lii CHARLES CARDALE BABINGTON. 



act. We also formed, the two cousins and I, a large part by count 

 of the Antiquarian Society, as represented in session — often the 

 half, seldom less than a third. As with Todhunter and Charles 

 Henry Cooper, so with Cardale Babington ; I knew him well, and 

 yet, save for the weekly ' wine ' of the Junior Book Club, I doubt 

 whether he ever ate or drank in my rooms or I in his. His devotion 

 to Natural History and Antiquities, to the past, present and future 

 of Education, lay on the surface ; but the higher life, which, as I 

 now know, he had embraced from a child, was ' hidden.' William 

 Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, and their peers, had indeed moulded 

 his thoughts and will ; but his messmates never pierced the secret. 

 Talkative, son of one Say-well of Prating Row, must have felt ill at 

 ease in the Cambridge of those days. 



Ransack his library ; ask his aims from ' the dead alive and 

 busy ' there. You will find in the Museum — for the bulk of his 

 botanical books, with his entire Herbarium,* both now bequeathed 

 to the University, have long dwelt there for public use, he claiming 

 his share as one of the public — more than 1600 volumes. Some 

 journals of associations he lodged on public shelves, number by 

 number, as they came. In his study still nestles something of 

 Botany and Zoology, far more of Archaeology. English, Irish, 

 Scotch, Welsh societies, national or local, — he seems to have been 

 parcel of all, to have worked for all. E. A. Freeman, Basil Jones, 

 G. T. Clark, Henry Bradshaw, Irish Crosses and Round Towers, 

 Minsters and Roman Roads, Roman Bath for auld lang syne, pot- 

 tery and coins, were fish welcome to his net as Hooker, Berkeley, 

 De Candolle, mosses and brambles, moths and beetles. Humboldt's 

 "Kosmos" and Gilbert White's "Selborne," Lives of Adam Sedgwick, 

 J. S. Henslow, Edward Forbes, the Voyage of the Beagle, tell of 

 labours which prompted and guided his. History was his pastime ; 

 whilst feeling safer with his friend Freeman, he still would not 

 blush to be caught with Froude's " Armada "or " Erasmus." The 

 quarterly of his choice was "The English Historical Review." At 

 home in every nook of the British, including the Channel, Isles, f — 

 for he paced them, north and south, east and west, chasing flowers 

 and insects, Avorks of stone age or of bronze, of Celt or Roman, 

 Saxon or Norman ; he was scarcely less at home, by others' eyes 

 all the world over — eyes of Franklin or Cameron, Nordenskjold, 

 Curzon, Hue, Palgrave, Tristram. He was no stranger to Milman's 

 "History of the Jews," Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine." 



For indeed he loved to link Nature with Mind, wherever he 

 strayed. Scott's poetry or novels, Wordsworth's verse, were his 

 guides through scenes which they paint ; at Dunblane he went on 



* The University can now shew 400,000 specimens. The collection to which 

 he succeeded would long ago have perished, had he not ' poisoned ' the sprigs. 



t Once only, in 1846, did he stray where the Queen's writ does not run, — to 

 Iceland. Else he was home-sick as Socrates, though citizen, it is true, of a larger 

 state. 



