pulls the tinsel off as quick as he put it on; being
his own he thinks he may do what he likes with it, and finds any
other doll looks just as well in the same light and decked with the
same trappings. Narcissus is not the only person who has fallen in
love with the reflection, or what he believed to be the reflection, of
himself. Some get off with a ducking, some are drowned in sad
earnest for their pains.
“Nevertheless, as the French philosopher says, ‘There is nothing
so real as illusion.’ The day that is dead has for men a more actual, a
more tangible, a more vivid identity than the day that exists, nay,
than the day as yet unborn. One of the most characteristic and
inconvenient delusions of humanity is its incapacity for enjoyment of
the present. Life is a journey in which people are either looking
forward or looking back. Nobody has the wisdom to sit down for half-
an-hour in the shade listening to the birds overhead, examining the
flowers underfoot. It is always ‘How pleasant it was yesterday! What
fun we shall have to-morrow!’ Never ‘How happy we are to-day!’ And
yet what is the past, when we think of it, but a dream vanished into
darkness—the future but an uncertain glimmer that may never
brighten into dawn?
“It is strange how much stronger in old age than in youth is the
tendency to live in the hereafter. Not the real hereafter of another
world, but the delusive hereafter of this. Tell a lad of eighteen that he
must wait a year or two for anything he desires very eagerly, and he
becomes utterly despondent of attaining his wish; but an old man of
seventy is perfectly ready to make arrangements or submit to
sacrifices for his personal benefit to be rewarded in ten years’ time or
so, when he persuades himself he will still be quite capable of
enjoying life. The people who purchase annuities, who plant trees,
who breed horses for their own riding are all past middle age.
Perhaps they have seen so many things brought about by waiting,
more particularly when the deferred hope had caused the sick
heart’s desire to pass away, that they have resolved for them also
must be ‘a good time coming,’ if only they will have patience and
‘wait a little longer.’ Perhaps they look forward because they cannot
bear to look back. Perhaps in such vague anticipations they try to
delude their own consciousness, and fancy that by ignoring and
refusing to see it they can escape the inevitable change. After all,
this is the healthiest and most invigorating practice of the two.
Something of courage seems wanting in man or beast when either is
continually looking back. To the philosopher ‘a day that is dead’ has
no value but for the lesson it affords; to the rest of mankind it is
inestimably precious for the unaccountable reason that it can never
come again.”
“Be it so,” I answered; “let me vote in the majority. I think with the
fools, I honestly confess, but I have also a theory of my own on this
subject, which I am quite prepared to hear ridiculed and despised.
My supposition is that ideas, feelings, delusions, name them how
you will, recur in cycles, although events and tangible bodies, such
as we term realities, must pass away. I cannot remember in my life
any experience that could properly be called a new sensation. When
in a position of which I had certainly no former knowledge I have
always felt a vague, dreamy consciousness that something of the
same kind must have happened to me before. Can it be that my soul
has existed previously, long ere it came to tenant this body that it is
so soon about to quit? Can it be that its immortality stretches both
ways, as into the future so into the past? May I not hope that in the
infinity so fitly represented by a circle, the past may become the
future as the future most certainly must become the past, and the
day that is dead, to which I now look back so mournfully, may rise
again newer, fresher, brighter than ever in the land of the morning
beyond that narrow paltry gutter which we call the grave?” I waited
anxiously for his answer. There are some things we would give
anything to know, things on which certainty would so completely alter
all our ideas, our arrangements, our hopes, and our regrets. Ignorant
of the coast to which we are bound, its distance, its climate, and its
necessities, how can we tell what to pack up and what to leave
behind? To be sure, regarding things material, we are spared all
trouble of selection; but there is yet room for much anxiety
concerning the outfit of the soul. For the space of a minute he
seemed to ponder, and when he did speak, all he said was this—
“I know, but I must not tell,” preserving thereafter an inflexible
silence till it was time to go to bed.
 CHAPTER VII
THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK

