X 



able circumstance that Charles Lyell had some time before been 

 educated in the same school. If we may judge, however, by the 

 amusing sketch given in Lyell's Autobiography (" Life and Letters," 

 1881) of the rough and almost brutal system adopted in the school, 

 there can have been nothing in the studies, the associations, or the 

 influences of the school at all calculated to foster that love of natural 

 science which became so conspicuous in the after lives of both Lyell 

 and Austen. After spending some time at Midhurst, Robert Austen 

 went to France, and in a semi-military school there laid the foundation 

 of that knowledge of the French language and its literature which 

 proved so useful to him in his subsequent scientific labours. 



The career of young Austen at Oxford, where he was next sent, 

 must have commenced somewhat early, for before he had reached the 

 age of twenty-two he had taken his degree and been elected a Fellow 

 of Oriel College. At Oxford he was, like Lyell, a pupil of Buck- 

 land's, and under his persuasive influence imbibed that passion for 

 geological study which henceforth became the distinguishing feature 

 of his life. 



Destined by fortune for the life of an English country-gentleman, 

 Robert Austen in 1830 became a student of Lincoln's Inn, and the 

 knowledge of law which he there acquired was doubtless of great 

 service to him during after years in the discharge of his duties as a 

 justice of the peace. But it is clear that at this time Austen's 

 studies were not entirely devoted to the law. At Lincoln's Inn he 

 met Lyell, then just returned from his geological explorations in the 

 south of Europe, and engaged in the completion of the first volume 

 of his " Principles of Geology ;" Leonard Horner, then Warden of the 

 London University, and Murchison were also resident in London ; and 

 on the 19th of March, 1830, Robert Austen, introduced by these 

 three friends, was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society. At 

 that time Sedgwick was President of the Society, and De la Beche, 

 Whewell, Greenough, and the three friends already mentioned were 

 among the most active Members of its Council. In listening to the 

 papers which described the numerous and important geological dis- 

 coveries of that period, and to the debates, always animated and 

 instructive, often amusing, and sometimes stormy, which followed the 

 reading of those papers, Robert Austen doubtless increased that 

 knowledge of the infant science, the foundation of which had been so 

 well laid by the teachings of Buckland. 



In 1833 Robert Austen was married at Teignmouth to Maria 

 Elizabeth, the only daughter, and afterwards the heiress, of the late 

 Major-General Sir Henry Thomas Godwin, K.C.B. This officer at a 

 later date, namely, between the years 1851 and 1853, commanded the 

 Burmese Field Force during the campaigns which resulted in the 

 addition of the Province of Pegu to our Indian possessions On the 



