59 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Royal Society, setatis twenty-nine. A year later, his review of Scrope's 

 book on Auvergne, in the " Quarterly," clearly showed the line that he 

 meant henceforth to adopt. He came forward as the champion of the 

 views set forward by Hutton and Playfair views which he was to 

 modify profoundly, to make his own, and to stamp with the seal of 

 universal scientific recognition. About this time he conceived the 

 plan of the "Principles of Geology," his first epoch-making book. 

 Shortly after, he went abroad with Murchison to France and Italy, 

 collecting material for the great work. His letters home bristle with 

 amusing sketches of his Sicilian experiences, for Sicily was then even 

 more impassable off the grand route than it is now ; and he often had 

 to rough it in strange quarters. He has a keen eye for the ludicrous 

 side of things, and tells many odd stories of men and manners. " This, 

 signor," says his cicerone once, "is the wife of Pompey the Great, 

 named after Pompeii ; she is weeping her husband's death, who was 

 killed at the siege of Troy." At Girgenti he sees "a droll sight. Fif- 

 teen orphan boys were paraded before the statue stark naked on a 

 windy day, and then clothed by the bishop in the name of the king." 

 He has time, too, besides climbing Etna, and noticing such things as 

 the signs of the rise and fall on the famous temple at Paestum, to look 

 at Giotto's frescoes, and to observe much about men and politics. At 

 the end of his tour he writes from Naples to Murchison (who had not 

 accompanied him so far) : 



My work is in part written, and all planned. It will not pretend to give 

 even an abstract of all that is known in geology, but it will endeavor to estab- 

 lish the principle of reasoning in the science ; . . . that no causes whatever have, 

 from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted, but 

 those now acting ; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy 

 from that which they now exert. I must go to Germany and learn German 

 geology and the language, after this work is published, and before I launch out 

 into my tables of equivalents. . . . This year we have by our joint tour fathomed 

 the depth and ascertained the shallowness of the geologists of France and Italy 

 as to their original observations. We can without fear measure our strength 

 against most of tbose in our own land, and the question is whether Germany is 

 stronger. They are a people who generally "drink deep or taste not." Their 

 language must be learned ; the places to which their memoirs relate, visited ; 

 and then you may see, as I may, to what extent we may indulge dreams of emi- 

 nence at least as original observers. 



'S' 



It is a great thing that Lyell was able thus to devote himself 

 entirely to his work, and to spare no expense or trouble that would 

 render him more competent rightly to perform it. "I shall never 

 hope to make money by geology," he said ; and again, " I will waste 

 no time in book-making for lucre's sake." To travel everywhere and 

 see everything with his own eyes was his great idea : " We must 

 preach up traveling, as Demosthenes did delivery, as the first, second, 

 and third requisites for a modern geologist." In 1830 the first volume 



