PREFACE. XXxi 
more and more upon me, and bringing me nearer, sensibly nearer, to my last resting-place 
in this world. I write not sorrowfully or despondingly. I wish to address my dear and 
honoured friends in Cambridge in words of hope and cheerfulness. But first of all let me 
thank the Author of my being for having so long upheld my life in heart and hope 
since I first began my residence in this University. There were three prominent hopes 
which possessed my heart in the earliest years of my Professorship. First, that I might 
be enabled to bring together a Collection worthy of the University, and illustrative of all 
the departments of the Science it was my duty to study and to teach. Secondly, that a 
Geological Museum might be built by the University, amply capable of containing its 
future Collections; and lastly, that I might bring together a Class of Students who would 
listen to my teaching, support me by their sympathy, and help me by the labour of their 
hands. It now makes me happy to say, that all these hopes have for many years been 
amply realized. 
It is to me no small delight to look back on the many past years when the Heads of 
Colleges were my sole Auditors; when we held our annual and most cheerful festive meetings 
on the first of May; and rejoiced over a dinner, very sumptuously provided by the Vice- 
Chancellor, in accordance with the express words of Dr Woodward’s Will. And we all 
acknowledged our Founder's judgment in this festive clause of his Will. For it greatly 
helped to preserve a Collection, made by him in the seventeenth century, in that integrity 
in which it is seen to this day in one of the closets of our Museum. 
On these occasions it was my duty to expound to my Auditors the annual additions 
made to our Collection, and the necessity there was for a more ample Museum. I was fed 
by good hopes, and (like many others who have tasted that food) I had to feed only upon 
hopes, so far as regarded the new Museum, for more than a quarter of a century. But 
my labour was its own reward. It gave me health, and led me into scenes of grandeur, 
which taught me to feel in my heart that I was among the works of the great Creator, 
the Father of all worlds, material or moral; and the Ordainer of those laws out of which 
spring all phenomena within the ken of our senses or the apprehension of our minds. 
I know there are men who deny the sound teaching of this lesson; but I thank God 
that I had been taught, from my early life, to accept these lessons as a part of God’s 
truth; and it was my delightful task to point out year by year to my Geological Class, 
the wonderful manner in which the materials of the Universe were knit together, by laws 
which proved to the understanding and heart of man, that a great, living, intellectual, 
and active Power must be the creative Head of the sublime and beautiful adjustments 
and harmonies of the Universe. 
Still nearer to us, and on that account more impressive, are the adaptations of organ 
