454 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



his original scientific production, was one of some mark, for 

 it is praised by Stanley-Jevons in his recent " History of the 

 Sciences." 



On attaining his majority, his elder and only brother having 

 died, he was placed in management of his father's Provencal 

 estate, an employment which he took up with alacrity and 

 prosecuted with success, turning to practical account his me- 

 thodical habits, his indomitable industry, and his familiarity 

 with Provencal country life and language. The latter he 

 spoke like a native. A language always seemed to come 

 to him without effort. Meanwhile his leisure hours were 

 given to philosophical studies, his holidays to botanical excur- 

 sions into the Cevennes and the Pyrenees. In the year 1853, 

 a visit to England upon business relating to his father's French 

 estate, where it seemed probable that he was to spend his life, 

 was followed by circumstances which gave him back to his 

 native country. He brought to his Uncle Jeremy a French 

 translation of the latter's " Chrestomathia " ; he made the 

 acquaintance of Sir James Edward Smith, Robert Brown, Lam- 

 bert, Don, and the other English botanists of the day ; visited 

 Sir William, then Professor Hooker, at Glasgow, and Walker 

 Arnott in Edinburgh ; took the latter with him the next sum- 

 mer to France, where the two botanists herborized together 

 in Languedoc and the Pyrenees ; and, returning to London, he 

 accepted his uncle's pressing invitation to remain and devote 

 a portion of his time to the preparation of the latter's manu- 

 scripts for the press, at the same time pursuing legal studies at 

 Lincoln's Inn. He was in due time called to the bar, and in 

 1832 he held his first and last brief. In that year Jeremy 

 Bentham died, bequeathing most of his property to his nephew. 

 This was much less than was expected, owing to bad manage- 

 ment on his uncle's part and to the extravagant sums spent 

 by his executors in the publication of the philosopher's post- 

 humous work. But it sufficed, in connection with the pater- 

 nal inheritance, which fell to him in the year previous, for the 

 modest independence which allowed of undistracted devotion 

 to his favorite studies. These were for a time divided be- 

 tween botany, jurisprudence, and logic, not to speak of edi- 



