SIR CHARLES LYELL 433 



I do not remember when I first saw Sir Charles Lyell, 

 but I probably met him at some of the evening meetings of 

 the scientific societies. I first lunched with him in the 

 summer of 1863, and then met, for the first time, Lady Lyell 

 and Miss Arabella B. Buckley. Miss Buckley had become 

 Sir Charles's private secretary early in that year, and she 

 informs me that she remembers this visit because Lady Lyell 

 gave her impressions of me afterwards — I am afraid not 

 very favourable ones, as I was shy, awkward, and quite 

 unused to good society. With Sir Charles I soon felt at 

 home, owing to his refined and gentle manners, his fund of 

 quiet humour, and his intense love and extensive knowledge 

 of natural science. His great liberality of thought and wide 

 general interests were also attractive to me; and although 

 when he had once arrived at a definite conclusion he held 

 by it very tenaciously until a considerable body of well- 

 ascertained facts could be adduced against it, yet he was 

 always willing to listen to the arguments of his opponents, 

 and to give them careful and repeated consideration. This 

 was well shown in the time and trouble he gave to the dis- 

 cussion with myself as to the glacial origin of the larger 

 alpine lake basins, writing me one letter of thirty pages on 

 the subject. Considering his position as the greatest living 

 authority on physical geology, it certainly showed remarkable 

 open-mindedness that he should condescend to discuss the 

 subject with such a mere amateur and tyro as I then was. 

 The theory was, however, too new and too revolutionary for 

 him to make up his mind at once, but he certainly was some- 

 what influenced by the facts and arguments I set before him, 

 as shown by the expressions in his correspondence with Dar- 

 win, which I have quoted. 



In the much vaster and more important problem of the 

 development of man from the lower animals, though convinced 

 of the general truth of Darwin's views, with which he had 

 been generally acquainted for twenty years, he was yet loth 

 to express himself definitely ; and Darwin himself was as 

 much disappointed with his pronouncement in the recently 

 published " Antiquity of Man," as he was with my rejection 



