Febkuaby 23, 1SS3.] 



SCIENCE. 



69 



SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



Life, letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., 

 Author of Principles of geology, etc. Edited 

 by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyeli. In two vol- 

 umes, -with portraits. London, Murray, 1881. 

 457, 489 pp. 8vo. 



I. 

 Although it has been more than a year 

 since these volumes appeared, thej- have re- 

 mained without anj- critical presentation to the 

 American public. Science, like the rest of our 

 modern life, goes so fast that there is scarce 

 time for us to remember the dead of a decade 

 ago. Thus it has seemed perhaps hardly worth 

 while for our American journals to notice these 

 admirable volumes. But it is not well for 

 Americans lightly to pass bj- an admirable life 

 of one who not onlj' laid the solid foundations 

 of the science in whose paths thej' have done 

 so much good work, but who gave to their 

 land and their people a patient study and a 

 sympathetic understanding in days when other 

 foreigners denied them both. Those who know 

 the field of American travels will all agree 

 that this country never had a juster or more 

 loving critic than Charles Lyell. His two se- 

 ries of travels in this countrj', descriptive of 

 his first and second visits to the United States, 

 remain the best picture of American life in 

 those years of imperfect promise, the fifth and 

 sixth decades of this centurj'. He made third 

 and fourth voyages to this country, and on each 

 of his journey's traA'elled extensivelj' in the re- 

 gion east of the Mississippi. His papers on 

 the geology of this couutrj- are among the most 

 valuable contributions made b}^ anj' European 

 to the understanding of American geology ; 

 while the frequent references to American geol- 

 og3' in his ' Principles ' have served to make 

 other parts classic localities in the science. 

 These acts should be enough to warrant us in 

 giving a careful study to his life, even if his 

 peculiar place in the history of his science did 

 not make him the most notable among all the 

 great laborers in its fields. 



It is, however, when we consider the place 

 of Charles Lyell in the combination of sciences 

 we call geology, that we find his true interest 

 for all those who care for the progress of learn- 

 ing. No one conversant with the development 

 of geology during this ceutur}-, which includes 

 its growth from the very germs of the science, 

 can hesitate to give him the verj' first place 

 among its manj- strong leaders, — a place that 

 is unique in the history of the several sciences. 

 The peculiarity of his position consisted in the 

 fact that he was, during the forty j-ears in 

 which the science was taking its shape, an ad- 



mirable critic of its work, — one who, from the 

 circumstances of his position, his large social 

 power, his penetration, sympathy, and capacitjr 

 for individual research, was able to enforce 

 moderation and judgment on all the workers 

 on two continents. 



When Lyell began to write the first of the 

 eleven editions of his ' Principles ' in 1828, geol- 

 ogy was still contending with those prejudices 

 which had retarded its progress, barriers which 

 he, with the acumen of Bacon in dealing with 

 the ' idols,' managed so well to overcome. In 

 the immeasurable past which the recent re- 

 searches of geologists had revealed, all sorts of 

 speculations had been carried : vast deluges, 

 periods of intense volcanic activity, epochs of 

 sudden destruction and re-creation of animal ' 

 life, were gi^^en room there. The aim of nat- 

 urahsts seemed to be to create a world as un- 

 like that of to-day as it was possible to haA'e 

 it. The critical humor of Hutton or of Wil- 

 liam Smith bad given place to a rage for 

 speculation. On the other hand, the church, 

 especiallj- in England, had set its face against 

 all theories that promised to weaken the dog- 

 mas of seven days' creation or the Noachian 

 deluge. Lyell was the only geologist of his 

 day who could have saved the science from the 

 dangers of vagariousness that promised it a 

 long period of trouble. Circumstances had 

 favored his early training for the pecaUar work 

 he was to accomplish. His father was a Scotch 

 gentleman of fortune, who had a strong taste 

 for natural history, and made something of a 

 name as a botanist. In his early youth Charles 

 Lyell became deeply interested in collecting 

 insects, — a taste which he seems to have kept 

 during his life. As this collecting was done 

 with discretion and stud^-, it developed in him 

 a power of close discrimination that was the 

 foundation of much of his good work : no 

 other study is so well fitted as is entomology 

 to develop this capacity for details which is the 

 condition of all good work in science. 



After the usual rough training in humanity 

 and the humanities in the preparatory schools, 

 — a training that fortunately awaits every 

 well-born British youth, — he went to Oxford, 

 at the age of seventeen, and matriculated at 

 Exeter College. There he laid the founda- 

 tions of that excellent knowledge of the clas- 

 sics for which during his whole life he was 

 distinguished above all of his scientific breth- 

 ren. At everj- step in his future work we see 

 the admirable results of this broad culture, 

 this sense of perspective in the intellectual 

 history of mankind, which is perhaps more 

 necessarjr for the well-developed man of science 



