256 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



doctor's collection as well as to interesting geological localities. 

 He often spoke of his effort at this time to find the Rev. Mr. 

 Simons, a cultivated gentleman and a geologist, to whom he had 



been warmly commended. Arriving at A , he set out for the 



parsonage, asking directions of the various country people he 

 happened to meet, none of whom, however, seemed to have 

 the slightest idea where their parson dwelt. At last two yokels 

 more conscientious than the others stopped to think, and after 

 a while one of them, receiving a ray of light, looked inquiringly 

 at the other and exclaimed : " Why, man, he must mean the 

 Squarson." Mystified as to who or what the "Squarson" was, 

 Mr. Shaler nevertheless followed the course his finger pointed, 

 and soon learned from Mr. Simons himself that, since he was 

 both squire and parson, the natives, with verbal thrift, merged 

 the titles. During his stay with this squire-parson, Mr. Shaler 

 was charmed with the man himself and with the felicitous man- 

 ner in which he discharged his combined duties preparing 

 the soul for virtue and both body and soul for the punishment 

 he sometimes felt called upon to mete out. 



As soon as the doctor would permit, Mr. Shaler left Malvern 

 for London. He succeeded in finding agreeable lodgings in Re- 

 gent's Park. The bedrooms were sunny, that is, the windows 

 admitted the sun whenever it shone, and the grounds were 

 enclosed with a high brick wall, which shut out the noise. The 

 conditions were favorable both for health and comfort, and he 

 did not fail to make physical progress notwithstanding the 

 enormous temptation to overdo ; for he not only wished to gain 

 an insight into the conditions of social life, but also to profit 

 by the intellectual revival which had just then put England at 

 the head of European thought. In one of his letters to Hooker, 

 Huxley writes, " I firmly believe in the advent of an English 

 epoch in science and art which will lick the Augustan (which 

 by the bye had neither science nor art in our sense, but you 

 know what I mean) into fits." Perhaps this was the epoch he 

 predicted, although, living in the thick of it, he did not perceive 



