14 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



conversation, he discovered me to be the son of his old fellow- 

 student, and we began to talk about Dr. Blair, with whom he 

 keeps up a correspondence. He subsequently asked me to 

 dinner, where I met Taylor (author of "Philip van Something"), 

 who was the lion of the last London season. Professors Pillans 

 and Muir, and some more intelligent men. Wilson and Taylor 

 had some interesting conversation on Wordsworth, which would 

 have delighted Mary. Both seemed to think him too minute 

 in describing nature, and that he has been very much soured 

 by his early want of success. They also began to discuss the 

 various translations of " Faust^," and, the conversation turning on 

 Goethe in general, I was able to edge in a word as to his having 

 been the first propounder of the doctrine of morphology in 

 plants. Professor Muir and I fell out about the date of this 

 production. I set it as far back as 1795, but allowed that it 

 was not noticed until at least fifteen years later. Professor Muir 

 was positive that it was not more than twenty years ago. I, of 

 course, yielded, but had the satisfaction when I returned home, 

 on referring to Lindley, to see that it was 1790. 



Many friendly houses were soon open to the young 

 Bristol student, who found more sympathy with his heresy 

 than he expected ; for he wrote shortly after : " As far as I 

 " have seen, the moderate party of the Scotch Church are 

 " extremely liberal, and I believe that many of them are 

 "Unitarians at the bottom." But he was astonished at the 

 superior freedom from conventional restraints which marked 

 the education of women ; and though he had been accus- 

 tomed to see his own sisters trained in the principles of 

 science, and familiar with the fossils or the shells in their 

 own cabinet, yet an extension of the same method of 

 education caused him an amusing shock. 



The tone of society (he wrote to his father) is certainly much 

 more well-informed here than in London. At least, there is less 

 reserve among the ladies with regard to scientific pursuits, which 

 many pursue here to an extent which even I think hardly femi- 

 nine ; such as practical (hammer-in-hand) geology, practical 



