22 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



Venus on July 31st, but owing to an accident it was 

 not printed. All my subsequent communications were 

 printed, and the titles and copies of most of my corre- 

 spondence with Sir D. Brewster are duly recorded in the 

 Journal. My letters are mostly very puerile in expres- 

 sion, and altogether unworthy of preservation. Dr. 

 Brewster 's on the contrary show great kindness, thought- 

 fulness, and a warm estimation of my enthusiasm for 

 science. Of course I have rigorously preserved the 

 originals of these/ 



This interesting correspondence, once begun, went on 

 for successive years. Two months, however, after it 

 began that is, in July 1826 James Forbes started 

 with his father and family on a journey to the Conti- 

 nent. Foreign travel did nothing to interrupt the cor- 

 respondence. Kather it increased in young Forbes the 

 desire to record in so well-known a journal some of the 

 marvels of nature and art which opened before him. 

 A journey abroad was not then the common or easy 

 affair it has nowadays become. Very few Scottish 

 youths at that time had such an opportunity of self- 

 improvement. James Forbes was not one to let the 

 opportunity pass unused. The journey lay by Paris, 

 Strasburg, Innspriick, on through Venice, Padua, 

 Bologna, Florence, to Kome. 



On Koine he looked with young and unsophisticated 

 eyes. Learned people may smile at the entry in his 

 journal as trite and puerile, yet it breathes a fine boyish 

 ardour, which those who make that visit later in life 

 might well envy. When men see those famous places 

 for the first time in ripe manhood, learned and fastidious 

 criticism often will not let their feelings go freely forth. 

 They are so repelled by the uncertainty of the old sites, 

 by the present social degradation, and by the effects of 

 long priestly domination, that they have no heart for 

 the ancient glories. Not so the ardent and intelligent 

 youth of seventeen, alive through all his pores, to see, 

 think, and feel. 



' We are now in Rome, which it has been my 



