14 ENGLISH MEN OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



resemblance necessarily gives way under the 

 gradually accumulated influences of difference 

 of nurture, but it often lasts till manhood. I 

 have been told of a case in which two twin 

 brothers, both married, the one a medical man, 

 the other a clergyman, were staying at the same 

 house. One morning, for a joke, they changed 

 their neckties, and each personated the other, 

 sitting by his wife through the whole of the 

 breakfast without discovery. Shakespeare was a 

 close observer of nature ; it is, therefore, worth 

 recollecting that he recognizes in his thirty-six 

 plays three pairs of family likeness so deceptive 

 as to create absurd confusion. Two of these 

 pairs are in the " Comedy of Errors," and the other 

 in "Twelfth Night" (v. 1.) I heard of a case 

 not many years back in which a young English- 

 man had travelled to St. Petersburg, then much 

 less accessible than now, with no letters of 

 introduction, and who lost his pocket-book, 

 and was penniless. He was walking along the 

 quay in some despair at his prospects, when he 

 was startled by the cheery voice of a stranger 

 who accosted him, saying he required no intro- 



