266 SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



" Had the States been dismembered, there would 

 have been endless wars, more activity than ever in 

 breeding slaves in America, and a renewal of the 

 African slave-trade, and the future course 'of civili- 

 zation retarded in that continent in a 1 degree which 

 would not, in my judgment, be counterbalanced by 

 any adequate advantage which Europe would gain 

 by the United States becoming relatively less 

 strong. ... I believe that if a small number of 

 our statesmen had seen what I had seen of America, 

 they would not have allowed their wishes for dis- 

 memberment to have biassed their judgment of 

 the issue so much." 



In 1853, at the request of his government, he 

 came to New York, as one of the commissioners to 

 the International Exhibition. Of course, now, 

 wherever he travelled, either in Europe or America, 

 he met the distinguished, and was honored by them. 

 He was the friend of Berzelius, the noted chemist 

 of Sweden, and of the great Liebig of Germany. 

 Professor Bunsen of Heidelberg said, that all his 

 taste for geology had been derived from Lyell's 

 books. 



During the next few years, he was much in 

 Holland, France, and Germany, preparing for the 

 publication of another great work in 1863, the 

 "Antiquity of Man." He had made a careful 

 study of the ancient Swiss Lake-dwellings, erected 

 on piles in the midst of the water, connected with 

 the land by bridges. On Lake Neuchatel it is 

 estimated that there were more than forty such 



