100 PHILOSOPHERS IN THEORY. 



trained or educated for a profession, but their natural 

 habitat was science, and to that they gravitated with- 

 out counting the cost or the sacrifice. They were 

 like Sir C. Bell, who, in reference to his first settling 

 in London, said — " I was as romantic as any young 

 man could be, though the prevailing cast of my mind 

 was to gain celebrity and independence by science, and 

 perhaps this was the most extravagant of all." It was 

 not choice or eccentricity, but the hard lines of the world, 

 that drove them to set up their " household gods " in 

 the attics of Lothian Street. Philosophers in theory, 

 and full of adolescent hopes as to merit having its due 

 reward, they had yet to learn that philosophy seldom, 

 if ever, pays its own expenses in this country. Science 

 they found to be the direst of economists, imperative in 

 its demands for books, instruments, and other agencies, 

 and more imperative still of brain-power, health, and 

 vitality ; yet the earnings it yielded in a highly 

 materialistic age were but as Roman denarii compared 

 with the " old Spanish dollar " and the fruits of com- 

 merce. 



These naturalists had to trust to their brains and 

 fingers, and these so actively and deftly occupied did 

 not bring in £100 a-year. They were citizens of a 

 free country — the wealthiest in the world — a country 

 that hails scientific discovery as a mighty contribution 

 to the national glory, yet seems to be unmindful of the 

 arduous steps which have led to the consummation of 

 the national boast. They loved science for its own 

 sake, and the nulla dies sine linea of their lives was 



