INTRODUCTION. 



RoBJiiiT Cii.vMJ5KRs pLibUslieJ lils " Vestiges of tlie Xatural 

 History of Creation" in the year 1844. He did not put his 

 name to the book, because, as he said afterwards in a volume 

 of •' Explanations," jDublished in 1846, his "design was not onl}- 

 to be personally removed from all praise or censure which it 

 might evoke, but to write no more on the subject." Except 

 the volume of "Explanations: a Sequel to 'Vestiges of the 

 Xatural History of Creation,' by the Author of that Work," 

 his subsequent writiug upon Science was confined to a book 

 on "Ancient Sea Margins," published in 1848, to which he 

 signed his name. 



Robert Chambers v/as a man with keen powers of intellectual 

 inquiry, and a strong interest in scientific speculation. This 

 had caused his election in 1840 to the Fellowship of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, upon the nomination of Sir Charles pell. 

 He took a particular interest in Geology, and made many 

 excursions by shores of rivers and lakes, and by sea-coasts, in 

 search of evidence of changes made on the earth's surface by 

 lapse of time. He went in 1848 to Switzerland, and in 1849 

 to Xorway, to study glacial action. But Robert Chambers had 

 yet stronger interest in the development of man. This drew 

 him to a study of literature as the voice of life, and caused him 

 to pay special attention to the records of earlier forms of civilisa- 

 tion. Such widespreading activity of mind Robert Chambers had 

 in common with his brother William, though William was more 

 essentially the man of business, and Robert more essentially 

 the author. It caused the two brothers to develop their business 

 relations with literature, from a boardful of second-hand books 



:'^ " ^ ,.V ,,,5,,, -Wiri^o WITHDRAW 



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