LORD HOUGHTON. 
377 
conversation with the present writer, he stated that there was only 
one man of real genius whom he had the opportunity of knowing 
with whom he had never been acquainted. This was none other than 
Goethe, and it was not a little remarkable that the great German's 
name was not added to the long roll of Lord Houghton's friends, 
seeing that the latter had actually been in Weimar at the time when 
Goethe resided there. Innumerable stories, some humorous and 
some pathetic, are related in society wdth regard to the variety and 
indeed universality of Lord Houghton's friendships. 
He frequently attended the meetings of this Society, and took 
considerable interest in the relation of geological science to agricul- 
tural pursuits. Ill 1865 he presided at a meeting at Doncaster, at 
which he gave an address, the report of which has not been preserved, 
and on October 23rd, 1878, his Lordship presided at the Annual 
Meeting, held at Wakefield, when he delivered an address full of 
genial encouragement to the younger members, in which the follow- 
ing sentences occur. ' There were men in the early part of this cen- 
tury, and who have continued through a very considerable portion of 
this century, who had a kind of suspicion of science as being some- 
thing antagonistic to the higher and more important qualities of the 
mind. People seemed to think that because men knew more they 
would either think less or feel less. That was a most erroneous 
opinion, and it has been completely answered by the facts of the 
world in which we live. Never has there been a time in our history 
in which so much interest has been taken in Science. At the same 
time, never has there been a time in which greater interest has been 
taken in all those developments of the imagination which are generally 
comprised in the name Art, nor in those deeper developments of man- 
kind w^hich are generally comprised in the word Religion. No doubt 
there will be certain minds which addict themsehes specially to 
science, and which seem to take very little interest in what are con- 
sidered still higher aspects of humanity ; but it does not at all follow- 
that because a man devotes himself to science he would be any the 
better for not knowing science at all. The condition of that man 
would be that he would be deprived of that one development of his 
nature, and not that he would be inclined to anything else. There- 