We are all looking for it; shall we ever find it? Can it be cultivated in
hothouses by Scotch head-gardeners with high wages and Doric
accent? or shall we come upon it accidentally, peeping through
green bulrushes, lurking in tangled woodlands, or perched high on
the mountain’s crest, far above the region of grouse and heather,
where the ptarmigan folds her wings amongst the silt and shingle in
the clefts of the bare grey rock? We climb for it, we dive for it, we
creep for it on our belly, like the serpent, eating dust to any amount
in the process; but do we ever succeed in plucking such a specimen
as, according to our natures, we can joyfully place in our hats for
ostentation or hide under our waistcoats for true love?
Do you remember Sir Walter Scott’s humorous poem called the
“Search after Happiness”? Do you remember how that Eastern
monarch who strove to appropriate the shirt of a contented man
visited every nation in turn till he came to Ireland, the native soil
indeed of all the shamrock tribe; how his myrmidons incontinently
assaulted one of the “bhoys” whose mirthful demeanour raised their
highest hopes, and how

“Shelelagh, their plans was well-nigh after baulking,

Much less provocation will set it a-walking;
But the odds that foiled Hercules foiled Paddywhack.
They floored him, they seized him, they stripped him, alack!
Up, bubboo! He hadn’t a shirt to his back!”

Mankind has been hunting the four-leaved shamrock from the very
earliest times on record. I believe half the legends of mythology, half
the exploits of history, half the discoveries of science, originate in the
universal search. Jason was looking for it with his Argonauts when
he stumbled on the Golden Fleece; Columbus sailed after it in the
track of the setting sun, scanning that bare horizon of an endless
ocean, day after day, with sinking heart yet never-failing courage, till
the land-weeds drifting round his prow, the land-birds perching on his
spars, brought him their joyous welcome from the undiscovered
shore; Alexander traversed Asia in his desire for it; Cæsar dashed
through the Rubicon in its pursuit; Napoleon well-nigh grasped it
after Austerlitz, but the frosts and fires of Moscow shrivelled it into
nothing ere his hand could close upon the prize. To find it, sages
have ransacked their libraries, adepts exhausted their alembics,
misers hoarded up their gold. It is not twined with the poet’s bay-
leaves, nor is it concealed in the madman’s hellebore. People have
been for it to the Great Desert, the Blue Mountains, the Chinese
capital, the interior of Africa, and returned empty-handed as they
went. It abhors courts, camps, and cities; it strikes no root in palace
nor in castle; and if more likely to turn up in a cottage-garden, who
has yet discovered the humble plot of ground on which it grows?
Nevertheless, undeterred by warning, example, and the
experience of repeated failures, human nature relaxes nothing of its
persevering quest. I have seen a dog persist in chasing swallows as
they skimmed along the lawn; but then the dog had once caught a
wounded bird, and was therefore acting on an assured and tried
experience of its own. If you or I had ever found one four-leaved
shamrock, we should be justified in cherishing a vague hope that we
might some day light upon another.
The Knights of the Round Table beheld with their own eyes that
vision of the Holy Vessel, descending in their midst, which scattered
those steel-clad heroes in all directions on the adventure of the
Sangreal; but perhaps the very vows of chivalry they had registered,
the very exploits they performed, originated with that restless longing
they could not but acknowledge in common with all mankind for
possession of the four-leaved shamrock.

“And better he loved, that monarch bold,

On venturous quest to ride
In mail and plate, by wood and wold,
Than with ermine trapped and cloth of gold
In princely bower to bide.
 The bursting crash of a foeman’s spear
As it shivered against his mail,
Was merrier music to his ear
Than courtier’s whispered tale.
And the clash of Caliburn more dear,
When on hostile casque it rung,
Than all the lays to their monarch’s praise
The harpers of Reged sung.
He loved better to bide by wood and river,
Than in bower of his dame Queen Guenevere;
For he left that lady, so lovely of cheer,
To follow adventures of danger and fear,
And little the frank-hearted monarch did wot
That she smiled in his absence on brave Launcelot.”

