600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the new school have ever heard of the ' Alciphron,' or even know Berke- 

 ley in any other way than through one eternal quotation from " Don 

 Juan"? ' 



In 1831 the journal written for his future wife begins, so that we 

 may conclude he was then or thereabout first engaged. In 1832 he 

 married. His wife was a daughter of Leonard Horner, and a lady of 

 tastes very similar to his own. Perhaps one may hint that all the 

 ladies of Lyell's family were a trifle more learned than all the world 

 would care for : it must have been rather a strain to live up to such a 

 constant stimulation in the home circle ; and most men would hardly 

 wish to fill their letters to their wives with highly interesting details 

 of dip, strike, and horizon. But this is a matter of personal taste. 

 Lyell seems to have been one of the giants who can stand such inces- 

 sant high pressure ; and he was probably all the happier for his well- 

 assorted marriage. He himself seems strongly to have believed that 

 bachelorhood was not good for the cause of science. 



The summer of 1834 was spent in Scandinavia. Lyell was delighted 

 with all that he saw in this new field. " There is much doing here 

 which is unknown in England and France," he writes from Copenha- 

 gen. " I am more than ever struck with the extreme slowness with 

 which science travels, what with multiplicity of languages, doacmes, 

 etc." If even Lyell felt this, though he spoke English, French, and 

 Italian fluently, German well, and Spanish a little, how much must 

 it stand in the way of lesser people, with smaller means and narrower 

 accomplishments ! After seeing Denmark from top to bottom, he 

 crossed to Malmo and Lund, and did the Peninsula pretty thoroughly. 

 At Stockholm, Berzelius took him in hand and gave him the cream of 

 all he knew ; at Upsala, it seems a strange link with the infancy of 

 science to read that the daughters of the great Linnaeus himself showed 

 him over their father's garden. Conversation was limited to German, 

 eked out, when needful, with Latin, which Lyell often found of service 

 as a lingua franca in out-of-the-way places ; but educated Scandina- 

 vians usually speak English so well that even the most helpless for- 

 eigner is seldom at a loss. He seems to have been as pleased with the 

 peaceful and simple descendants of the wickings as most other people, 

 and to have returned to Scandinavia with special pleasure on future 

 visits. In 1837 he took his wife with him, and made further investi- 

 gations on the geology of the Baltic basin, which stood him in good 

 stead in his later works. 



Naturally, as he grew older, after the "Principles" and the "Ele- 

 ments " had made their mark, he became an authority, and saw even 

 more of the best intellects of the time than before. His correspondence 

 with Mr. Darwin not yet the apostle of evolution seems to date from 

 this period, and the allusions to London society crowd more and more 

 thickly on every page. The tone, however, remains unchanged. Not 

 a trace of narrow specialism anywhere. We get long accounts of such 



