1856 RAMSA Y IN THE FIELD 245 



allusions, or suggestions which he thus obtained. It 

 was this wide range of knowledge and broad view of 

 geological principles which gave so much interest and 

 value to his lectures, and which made the long talks 

 with him in the field so inexpressibly instructive to 

 those who were privileged to take part in them. 



But where Ramsay met with a congenial spirit in 

 those country rambles, geology formed only a part, 

 and sometimes, if the rocks were not particularly 

 difficult or attractive, only a small part of the conversa 

 tion of the day. English literature was to him a vast 

 and exhaustless garden, full of alleys green and sunny- 

 arbours, where from boyhood he had been wont to 

 spend many a delightful hour. When he found among 

 his colleagues one whose talk was not always of stones, 

 but who had ranged like himself far and wide in literary 

 fields, he opened out his inner soul, and his conversa 

 tion glowed with an animation and power as well as a 

 gleeful exuberance which astonished and charmed his 

 companion. As the writer pens these lines, he re 

 calls many a happy day spent with his Director among 

 the hills and valleys of southern Scotland, when the 

 discussion of the geology and the mapping were inter 

 spersed with endless comments on favourite authors, 

 disquisitions on style, analyses of characters in fiction, 

 and quotations of parallel passages in illustration of 

 some thought that had arisen in the course of the talk. 

 Ramsay had his favourite authors, for whom his 

 affection increased every year. He knew Shake 

 speare so well that he would every now and then flash 

 some apposite phrase or line from him to lighten up 

 the sentence he was uttering. Among novelists his 

 acquaintance was wide and varied, but he always put 

 Scott far away at the head of them all. He had read 