Oh! those lilting stanzas of Sir Walter’s, how merrily they ring on
one’s ear, like the clash of steel, the jingling of bridles, or the
measured cadence of a good steed’s stride! We can fancy ourselves
spurring through the mêlée after the “selfless stainless” king, or
galloping with him down the grassy glades of Lyonesse on one of his
adventurous quests for danger, honour, renown—and—the four-
leaved shamrock.
Obviously it did not grow in the tilt-yards at Caerleon or the palace
gardens of Camelot; nay, he had failed to find it in the posy lovely
Guenevere wore on her bosom. Alas! that even Launcelot, the flower
of chivalry, the brave, the courteous, the gentle, the sorrowing and
the sinful, must have sought for it there in vain.
Everybody begins life with a four-leaved shamrock in view, an
ideal of his own, that he follows up with considerable wrong-
headedness to the end. Such fiction has a great deal to answer for in
the way of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust. Many
natures find themselves completely soured and deteriorated before
middle age, and why? Because, forsooth, they have been through
the garden with no better luck than their neighbours. I started in
business, we will say, with good connections, sufficient capital, and
an ardent desire to make a fortune. Must I be a saddened, morose,
world-wearied man because, missing that unaccountable rise in
muletwist, and taking the subsequent fall in grey shirtings too late, I
have only realised a competency, while Bullion, who didn’t want it,
made at least twenty thou.? Or I wooed Fortune as a soldier, fond of
the profession, careless of climate, prodigal of my person, ramming
my head wherever there was a chance of having it knocked off,
“sticking to it like a leech, sir; never missing a day’s duty, by Jove!
while other fellows were getting on the staff, shooting up the country,
or going home on sick leave.” So I remain nothing but an overworked
field-officer, grim and grey, with an enlarged liver, and more red in my
nose than my cheeks, while Dawdle is a major-general commanding
in a healthy district, followed about by two aides-de-camp, enjoying a
lucrative appointment with a fair chance of military distinction. Shall I
therefore devote to the lowest pit of Acheron the Horse Guards, the
War Office, H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief, and the service of Her
Majesty the Queen? How many briefless barristers must you multiply
to obtain a Lord Chancellor, or even a Chief Baron? How many
curates go to a bishop? How many village practitioners to a
fashionable doctor in a London-built brougham? Success in every
line, while it waits, to a certain extent, on perseverance and capacity,
partakes thus much in the nature of a lottery, that for one prize there
must be an incalculable number of blanks.
I will not go so far as to say that you should abstain from the liberal
professions of arts or arms, that you should refrain from taking your
ticket in the lottery, or in any way rest idly in mid-stream, glad to

“Loose the sail, shift the oar, let her float down,
Fleeting and gliding by tower and town;”

