ch. ii.] DOWN. 39 



that of a depressed, almost despondent, yet benevolent man, 

 and it is notorious how heartily he laughed. I believe that 

 his benevolence was real, though stained by not a little 

 jealousy. No one can doubt about his extraordinary power 

 of drawing pictures of things and men far more vivid, as 

 it appears to me, than any drawn by Macaulay. "Whether 

 his pictures of men were true ones is another question. 



He has been all-powerful in impressing some grand 

 moral truths on the minds of men. On the other hand, his 

 views about slavery were revolting. In his eyes might was 

 right. His mind seemed to me a very narrow one ; even if 

 all brances of science, which he despised, are excluded. It 

 is astonishing to me that Kingsley should have spoken of 

 him as a man well fitted to advance science. He laughed 

 to scorn the idea that a mathematician, such as Whewell, 

 could judge, as I maintained he could, of Goethe's views on 

 light. He thought it a most ridiculous thing that any one 

 should care whether a glacier moved a little quicker or a 

 little slower, or moved at all. As far as I could judge, I 

 never met a man with a mind so ill adapted for scientific 

 research. 



Whilst living in London, I attended as regularly as I 

 could the meetings of several scientific societies, and acted 

 as secretary to the Geological Society. But such attend- 

 ance, and ordinary society, suited my health so badly that 

 we resolved to live in the country, which we both jn-eierred 

 and have never repented of. 



Residence at Down, from September lJf., lSJfi* to the present 



time, 1876. 



After several fruitless searches in Surrey and elsewdiere, 

 we found this house and purchased it. I was pleased with 

 the diversified appearance of the vegetation proper to a chalk 

 district, and so unlike what I had been accustomed to in the 

 Midland counties ; and still more pleased w T ith the extreme 

 quietness and rusticity of the place. It is not, however, 

 quite so retired a place as a writer in a German periodical 

 makes it, who says that my house can be approached only 

 by a mule-track ! Our fixing ourselves here has answered 

 admirably in one way which we did not anticipate, namely, 

 by being very convenient for frequent visits from our chil- 

 dren. 



Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we 

 4 



