and gay"; but on the whole he is much impressed with the buildings of Venice, and especially with the pictures. On their return they went to Bologna, and then crossed the Apennines to Florence. Everywhere little touches in the diary indicate a mind exceptionally observant—such as notes on the first firefly, the fields of millet, the festooned vines seen on the plain, or the peculiar sandy zone on the northern slopes of the hills. He also mentions that shortly after crossing the frontier of Tuscany they passed near Coviliajo, "a volcanic fire" which proceeded from a neighbouring mountain.[8] This they intended to visit on their return. But at Florence the diary ends abruptly, for the note-book which contained the rest of it was unfortunately lost.

We have given this summary of Lyell's journal in some detail, but even thus it barely suffices to convey an adequate idea of the cultured tastes, wide interests, and habits of close and accurate observation disclosed by its pages. It shows, better perhaps than any other documents, the mental development of the future author of the "Principles of Geology." Few things, as he journeys, escape his notice; he describes facts carefully and speculates but little. As he wanders among the Alpine peaks, he makes no reference to convulsions of the earth's crust; as he views the ruin wrought by the Dranse, he says naught of deluges.

The travellers got back to England in September, and at the end of the Long Vacation Lyell returned to Oxford. There he remained till December, 1819, when he proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, obtaining a second class in Classical Honours. Considering that he had never been a "hard reader," and that he appears to have spent much of his "longs" in travel—a practice which, though good for general education, counts for little in the schools—the position indicates that he possessed rather exceptional abilities and a good amount of scholarship. Though Oxford had been unable to bestow upon him a systematic training in science, she had given a definite bias to his inclination, and had fostered and cultivated a taste for literature which in the future brought forth a rich fruitage.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER III.

THE GROWTH OF A PURPOSE.

Shortly after he had donned the bachelor's hood Lyell came to London, was entered at Lincoln's Inn, and studied law in the office of a special pleader. Science was not forsaken, for in March, 1819, he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society, and about the same time joined the Linnean Society. Before very long his legal studies were interrupted. His eyes became so weak that a complete rest was prescribed; accordingly, in the autumn of 1820, he accompanied his father on a journey to Rome. During this but little was done in geology, for the travellers spent almost all their time in towns.

On his return, so far as can be inferred from the few letters which have been published, Lyell continued to work at geology, and at Christmas, 1821, was seeking in vain for freshwater fossils in the neighbourhood of Bartley. In the spring of 1822 he investigated the Sussex coast from Hastings to Dungeness, and studied the effects of the sea at Winchelsea and Rye. In the early summer of 1823 he visited the Isle of Wight, and in a letter to Dr. Mantell suggested that the "blue marl"[9] in Compton Chine is identical with that at Folkestone, and compared the underlying strata with those in Sussex, clearing up some confusions, into which earlier observers had fallen, about the Wealden and Lower Greensand. He was now evidently beginning to get a firm grip on the subject—a thing far from easy in days when so little had been ascertained—and this year he read his first papers to the Geological Society—one, in January, written in conjunction with Dr. Mantell, "On the Limestone and Clay of the Ironsand in Sussex"; the other in June, "On the Sections presented by Some Forfarshire Rivers." Also, on February 7th, he was elected one of the secretaries of that Society, an office which he retained till 1826. This is a pretty clear proof that he had begun to make his mark among geologists, and was well esteemed by the leaders of the science.

No sooner had he returned from the Isle of Wight than he started for Paris, going direct from London to Calais, in the Earl of Liverpool steam packet, "in 11 hours! 120 miles! engines 80 horse-power for 240 tons." In the last letter written to his father before quitting England he refers to our neighbours across the Channel in the following terms: "My opinion of the French people is that they are much too corrupt for a free government and much too enlightened for a despotic one." That was written full seventy years ago; perhaps even now, were he alive, he would not be disposed to withdraw the words.

At Paris he was well received by Cuvier, Humboldt, and other men of science, attended lectures at the Jardin du Roi, and saw a good deal of society. His letters home often contain interesting references to matters political and social—such as, for example, the following remarks which he heard from the mouth of Humboldt: "You cannot conceive how striking and ludicrous a feature it is in Parisian society at present that every other man one meets is either minister or ex-minister. So frequent have been the changes. The instant a new ministry is formed, a body of sappers and miners is organised. They work industriously night and day. At last the ministers find that they are supplanted by the very arts by which a few months ago they raised themselves to power."