but I ask you to remember that the marshal’s baton can only be in
one conscript’s knapsack out of half a million; that wigs and mitres,
and fees every five minutes, fall only to one in ten thousand; that
although everybody has an equal chance in the lottery, that chance
may be described as but half a degree better than the cipher which
represents zero.
There is an aphorism in everybody’s mouth about the man who
goes to look for a straight stick in the wood. Hollies, elms, oaks,
ashes, and alders he inspects, sapling after sapling, in vain. This one
has a twist at the handle, that bends a little towards the point; some
are too thick for pliancy, some too thin for strength. Several would do
very well but for the abundant variety that affords a chance of finding
something better. Presently he emerges at the farther fence, having
traversed the covert from end to end, but his hands are still empty,
and he shakes his head, thinking he may have been over-fastidious
in his choice. A straight stick is no easier to find than would be a
four-leaved shamrock.
The man who goes to buy a town house or rent a place in the
country experiences the same difficulty. Up-stairs and down-stairs he
travels, inspecting kitchen-ranges, sinks and sculleries, attics,
bedrooms, boudoirs, and housemaids’ closets, till his legs ache, his
brain swims, and his temper entirely gives way. In London, if the
situation is perfect, there is sure to be no servants’ hall, or the
accommodation below-stairs leaves nothing to be desired, but he
cannot undertake to reside so far from his club. These difficulties
overcome, he discovers the butler’s pantry is so dark no servant of
that fastidious order will consent to stay with him a week. In the
country, if the place is pretty the neighbourhood may be
objectionable: the rent is perhaps delightfully moderate, but he must
keep up the grounds and pay the wages of four gardeners. Suitable
in every other respect, he cannot get the shooting; or if no such
drawbacks are to be alleged, there is surely a railway through the
park, and no station within five miles. Plenty of shamrocks grow, you
see, of the trefoil order, green, graceful, and perfectly symmetrical. It
is that fourth leaf he looks for, which creates all his difficulties.
The same with the gentleman in search of a horse, the same with
Cœlebs in search of a wife. If the former cannot be persuaded to put
up with some little drawback of action, beauty, or temper, he will
never know that most delightful of all partnerships, the sympathy
existing between a good horseman and his steed. If the latter
expects to find a perfection really exist, which he thinks he has
discovered while dazzled by the glamour surrounding a man in love,
he deserves to be disappointed, and he generally is. Rare, rare
indeed are the four-leaved shamrocks in either sex; thrice happy
those whom Fate permits to win and wear them even for a day!
 What is it we expect to find? In this matter of marriage more than
in any other our anticipations are so exorbitant that we cannot be
surprised if our “come-down” is disheartening in proportion.

“Where is the maiden of mortal strain

That may match with the Baron of Triermain?
She must be lovely, constant, and kind,
Holy and pure, and humble of mind,” etc.

(How Sir Walter runs in my head to-night.) Yes, she must be all this,
and possess a thousand other good qualities, many more than are
enumerated by Iago, so as never to descend for a moment from the
pedestal on which her baron has set her up. Is this indulgent? is it
even reasonable? Can he expect any human creature to be always
dancing on the tight-rope? Why is Lady Triermain not to have her
whims, her temper, her fits of ill-humour, like her lord? She must not
indeed follow his example and relieve her mind by swearing “a good,
round, mouth-filling oath,” therefore she has the more excuse for
feeling at times a little captious, a little irritable, what she herself calls
a little cross. Did he expect she was an angel? Well, he often called
her one, nay, she looks like it even now in that pretty dress, says my
lord, and she smiles through her tears, putting her white arms round
his neck so fondly that he really believes he has found what he
wanted till they fall out again next time.
Men are very hard in the way of exaction on those they love. All
“take” seems their motto, and as little “give” as possible. If they
would but remember the golden rule and expect no more than
should be expected from themselves, it might be a better world for
everybody. I have sometimes wondered in my own mind whether
women do not rather enjoy being coerced and kept down. I have
seen them so false to a kind heart, and so fond of a cruel one. Are
they slaves by nature, do you conceive, or only hypocrites by
education? I suppose no wise man puzzles his head much on that
subject. They are all incomprehensible and all alike!
“How unjust!” exclaims Bones, interrupting me with more vivacity
than usual. “How unsupported an assertion, how sweeping an
accusation, how unfair, how unreasonable, and how like a man! Yes,
that is the way with every one of you; disappointed in a single
instance, you take refuge from your own want of judgment, your own
mismanagement, your own headlong stupidity, in the condemnation
of half the world! You open a dozen oysters, and turn away
disgusted because you have not found a pearl. You fall an easy prey
to the first woman who flatters you, and plume yourself on having
gained a victory without fighting a battle. The fortress so easily won
is probably but weakly garrisoned, and capitulates ere long to a fresh
assailant. When this has happened two or three times, you veil your
discomfiture under an affectation of philosophy and vow that women
are all alike, quoting perhaps a consolatory scrap from Catullus—

‘Quid levius plumâ? pulvis. Quid pulvere? ventus.

