Memoir of the Rev. Leonard Blomefield. 353 



is not surprising that he found religion to be more a matter of 

 form than anything else. His work and example, however, 

 gradually wrought a happy change. He enlarged the vicarage, 

 built a new school house, established a Sunday school, founded 

 village clubs for clothing, coals, etc. ; and in the church, as well 

 as out of it, he sought to follow the ideal of George Herbert's 

 priest to the people. The result of his ministration may be 

 summed up in the testimony of his Bishop, that his parish was 

 one of the best regulated in the diocese ; and that when he 

 retired, it was to the great sorrow of his parishioners, who 

 showed their regard for him by presenting him with forty-nine 

 handsomely bound volumes of Divinity. During a sojourn of a 

 few months in the Isle of Wight he took occasional duty, and 

 when he came to Bath, in 1850, he held for eight years the 

 curacy of Woolley, then, as now, attached to Bathwick, of 

 which his friend, the late Prebendary Scarth, was rector. He 

 also had charge of the neighbouring parish of Langridge, the 

 latter services being given gratuitously. On changing his 

 residence from Swainswick to Bath, with the consent of the 

 rector of Bathwick, he visited some of the poor in his parish, 

 and, subsequently, for several years, until failing health and 

 strength obliged him to discontinue it, he visited the patients, 

 and held a short weekly service at Bellott's Hospital. His 

 relinquishment of this voluntary work ended his ministerial 

 labours, forty-five to fifty years from the time of his ordination. 

 But, as we have said, it is as a man of science that he will be 

 remembered, and the present and future generations will profit 

 by his researches and writings. From the days of his boyhood 

 natural history pursuits and love of books were his chief 

 pleasure and occupation; and as years advanced and opportunities 

 presented themselves, his devotion to his favourite science 

 became more ardent. Always a careful observer, his researches 

 were remarkable for their accuracy and thoroughness; no point 

 was too minute to be overlooked, no problem, in the domain of 

 which he was a master, too abstruse for solution. With his 

 innate love for science, it was but natural that, whilst at 

 Cambridge, he should take especial interest in the professorial 

 lectures that treated of science in its several branches. It was 

 here he came to know Professor Henslow, the distinguished 

 botanist, whose memoir he wrote in later years, the many-sided 

 Whewell, Charles Darwin, the celebrated naturalist, Adam 



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