340 LIFE AT DOWN. JETAT. 33-45. [1845. 



the Clergy. In your University chapter the Clergy, and not 

 the State of Education, are most severely and justly handled, 

 and this I think is very bold, for I conceive you might crush 

 a leaden-headed old Don, as a Don, with more safety, than 

 touch the finger of that Corporate Animal, the Clergy. What 

 a contrast in Education does England shew itself! Your 

 apology (using the term, like the old religionists who meant 

 anything but an apology) for lectures, struck me as very 

 clever ; but all the arguments in the world on your side, are 

 not equal to one course of Jamieson's Lectures on the other 

 side, which I formerly for my sins experienced. Although I 

 had read about the * Coalfields in North America/ I never in 

 the smallest degree really comprehended their area, their 

 thickness and favourable position ; nothing hardly astounded 

 me more in your book. 



Some few parts struck me as rather heterogenous, but I do 

 not know whether to an extent that at all signified. I missed 

 however, a good deal, some general heading to the chapters, 

 such as the two or three principal places visited. One has no 

 right to expect an author to write down to the zero of geogra- 

 phical ignorance of the reader ; but I not knowing a single 

 place, was occasionally rather plagued in tracing your course. 

 Sometimes in the beginning of a chapter, in one paragraph 

 your course was traced through a half dozen places ; anyone, 

 as ignorant as myself, if he could be found, would prefer such 

 a disturbing paragraph left out. I cut your map loose, and I 

 found that a great comfort ; I could not follow your engraved 

 track. I think in a second edition, interspaces here and there 

 of one line open, would be an improvement. By the way, I 

 take credit to myself in giving my Journal a less scientific air 

 in having printed all names of species and genera in Romans ; 

 the printing looks, also, better. All the illustrations strike 

 me as capital, and the map is an admirable volume in itself. 

 If your 'Principles ' had not met with such universal admiration, 

 I should have feared there would have been too much geology 



