SIB CHARLES LYELL. 599 



of the "Principles" came out, and immediately achieved a marked 

 success. No sooner was his hook published, than he was off to the 

 Pyrenees, and dashing down in his impetuous way into Catalonia. 

 Here he mixes up in his letters the volcanoes of Olot and the salt- 

 mines of Cardona with much amusing chat about the peninsularity of 

 the Spaniards and the odd people he met en route. On his way back 

 through France, he comes across the tail-end of the Revolution of 

 1830. At Perpignan he sees the cross removed from the cathedral, 

 and hears a bystander indulge in the exquisitely French reflection : 

 " Chacun a son tour ; le bon J) leu a eu le sien." Next year he is off 

 to Germany, inspecting the volcanic region of the Eifel. About the 

 same time he accepts the professorship of Geology in King's College, 

 offered him by three bishops, who knew not what they did ; for Cony- 

 beare vouched for his orthodoxy. Even then Conybeare must have 

 been satisfied with very little. Lyell did not keep the chair, however, 

 as it interfered with his schemes of traveling and original research. 

 So he returned immediately to his tours, much to the ultimate advan- 

 tage of science, and no doubt to the great satisfaction of the hesitating 

 episcopal triumvirate. 



During all these bachelor years Lyell was daily mixing with the 

 most cultivated society of the time. In every letter half a dozen well- 

 known names catch the eye at once. On one page, he is dining at 

 Craig Crook Castle with Francis Jeffrey, " a great treat," and meeting 

 " Mr. Maculloch, who gave the celebrated lectures on political economy 

 in town last summer, which I attended " ; on another, he is breakfast- 

 ing at Lockhart's with Sir Walter Scott, " a far more genteel-looking 

 man than Phillips has represented him in his portrait" ; and on a 

 third, he is at Cambridge, playing whist with Copley, Master of the 

 Rolls, afterward Lord Lyndhurst, and chronicling only " a stiff bow " 

 from highly-aristocratic young Lord Palmerston, who must then have 

 been strangely different from his later easy-going self. Mrs. Somer- 

 ville was always a close friend, and he even chaperones her to a Sunday 

 evening " At Home " at Sir George Phillips's, where they meet Yankee 

 novelist Cooper, politico-economical Mrs. Marcet, ethical Mackintosh, 

 poet Rogers, Benthamite Dumont, Conversation Sharp, Sir Walter him- 

 self, and a dozen other assorted notabilities. Sir John Herschel, too, was 

 an equally early ally, to whom many of the letters are addressed. Lyell 

 is very catholic. He goes to hear Paganini, not enthusiastically ; and 

 then he goes to kirk to hear Chalmers, and retains enough of the 

 Scotchman about him to characterize the sermon as " a very long dis- 

 course, but admirable." This catholicity comes out in far stronger 

 relief in his letters than even in his published works, which stick com- 

 paratively close to the matter in hand. One sees it over and over 

 again in such little touches as his first notion that he might write the 

 " Principles " as conversations on geology, in the form of " a dialogue 

 like Berkeley's ' Alciphron,' between equals." How many geologists of 



