70 1860-1865 : PERSONAL 



whom I can write in my folly, as well as in my sorrow 

 and perplexity. Don't you see I am better ? 



We have read Uncle Silas, isn't it creepy ? and crawly 

 too. One should have a brandy bottle and sal volatile to 

 get through it in safety alone. How splendidly the interest 

 is kept up. Then I took the ' Mill on the Floss ' and am 

 ravished with it ; what a clever person the authoress is, 

 I like it even better than * Adam Bede.' How evidently the 

 authoress belongs to the class of life of her heroines, with whom 

 first love is an animal passion with nothing to elevate it. 

 How splendid are her analyses of the mixed motives of human 

 action in the young, but not in the old, and yet how vividly she 

 represents the acts and conversation of the old. Then I took 

 a dose of Jamieson's paper on the Glacial period of Scotland, 1 

 and wrote him a long letter praising it. Still I am sure there 

 was a time when the contour of submerged Scotland was 

 ploughed by icebergs moving in definite direction (S.W. to 

 N.E., or rather vice versa !). Given a submerged Great 

 Britain a hundred miles or so off Victoria Land, and the Bergs 

 would plough it in a direction S.W. to N.E. Bergs some of 

 them 10 miles long and 700 feet below water ! I can fancy no 

 other explanation of the parallelism of the great Scotch 

 valleys but this, and as there are not more things in Heaven 

 and Earth than are dreamt of in &c., it follows as a matter 

 of course. 



October 6, 1865. 



And now for a confession I have read ' Clarissa Harlowe'! 

 I feel that this is self damnatory and can only plead my illness 

 and the tedium of a watering-place. As however * frank 

 confession is good for the soul,' I will tell you the first 5 

 volumes are simply illegible, so dull, so poor, so attenuated, 

 that had I stopped there I should have considered the 

 former popularity of the book as one of those things which 

 * no fellow can be expected to understand,' as Uncle Sam 

 has it ; the 6th and 7th (horresco referens) opened my eyes 

 however ; though to me they had no merit or interest what- 



1 In the Quarterly Journal, Geological Society, vol. xix-, p. 235, 1863. This 

 paper brought forward further evidence as to the existence of glacial barriers 

 damming the mouth of Glen Roy, &c., and so forming lakes, the margins of 

 which are still marked by the famous * Parallel Roads.' Jamieson's work 

 converted Darwin from his earlier theory of raised sea -beaches, which was 

 the only explanation possible in the then state of knowledge (see M.L. ii. 172). 



