bent towards natural science by which it was marked during the rest of his 

 life. " From that time," he writes, " began a new state of mind. I took 

 an interest in the subject, bought apparatus, made experiments, and de- 

 stroyed many of my mother's towels. I took a particular interest in 

 mineralogy, began to make a collection of specimens, cultivated acquaint- 

 ance with some fellow students who had the same turn, and read Playfair's 

 ' Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory,' of which I became a worshipper, 

 having heard it well expounded by Dr. Hope." He was too young to have 

 personal intercourse with Hutton, though he tells how he used to hear 

 much in his own family of the " ingenuity, acuteness, and even light- 

 hearted playfulness " of that philosopher. But he became attached to the 

 Professor of Mathematics, to whom sixty years afterwards he referred from 

 the chair of the Geological Society as his " venerable friend the able and 

 eloquent Play fair." 



At the age of nineteen Mr. Horner left Edinburgh to become partner in 

 a branch of his father's business, which it was proposed to carry on in 

 London. His elder brother Francis was already rising to eminence in the 

 House of Commons ; so that Mr. Horner soon found himself in the midst of 

 a large circle of friends, among whom were not a few of note in science and 

 literature. Two years afterwards he married Miss Lloyd, daughter of a 

 landed proprietor in Yorkshire, and took a house in London. His love for 

 geology, however, was not quenched by the claims of business, for we find 

 him, the year after his marriage, joining the newly-founded Geological 

 Society. Nor did he become an inactive member. In 1810, the second 

 year after his election, he was chosen one of the Secretaries of the Society, 

 and from that time down almost to the very day of his death, he continued 

 one of its most zealous and unwearying members. 



In 1815 he found himself under the necessity of returning to Edinburgh 

 to take a personal superintendence of his business there. Two years after- 

 wards his brother Francis, with whom he had journeyed to Italy in a vain 

 search for health, died full of promise. When Mr. Horner had recovered 

 from the blow of this sad loss, his active mind sought new scope for itself 

 in the organization of political meetings, wherein the young Whiggism was 

 'developed, for which Edinburgh afterwards came to be so noted. In this, 

 as in many other features of his life, Mr. Horner showed the practical and 

 methodical character of his mind, as well as his social disposition ; for these 

 meetings were not arranged without exciting much keen opposition and 

 political feeling. His residence in Edinburgh was marked by the success of 

 another project one of themostwidelyuseful of all his schemes for thebenefit 

 of his fellow-men. In March 1821, happening to observe some watch- 

 makers at work, he was led to inquire whether they ever received any 

 mathematical education. On being told that they did not, and that, though 

 anxious to obtain such instruction, they could not afford to pay for it, the 

 idea occurred to him to found a school for the training of mechanics in 

 those branches of science which would aid them in their daily work. Hence 



