SIB CHABLES LYELL. 



595 



to the origin and development of the surface of our own planet ; the 

 third is that of Darwin, who applied it to the origin and development 

 of the phenomena of life ; the fourth is that of Herbert Spencer, who 

 applied it to the origin and development of the phenomena of mind, 

 besides working up all the scattered elements of the system into one 

 complete and harmonious whole. To pretend that Lyell stood up to 

 the level of the other three would be passing the love of biographers : 

 his work neither required nor engaged such high synthetic powers as 

 theirs. But, without the first two, the revolution accomplished by the 

 last two could never, perhaps, have been successfully carried out. 



While at Oxford, too, general culture is not neglected. We find 

 Lyell criticising Mr. Coleridge's new poem of " Christabel," writing 

 some mild verses of his own on Staffa, which he had just visited with 

 his father (better mild than none), and not quite successfully trying to 

 take an interest in his tutor's lectures on the Ethics, where every Ox- 

 ford man can surely afford him the most heart-felt sympathy. In 1818 

 he made a vacation tour through France, Switzerland, and Italy, ob- 

 serving and learning much, and interesting himself in art and society. 

 He sees the Dranse in flood, and pores over the pictures of the Pitti 

 Palace and the domes of Venice. Coming home, he went in for clas- 

 sical honors, and took a second in 1819. In after-life he evidently re- 

 gretted the sort of teaching he had got at Oxford as much as most 

 other men do ; yet it left some good effects, apparent enough in all his 

 subsequent work. 



Law was to be his profession : so he went to Lincoln's Inn and 

 made a beginning of reading. But luckily his eyes were weak, and he 

 was sent abroad again for a trip to Rome. Here he devoted himself 

 to the Forum Romanum and the Vatican, and left no time for geology 

 good education for his future work. Next, he is back in England, 

 and down at Romney, with a friend. What luck for one of his bent : 

 Yarmouth and Romney, the two great modern districts of England, 

 the exact places to see geology now at work under one's very eyes ! 

 Here comes one of the jarring passages again : " The back door, open- 

 ing into the farm-yard, betrays [his friend's father] to have been the 

 farmer turned gentleman, not the gentleman turned farmer. How 

 short and direct is the road through Eton and Oxford from the grazier 

 on Romney Marsh to the fine gentleman ! " But even here the better 

 nature comes out on second thoughts " or, to speak plainly, to the 

 real gentleman in ideas, manners, and information." In the earlier 

 letters there is a good deal of this sort of thing talk of " good com- 

 pany," " my father's head livery-servant," and so forth ; but we are 

 still in the year 1822, and great allowances must be made for the son 

 of a Scotch laird, living in the midst of the Tory society of the Re- 

 gency, and hardly daring to trust his own native Liberal promptings. 

 In politics he was Liberal from the first, though never a sound Radi- 

 cal ; and in social matters the tone of his letters widens out steadily 



