1846-1858.] LOVE OF NATURE, 167 



often gather in its course a larger crowd. When the halt was 

 made, speeches, singing, and recitations were the usual pro- 

 ceedings of the meeting. 



"His Saturday afternoons were often, in the summer, 

 spent in long country walks, attended by any who cared for 

 the excursion — usually big lads who were at work all the 

 week. He would pluck a flower from the hedge-side, and 

 teach from it the elements of botany to the circling crowd; 

 or he would turn aside into a stone quarry, and make it his 

 text for a lesson on geology." We have already mentioned 

 his Sunday walks, when he would discourse on some religious 

 theme. In his ordinary conversations with his young friends, 

 "he would often stop to correct bad grammar or faulty 

 pronunciation." For some years he had a boating crew : it 

 was very pleasant to go out with them in the " Old Teetotaller " 

 on a fine summer evening, and hear their glees and catches. 



In March, 1857, he and ten others went to the neighbour- 

 hood of Peterborough to see an eclipse of the sun, of which 

 he sent a graphic account to the Warrington papers, especially 

 noting the general effect of the " ' darkness that might be felt : ' 

 it was felt by each of us with more or less of unaccountable 

 dread. ... A young man (with so little fear about him that 

 he lately allowed the Warrington drunkards to give him a 

 thorough thrashing sooner than pay his ' footing ') felt ' as if 

 the least thing would have knocked him down.' " He charac- 

 teristically ends by remarking that "the whole expense of a 

 journey of nearly three hundred miles was less than a month's 

 drinking and smoking to an ordinary working-man." 



Shells and music were from a child his chief delight, and 

 to each he devoted a great deal of time for the good of others. 

 He not only taught music gratuitously to members of his con- 

 gregation, but gave lessons twice a week, for some years, to the 

 scholars of the excellent British School, afterwards known as 

 the People's College. For their use chiefly, he printed " First 

 Notions of Singing " (and "First Notions of Elocution") in 1856, 

 which took him " an enormous quantity of time." He writes 

 (December 21, 1856): "I have got the British School concert 



