438 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



while you broke down in your classical course, and had 

 fully as great a passion for rough sport and enterprise 

 as for reading that being, again, a passion of which I 

 never had one particle. This has, however, resulted in 

 making you, what I never was inclined to be, a close 

 observer of external nature an immense advantage in 

 your case. Still I think I could present against your 

 hardy field observations by frith and fell, and cave and 

 cliff, some striking analogies in the finding out and 

 devouring of books, making my way, for instance, through 

 a whole chestful of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which 

 I found in a lumber garret ! I must also say, that an 

 unfortunate tenderness of feet, scarcely yet got over, 

 had much to do in making me mainly a fireside student. 

 As to domestic connections and conditions, mine being 

 of the middle classes were superior to yours for the 

 first twelve years. After that, my father being unfortun- 

 ate in business, we were reduced to poverty, and came 

 down to even humbler things than you experienced. I 

 passed through some years of the direst hardship, not 

 the least evil being a state of feeling quite unnatural in 

 youth, a stern and burning defiance of a social world in 

 which we were harshly and coldly treated by former 

 friends, differing only in external respects from our- 

 selves. In your life there is one crisis where I think 

 your experiences must have been somewhat like mine ; 

 it is the brief period at Inverness. Some of your ex- 

 pressions there bring all my own early feelings again to 

 life. A disparity between the internal consciousness of 

 powers and accomplishments and the external ostens- 

 ible aspect led in me to the very same wrong methods 

 of setting myself forward as in you. There, of course, 

 I meet you in warm sympathy. I have sometimes 

 thought of describing my bitter, painful youth to the 



