Dec. 22, 1881] 
‘ May the house of Herschel be perpetuated and, like the 
Cassinis, be illustrious astronomers for three generations. 
May all the constellations wait upon him! may Virgo go 
before, and Gemini follow after!’ Poor H., notwith- 
standing his confusion, got up after a roar of laughter had 
continued for three minutes, and made a famous speech” 
(vol. i. 251). 
In the whole of these letters of Lyell there is a striking 
absence of anything like jealousy or ill-nature in his 
remarks. His judgment concerning his contemporaries, 
whom he had the greatest facilities for knowing, appears 
to be remarkably just and such as will, we believe, be 
endorsed by posterity. Take for example what he says 
concerning the great rivals Murchison and Sedgwick :— 
Murchison “has a little too much of what Mathews 
used to ridicule in his slang as ‘the keep-moving, go-if- 
it-kill-you’ system, and I had to fight sometimes for the 
sake of geology, as his wife had for her strength, to make 
him proceed with somewhat less precipitation ”’ (vol. i. 
p. 107). 
“Murchison is one who has worked at science chiefly for 
the rewards, but not entirely, for if he had had no pleasure 
in it he would have failed ; Sedgwick and Conybeare for 
the pleasure chiefly. What I shall always cherish, is a 
love for science, rather than its rewards; but I indulge 
the hope of profit, as the best earnest of usefulness, and 
also against its becoming a duty to accept some offer of 
an uncongenial situation ’’ (vol. i. p. 373). 
““ Sedgwick asked me to walk home with him. I found 
a gloom upon him, unusual and marked. I most care- 
fully avoided all allusion to the rejected living, but 
now when the first excitement of declining the boon is 
over, and that others have expressed their wonder at it, 
and that he finds himself left alone with his glory, he is 
dejected. He told me, Thursday last, that he wished 
before he left Cambridge, to do something. ‘Now if I 
take a living instead of going to Wales, I abandon my 
professorship, and cannot get out the volume on the 
primary rocks with Conybeare,’ &c. Then he hinted that 
in a year, when this is done, he may retire on some 
living, and mavry. But I know Sedgwick well enough to 
feel sure that the work won’t be done in a year, nor 
perhaps in two; and then a living, &c., won’t be just 
ready, and he is growing older. He has not the applica- 
tion necessary to make his splendid abilities tell in a 
work. Besides every one leads him astray. A man 
should have some severity of character, and be able to 
refuse invitations, &c. The fact is, to become great in 
science, a man must be nearly as devoted as a lawyer, 
and must have more than mere talent” (vol. i. p. 375). 
With respect to the unfortunate quarrel between these 
two pioneers in the study of the older palzeozoic rocks, the 
line which Lyell adopts appears to us to be singularly 
just and judicious. He could not but see that Sedgwick’s 
wrongs, like his maladies, were to a great extent imagi- 
nary, and, doing so, was filled with regret at the folly 
which made so able a man nurse his mortification and 
rage till it embittered the whole of his subsequent life. 
Writing in 1855 Lyell says :— 
“Tn Phillips’s new edition of his ‘ Geology,’ just out, he 
makes the Lingula beds Cambrian, just as I do, which I 
am glad of, as however Murchison may complain, it is 
really we that are adhering to the original divisions and 
names adopted by Murchison and Sedgwick. It would 
be wrong to give up the term Cambrian just when we are 
beginning to have a distinct fauna for it, as Salter was 
the first to show here, and Barrande in Bohemia. 
Sedgwick’s attempt to take the Lower Silurian into his 
Cambrian is even worse than Murchison claiming all that 
NATURE 
Lz 
is older than the Devonian as appertaining to his Silurian” 
(vol. ii. p. 205-6). 
Lyell had great opportunities of knowing Cuvier, and 
we cannot refrain from quoting what he tells us about 
the great naturalist’s method of organising his work -—— 
“T got into Cuvier’s sasctium sanctorum yesterday, and 
it is truly characteristic of the man. In every part it 
displays that extraordinary power of methodising which 
is the grand secret of the prodigious feats which he per- 
forms annually without appearing to give himself the 
least trouble. But before I introduce you to this study, I 
should tell you that there is first the Museum of Natural 
History opposite his house, and admirably arranged by 
himself, then the Anatomy Museum connected with his 
dwelling. In the latter is a library disposed in a suite of 
rooms, each containing works on one subject. There is 
one where there are all the works on ornithology, in 
another room all on ichthyology, in another osteology, 
in another Zaw books! &c., &c. When he is engaged 
in such works as require continual reference to a variety 
of authors, he has a stove shifted into one of these rooms, 
in which everything on that subject is systematically 
arranged, so that in the same work he often takes the 
round of many apartments. But the ordinary studio con- 
tains no bookshelves. It is a longish room comfortably 
furnished, lighted from above, and furnished with eleven 
desks to stand to, and two low tables, like a public office 
for so many clerks. But all is for the one man, who 
multiplies himself as author, and admitting no one into 
this room, moves as he finds necessary, or as fancy in- 
clines him, from one occupation to another. Each desk 
is furnished with a complete establishment of inkstand, 
pens, &c., pins to pin MSS. together, the works imme- 
diately in reading and the MS. in hand, and in shelves 
behind all the MS. of the same work. There is a sepa- 
rate bell to several desks. The co//aborateurs are not 
numerous, but always chosen well. They save him every 
mechanical Jabour, find references, &c., are rarely ad- 
mitted to the study, receive orders, and speak not.’’ 
“ Brongniart, who, in imitation of Cuvier has many 
clerks and collaborateurs, is known to lose more time in 
organising this auxiliary force than he gains by their 
work, but this is never the case with Cuvier. When I 
went to get Mantell’s casts I found that the man who made 
moulds, and the painter of them, had distinct apart- 
ments, so that there was no confusion, and the despatch 
with which all was executed was admirable. It cost 
Cuvier a word only” (vol. i. p. 249). 
Although Lyell devoted all his energies to the advance- 
ment of geological science, and, as his letters show, 
steadfastly refused all honours and engagements which 
would interfere with the performance of the great tasks 
he had set before himself, yet he was far from being a 
recluse or one refusing to take an interest in the affairs of 
the time. His earliest essays in the Quarterly were 
employed in the advocacy of the importance of giving 
scientific instruction in schools and universities. In his 
“Travels in North America” he devoted a chapter to the 
subject of University Reform, and his remarks produced 
a great impression at the time, and before the Public 
Schools Commission he gave important evidence. In 
the reform of the Royal Society he was one of the most 
active members, and in many of the great movements of 
the day we find him playing the part of an earnest and 
advanced liberal. 
Qn other than scientific subjects we may not stay to 
speak here, but we cannot refrain from mentioning that 
Lyell’s works on America did much to dispel among the 
educated classes, on both sides of the Atlantic, the feeling 