Quid vento? mulier. Quid muliëre? nihil?’

But Roman proverbs and Roman philosophy are unworthy and

delusive. There is a straight stick in the wood if you will be satisfied
with it when found; there is a four-leaved shamrock amongst the
herbage if you will only seek for it honestly on your knees. Should
there be but one in a hundred women, nay, one in a thousand, on
whom an honest heart is not thrown away, it is worth while to try and
find her. At worst, better be deceived over and over again than sink
into that deepest slough of depravity in which those struggle who,
because their own trust has been outraged, declare there is no faith
to be kept with others; because their own day has been darkened,
deny the existence of light.
“You speak feelingly,” I observe, conscious that such unusual
earnestness denotes a conviction he will get the worst of the debate.
“You have perhaps been more fortunate than the rest. Have you
found her, then, this hundredth woman, this prize, this pearl, this
black swan, glorious as the phœnix and rare as the dodo? Forgive
my argumentum ad hominem, if I may use the expression, and
forgive my urging that such good fortune only furnishes one of those
exceptions which, illogical people assert, prove the rule.” There is a
vibration of his teeth wanting only lips to become a sneer, while he
replies—
 “In my own case I was not so lucky, but I kept my heart up and
went on with my search to the end.”
“Exactly,” I retort in triumph; “you, too, spent a lifetime looking for
the four-leaved shamrock, and never found it after all. But I think
women are far more unreasonable than ourselves in this desire for
the unattainable, this disappointment when illusion fades into reality.
Not only in their husbands do they expect perfection, and that, too, in
defiance of daily experience, of obvious incompetency, but in their
servants, their tradespeople, their carriages, their horses, their
rooms, their houses, the dinners they eat, and the dresses they
wear. With them an avowal of incapacity to reconcile impossibilities
stands for wilful obstinacy, or sheer stupidity at best. They believe
themselves the victims of peculiar ill-fortune if their coachman gets
drunk, or their horses go lame; if milliners are careless or ribbons
unbecoming; if chimneys smoke, parties fall through, or it rains when
they want to put on a new bonnet. They never seem to understand
that every ‘if’ has its ‘but,’ every pro its con. My old friend, Mr.
Bishop, of Bond Street, the Democritus of his day (and may he live
as long!), observed to me many years ago, when young people went
mad about the polka, that the new measure was a type of everything
else in life, ‘What you gain in dancing you lose in turning round.’ Is it
not so with all our efforts, all our undertakings, all our noblest
endeavours after triumph and success? In dynamics we must be
content to resign the maximum of one property that we may preserve
the indispensable minimum of another, must allow for friction in
velocity, must calculate the windage of a shot. In ethics we must
accept fanaticism with sincerity, exaggeration with enthusiasm, over-
caution with unusual foresight, and a giddy brain with a warm,
impulsive heart. What we take here we must give yonder; what we
gain in dancing we must lose in turning round!
“But no woman can be brought to see this obvious necessity. For
the feminine mind nothing is impracticable. Not a young lady eating
bread and butter in the school-room but cherishes her own vision of
the prince already riding through enchanted forests in her pursuit.
The prince may turn out to be a curate, a cornet, or a count, a duke
or a dairy-farmer, a baronet or a blacking-maker, that has nothing to
do with it. Relying on her limitless heritage of the possible, she feels
she has a prescriptive right to the title, the ten thousand a year, the
matrimonial prize, the four-leaved shamrock. Whatever else turns
up, she considers herself an ill-used woman for life, unless all the
qualities desirable in man are found united in the person and
fortunes of her husband; nay, he must even possess virtues that can
scarce possibly co-exist. He must be handsome and impenetrable,
generous and economical, gay and domestic, manly but never from
her side, wise yet deferring to her opinion in all things, quick-sighted,
though blind to any drawbacks or shortcomings in herself. Above all,
must he be superlatively content with his lot, and unable to discover
