290 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



been preserved by the family and friends that there is 

 abundance of evidence. William Ramsay came of a 

 family more than usually distinguished by the affec- 

 tionate regard of the numerous members of it for one 

 another, and the freedom from those divisions which 

 separate so many relatives^ often for years or even per- 

 manently, for no reason which to the outside observer 

 seems sufficient. An only child, his welfare anxiously 

 watched over by affectionate and deeply religious 

 parents, the influences which attended him in child- 

 hood doubtless retained appreciable hold on the general 

 direction of his thoughts on religious and moral questions. 

 There is reason to believe that very early in his man- 

 hood he began to consider these things, and though he 

 soon threw off the restraints of the narrow evangeli- 

 calism (Calvinism would be the more exact word) in 

 which he had been brought up, he continued all his life 

 to conform to and value religious observances. At 

 Tubingen he mentioned in his letters the services and 

 meetings arranged by his American fellow-students, and 

 he joined with them in these practices, beside attending 

 the services of the Lutheran Church. And years later 

 when he became Professor at Bristol and was living 

 there alone, letters of his at that time refer to his 

 attendance at the services in the Cathedral and to excur- 

 sions to country churches. But all this time it cannot be 

 doubted that the misgivings which had already begun 

 to operate in his mind had slowly crumbled away his 

 acceptance of many of the views and feelings under 



