LIFE OF DK. ROLLESTON. lxi 



and renewed some of his old friendships. He saw Athens, which 

 he had failed to visit in former years, and was angry that 

 historians should. have said Greek history was on a small scale, 

 'as if men were to be counted like pheasants at a battue.' All 

 the classic in him comes out in a characteristic estimate of the 

 surroundings of Athens, ' as much superior to those surrounding 

 most English writers as Aristotle is to ' (naming a well- 

 known Oxford metaphysician). It was eight years before he 

 made another distant journey, when in 1879 he went with 

 General Pitt-Rivers to Sweden. He was much struck with the 

 manliness of Scandinavian life, the absence of the worst side of 

 poverty, the provisions for public enjoyment, the behaviour of the 

 upper classes contrasting advantageously with England, and the 

 active influence of the Court for good. The object of their visit 

 was to see Museums and Universities, and they were impressed, 

 not indeed with any of these excelling what might be seen at 

 home, so much as by the educational activity among a nation so 

 much less in number and wealth than Great Britain. In a letter 

 written next year to General Pitt-Rivers, Dr. Rolleston com- 

 ments on ' this cheeseparing Government.' ' I should be in 

 despair if it were not for what we saw done by people of the 

 same flesh and blood as ourselves, but much poorer and less 

 aristocratic, last summer. Recollect what sums are spent, and, 

 as the enclosed cutting from the "Times" of yesterday shows, are 

 going on being spent by democratic Scandinavians for Science.' 

 Among the letters written to General Pitt-Rivers is one of earlier 

 date, taking up the question how far it was well for the Anthro- 

 pological Institute, when making an effort to increase public 

 knowledge on the then popular subject of Turkey, to go into 

 politics. ' It seems to me that it is well to avoid bringing science 

 into collision or into connexion with moral, social, or political 

 issues more than is inevitable. I always envy mathematicians 

 who have nothing to do with these questions. Of course if you 

 cannot avoid it, you must face it like other disagreeable neces- 

 sities ; but then it is a very difficult thing to balance moral and 

 scientific reasons against each other. In this case I don't see 



