NE WFO UNDLA ND. 83 



ever returned to the attack. He made many mistakes, 

 which experience gradually corrected. The want of books 

 cast him the more upon nature, and so he stru^c^f^lcd on, 

 constantly increasing his acquaintance with actual facts, 

 and laying a solid basis for book-knowledge whenever it 

 might fall in his path. 



All this time, the religious fervour to which allusion has- 

 already been made continued to keep pace with the 

 scientific. Philip Gosse joined the Wesleyan Society, being 

 led in that particular direction mainly by two new friends, 

 G. E. Jaqucs and his wife, the former a colonist settled 

 in the town of Carbonear, the latter an English lady. He 

 presently became very intimate with them, spending his 

 Sundays at their house, and frequently his week evenings. 

 This friendship, to which reference will often be made in 

 these pages, lasted more than forty years, and it should be 

 noted here that it was mainly owing to the influence of 

 this estimable couple that my father adopted a view of his 

 duty to his fellows which henceforward, though in a fluctu- 

 ating degree, never left him, and which towards the close of 

 his life became paramount, namely, his belief that it was 

 proper to exclude from his companionship all those whose 

 opinions on religious matters did not coincide with his own. 

 That I know this to have been the result of intense 

 conscientiousness and a conviction that his duty lay in 

 such isolation, must not induce me to pretend that the 

 effects of it were not in many ways deplorable, or that it 

 did not narrow, more than any other of his characteristics, 

 the range of his sympathy and usefulness. He, however, 

 of course, thought otherwise. He wrote, long afterwards, 

 '* My friendship with the Jaqueses was very helpful to my 

 spiritual life. It alienated me more and more from the 

 companionship of the unconverted young men of the 

 place ; it was a marked commencement of that course of 



