SIR CHARLES LYELL 199 



enough to perform it, and I think I am not wrong in sur- 

 mising that in X.'s case such a duty would be eminently 

 beneficial. I well remember my own extreme aversion to 

 undertake public duties, and your affectionate encourage- 

 ment on very many occasions when I would fain have held 

 back. I now know how good it has been for me, and how 

 grateful I am to you for your encouragement I only know. 



Now, too, another link with the past was broken, another 

 lifelong friendship ended. Already in 1871 he had written 

 apropos of ' dear old ' Murchison's death and Sedgwick's 

 retirement from lecturing : ' After a year or two there will 

 have been a regular clearing out of the old philosophers, all 

 dying at a ripe old age.' Chief among these, Sir Charles Lyell, 

 who had for some time been failing, died on February 22, 1875. 



This is another black week [he tells Asa Gray on February 

 26]. Dear Lyell is gone. . . . Stanley had as good as offered 

 [Westminster Abbey for his burial], and there we shall lay 

 the grand old Philosopher, — the kind friend and sympathiser 

 in all my ups and downs. He was indeed great ; so truthful, 

 so fearlessly honest, such a hater of everything mean, small, 

 or doubtful. To me the loss is very great. I loved him 

 so, as I did his wife. 



To Charles Darwin 



February 24, 1875. 



I feel Lyell's loss most keenly, he was father and brother 

 to me ; and except yourself, no one took that lively, generous, 

 hearty, deep, and warm interest in my welfare that he did. 

 I cannot tell you how lonely I begin to feel, how desolate, 

 and how heavily the days, and worse still, the nights, hang 

 on my mind and body. Well 1 it is all for the best, i.e. 

 the best that man is born to, poor lot as that may be, it is 

 one that no one really wishes to exchange for an unknown 

 one ; and we are hence logically driven to the conclusion 

 that the sum of life is more happiness than the reverse. 

 Assuredly the sum of happiness derived from having known 

 and loved Lyell is greatly in excess of the pain felt at his 

 loss : the gap he filled has to be compared with the chink 

 his mere absence for the rest of life opens. 



