32 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



Edward Forbes, reopened an old wound. But he had the 

 happiness of feeling, long before he himself passed away, 

 that, through the spread of larger views of Christianity, 

 this ground of objection was for ever removed. 



In the mean time he was obliged to labour incessantly 

 with his pen. In 1841 he had undertaken, single-handed, 

 the issue of a " Cyclopaedia of Natural Science." Treatise 

 after treatise, on Animal Physiology, Mechanical Philo- 

 sophy, Horology, Astronomy, Vegetable Physiology, 

 Botany, and Zoology, poured out in a stream of yellow- 

 backed numbers with punctual regularity for three years. 

 Such a production gave him a wide range of knowledge, 

 and enabled him often to enrich his lectures and essays 

 with varied illustrations. But the struggle to maintain 

 his position was severe ; and the acquaintance which he 

 formed in the autumn of 1843 with Lady Byron and her 

 daughter, Lady Lovelace, led to his removal to Ripley, 

 in Surrey, to undertake the superintendence of certain 

 branches of the education of Lord Lovelace's two chil- 

 dren at his country-seat at Ockham. The only available 

 house was small and inconvenient ; the precious organ 

 had to be left behind. Withdrawn from the circle of his 

 friends in Bristol, he was more closely occupied than 

 ever with his scientific studies, of which he felt his grasp 

 becoming stronger and deeper. When the second edition 

 of his *' Human Physiology " was called for in the summer 

 of 1844, he wrote to his brother Russell : — 



It is very interesting to me to see how much progress my 

 own knowledge of the subject has made during the last two 

 years and a half, which many people think have been unprofit- 

 ably occupied in writing the Cyclopaedias ; and to find how 

 many views which I advanced hesitatingly have since been so 

 far sanctioned by additional facts that I can now state them 

 with almost certainty. 



