311 



Townsend, with whom the novelist was well acrinaintcd, but in the character 

 of the celobrated fanatic Sir H:irry Trolawney, Baronet."* 

 It is too late now to re-opcn the question. We can only state the 

 opinion of contemporaries. 



Notwithstanding the energy he threw into his ministerial work 

 he did not allow this to take him away entirely from his study of 

 mineralogy and the traces of a universal deluge. 



" In the j'ear 1769 he traversed Ireland, and the next year he crossed over 

 to the Continent, that he might ijursue his researches in Holland, Franco, and- 

 Flanders. In these journeys he had an opportunity of conversing with men 

 of superior knowledge in these subjects ; and on his return to England he 

 read whatever had been written by modern travellers descriptive of their 

 geological excursions. 



" During successive winters he ransacked every part of Cornwall and 

 visited its mines, to all which he had free access, f 



In 1773 he man-ied Joyce, the daughter of Thomas Nankivell, 

 of St. Agnes, in the county of Cornwall, gentleman, by whom he 

 had six children. She died in 1783, and was buried at Croydon, 

 in the county of Surrey.;}: 



During these ten years of his married life he seems to have 

 remained in England, but three years after his wife's death he 

 again went on the Continent, still bent on his favourite studies. 

 Whatever may have been the information he obtained from 

 the different mineralogists he visited, he had not lost sight of 

 the idea conceived in his undergraduate's days, of tracing, 

 as far as he could, the effects of an universal Deluge. In 

 speculating on what were probably the ideas communicated to 

 him during this extended tour, we can hardly suppose that he did not 

 come into contact with some disciples of Werner, and learn his views 

 of universal formations. It must be borne in mind that this tour 

 commenced in 1786, and, as pointed out above, he certainly had 

 no knowledge of the facts of stratification which he worked out 

 and gave to the world in his " Vindication of Moses " till so late as 

 1799. He had the reputation of being a good mineralogist himself, 

 and had held converse with the most distinguished mineralogists of 

 Europe ; but although he has written on many subjects, I do not 

 know that he ever wrote anything on Mineralogy in the sense, at 



*Lit. Kec.,vol.ii.,p. 19. f" Moses." Introduction. J Tablet in Pewsey Church. 



