SIB CHARLES LYELL. 601 



events as a party at Milman's, where Rogers and "VVhewell discuss 

 Pope, and where Milnian gives the fresh opinion of a contemporary 

 on Macaulay's " Bacon." To follow him in all his wanderings after 

 the age of railways would be impossible : a run across to Spain, Italy, 

 or Scandinavia, seemed to him merely an ordinary bit of his week's 

 work. In 1841, however, he took a more ambitious trip across the 

 Atlantic to lecture at the Lowell Institute, and then traveled through 

 much of the United States and Canada. Geologically, he was deeply 

 impressed by the great scale of the phenomena he saw, the vast lakes, 

 the enormous glacial deposits, the immense subterranean forests ; so- 

 cially and politically, the trip left lasting effects upon his tone of 

 mind. Singularly unprejudiced to start with, he met American so- 

 ciety frankly and cordially, and judged both its merits and defects 

 with somewhat lenient impartiality. But his kindliness was not the 

 result of mere unobservant and uncritical good nature. He kept his 

 eyes open, as usual, to all the main sociological factors, and rightly 

 remarks that many Englishmen set down much to American political 

 institutions which is really due to American circumstances abundant 

 land, free elbow-room, and constant European immigration, often of 

 the poorest and most ignorant class. On the other hand, when he 

 crosses the border at Niagara, he sees the weak points of the colonial 

 system on the north of the Great Lakes keenly and acutely : 



You and I would hear more in good society here (in Canada) in one week 

 (he writes to Leonard Horner), which we should consider narrow -minded and 

 prejudiced and ungenerous to foreigners, in matters of politics, religion, and 

 political economy, than we heard in nine months in the United States ; for they 

 have here all the Kleinstadterei of a colony and the enmity of the borderer, 

 added to everything that you might disapprove of which they bring from 

 home. 



This is less true now than it was then, but there is still much truth 

 in it ; and it is painful to think that we have condemned Canada to 

 such a poor and petty mock-national existence for forty years longer, 

 since Lyell wrote, merely for the sake of our own meaningless im- 

 perial claim, which nobody ever seriously means to assert, but which 

 everybody pretends to believe is vastly important. The interesting 

 thing to note here, however, is the fact that Lyell should have come 

 to so definite and just a conclusion after only a few weeks' sojourn in 

 a new country. It is one of the many proofs of his keen practical 

 penetration which lie scattered over every page of his memoirs and 

 journals. 



Perhaps the chief visible results of this first American trip was the 

 formation of a close friendship with Mr. Ticknor, of Boston a mem- 

 ber of the well-known publishing firm to whom many of his letters 

 are henceforth addressed. They are among the most interesting he 

 ever wrote, containing expressions of broad general opinions, which 

 would hardly be needed in writing to European friends. Some of 



