SKETCH OF LIFE AND WORK 47 



to have been deepened. Religious thought had grown 

 in him to greater maturity, and had come to dominate 

 in a sense his science and his life, yet not so as to 

 prevent him from seeing the facts of nature as he had 

 always seen them or from drawing from them without 

 bias the deductions which they appeared to him to 

 warrant. 



In his preface to that book he says : " If the 

 Valley of the Dee has many a time been traversed by 

 the wise and the learned, the man of science and the 

 man of wit, the poet, the painter, and the tourist, it is 

 equally instructive to the naturalist, who ought in his 

 own person to represent all these." In his case the ideal 

 naturalist was realised, for he did combine all these 

 characteristics in himself. He was eminently the man 

 of science ; he had the heart and the imagination of the 

 poet and the painter, and he was the patient, plodding 

 pedestrian tourist, easily accommodated with lodging 

 and food wherever he went, in his earlier days not 

 unfrequently sleeping under the open canopy of heaven 

 after supping on a piece of oatcake and a few mouthfuls 

 of water from a spring. 



It would do injustice to most of the finer passages 

 in the book to attempt to quote them partially, but one 

 a very touching one, near the end, can be so quoted 

 without such risk : " The Divine Providence," he says, 

 " has rendered my path pleasant to me in the rugged 

 corrie, in the thick wood, and in the green valley ; has 

 prepared friends to forward my views, to protect me 

 under their hospitable roofs, and instruct me by their 



