256 THOMAS YOUNG. 



its acceptance would have rendered necessary the aban- 

 donment of his costume as a member of the Society of 

 Friends. Soon afterwards he paid a visit to a cele- 

 brated cattle-breeder near Ashbourne, and describes with 

 vivid interest what Mr. Bickwell had accomplished by 

 the process of artificial selection. Facts like these, 

 presented afterwards to the pondering mind of Darwin, 

 caused the great naturalist to pass from artificial to 

 natural selection. Young visited Darwin's grandfather, 

 and criticised his ' Zoonomia.' The inspection of Dr. 

 Darwin's cameos, minerals, and plants, gave him great 

 delight, the supreme pleasure being derived from the 

 cameos. Dr. Darwin stated that he had borrowed much 

 of the imagery of his poetry from the graceful expres- 

 sion and vigorous conception which these cameos 

 breathe. His opinion of his visitor was pithily ex- 

 pressed in a letter of introduction to a friend in Edin- 

 burgh. ' He unites the scholar with the philosopher, 

 and the cultivation of modern arts with the simplicity 

 of ancient manners.' 



Young went to Edinburgh to continue his studies in 

 medicine. His reputation had gone before him, and he 

 was welcomed in the best society of the northern capital. 

 He met Bostock, Bancroft, Turner, Gibbs, Gregory, 

 Duncan, Black, and Munroe. He dwells specially upon 

 the lectures of John Bell, whose demonstrations in 

 anatomy appeared to him to be of first-rate excellence. 



There is nothing that I have met in Dean Peacock's 

 'Life of Young' to denote that he was fervently reli- 

 gious. The Ciceronian ' virtue,' rather than religious 

 emotion, seemed to belong to his character. The hold 

 which mere habit long exercised over him, and which 

 loyalty to his creed had caused him to maintain at a 

 period of temptation, became more and more relaxed. 

 He gradually gave up the formal practices of Quakerism 



