TIL] MARRIED LIFE. 183 



during this tour. The great Ben Nevis group of moun- 

 tains retained for him a peculiar attraction, even after 

 lie knew that he would never again be able himself 

 to explore their scarped precipices and snow-filled gorges. 

 He used then to tell what he had once hoped to have 

 done for that brotherhood of Bens, and to speak of the 

 fine field that lay there almost untouched for some future 

 geologist, and the delightful work that might be produced 

 by the combined labours of some skilful man of science 

 and some scholar who knew the Gaelic names which every 

 and rorrie bears. Science and poetry might corn- 

 to read the character which nature and man have 

 together inscribed on the blank folds of those mountains. 

 He had scarcely returned to Edinburgh to begin the 

 session 1847-4S, when he had an attack of severe in- 

 fluenza, from which he hardly recovered all the winter. 

 The following letters, to the friend who for some years 

 his chief correspondent, mark the chief family inci- 

 dents during the College session : 



/<///""/// $th, 1848. . . . We have just returned 

 from consummating the happy event of christening your 

 name-son . . . It was a very happy moment to me this, 

 consecrating as it were for another generation the memory 

 of the very deep attachment and aiiection which I have 



j borne lo you/ 



' Aju'il .">///, 1848. . . . AVere I to write fur a week, 

 I 'dd not tell you what we have none through since 1 

 WTOte. Our dearest Kli/a lias been at the very brink 

 of the j and has been mercifully iv>tored to us 



under seemingly lmpe]e>s circumstances. All thought of 

 recovery was abandoned, and we wailed to see her die ; 

 Cting ii" means "f and having our rare ful 



and excellent hr. Smith in tin- house, \\ < saw her gra- 

 dually revive, and she is now, 1 may say, convalescent, 

 v believe I am 1 1 1< U'oii u 1 1 Iv e.xliau.-led with anxiety 

 and watching, and Alicia is nut much better: but I Ii 

 returned to my lectures, which are very heavy work. I 

 have l.ad> of examination papers, which miM be my 

 For \N ritiiiL! thus briefly.' 