that by any means in his matrimonial venture, ‘what he gained in
dancing he has lost in turning round.’
“I declare to you I think if Ursidius[2] insists on marrying at all, that
he had better select a widow; at least he runs at even weights
against his predecessor, who, being a man, must needs have
suffered from human weakness and human infirmities. The chances
are that the dear departed went to sleep after dinner, hated an open
carriage, made night hideous with his snores under the connubial
counterpane, and all the rest of it. A successor can be no worse,
may possibly appear better; but if he weds a maiden, he has to
contend with the female ideal of what a man should be! and from
such a contest what can accrue but unmitigated discomfiture and
disgrace?
“Moreover, should he prove pre-eminent in those manly qualities
women most appreciate, he will find that even in those they prefer to
accept the shadow for the substance, consistently mistaking
assertion for argument, volubility for eloquence, obstinacy for
resolution, bluster for courage, fuss for energy, and haste for speed.
“On one of our greatest generals, remarkable for his gentle,
winning manner in the drawing-room as for his cool daring in the
field, before he had earned his well-merited honours, I myself heard
this verdict pronounced by a jury of maids and matrons: ‘Dear! he’s
such a quiet creature, I’m sure he wouldn’t be much use in a battle!’
No; give them Parolles going to recover his drum, and they have a
champion and a hero exactly to their minds, but they would scarcely
believe in Richard of the Lion-Heart if he held his peace and only set
his teeth hard when he laid lance in rest.
“Therefore it is they tug so unmercifully at the slender thread that
holds a captive, imagining it is by sheer strength the quiet creature
must be coerced. Some day the pull is harder than usual, the thread
breaks, and the wild bird soars away, free as the wind down which it
sails, heedless of lure and whistle, never to return to bondage any
more. Then who so aghast as the pretty, thoughtless fowler, longing
and remorseful, with the broken string in her hand?
“She fancied, no doubt, her prisoner was an abnormal creature,
rejoicing in ill-usage; that because it was docile and generous it must
therefore be poor in spirit, slavish in obedience, and possessing no
will of its own. She thought she had found a four-leaved shamrock,
and this is the result!
“But I may talk for ever and end where I began. Men you may
convince by force of argument, if your logic is very clear and your
examples or illustrations brought fairly under their noses; but with the
other sex, born to be admired and not instructed, you might as well
pour water into a sieve. Can you remember a single instance in
which with these, while a word of entreaty gained your point
forthwith, you might not have exhausted a folio of argument in vain?”
He thinks for a minute, and then answers deliberately, as if he had
made up his mind—
“I never knew but one woman who could understand reason, and
she wouldn’t listen to it!”
 CHAPTER VIII
RUS IN URBE

Romæ Tibur Amem, ventosus. Tibure Romam! quoth the Latin

satirist, ridiculing his own foibles, like his neighbour’s, with the
laughing, half-indulgent banter that makes him the pleasantest, the
chattiest, and the most companionable of classic writers. How he
loved the cool retirement of his Sabine home, its grassy glades, its
hanging woodlands, its fragrant breezes wandering and whispering
through those summer slopes, rich in the countless allurements of a
landscape that—

“Like Albunea’s echoing fountain,

All my inmost heart hath ta’en;
Give me Anio’s headlong torrent,
And Tiburnus’ grove and hills,
And its orchards sparkling dewy,
With a thousand wimpling rills,”

as Theodore Martin translates his Horace, or thus, according to Lord

Ravensworth—

“Like fair Albunea’s sybil-haunted hall,

By rocky Anio’s echoing waterfall,
And Tibur’s orchards and high-hanging wood,
Reflected graceful in the whirling flood.”

His lordship, you observe, who can himself write Latin lyrics as
though he had drunk with Augustus, and capped verses with Ovid,
makes the second syllable of Albunea long, and a very diffuse
argument might be held on this disputed quantity. Compare these
with the original, and say which you like best—

“Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis,

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