1858 DEATH OF HIS MOTHER 257 



power conveyed to the mind while reflecting on the 

 agency that bore these ponderous masses and left 

 them perched on this hill, from 500 to 600 feet above 

 the Rhone. The largest, twenty-two paces in length, 

 and nearly equally broad and high, has on its flat 

 summit a good - sized summer - house with a small 

 garden containing cherry-trees.' 1 



On reaching England, and realising there amid all 

 the old familiar surroundings the blank that had now 

 fallen upon his life, with the rupture of his oldest and 

 tenderest associations, he made the following entry in 

 his diary : 



'On the 29th July 1858 my dearest mother died 

 at the Bridge of Allan. She had been a few days 

 ailing, a little breathless, and in bed. William had 

 gone to Glasgow, and was telegraphed for ; when he 

 got back at six o'clock all was over. There may have 

 been many as good, but none better than our mother. 

 She died in her eighty-fifth year, surrounded by love. 

 She truly lived all her days, in health and cheerfulness, 

 in peace, love, and honour, with her faculties and 

 cheerfulness clear to the last, loving books and mirth, 

 and writing a good letter in a clear hand to the very 

 end. When my father died she must have been fifty- 

 three years old. I was then thirteen. She had but 

 ^1000 and a house. Then came a time that would 

 have crushed a weaker spirit. But she battled for us, 

 and keeping college and other boarders, brought us 

 all up respectably. William was apprenticed to Napier, 



the engineer, and I went at that early age into 's 



counting-house, and passed through many battles ere 

 I emerged from mercantile life and got launched in 

 the world of science. These times, which I look on 



1 Old Glaciers of Switzerland and Wales, p. 30. 

 S 



