1808-1822.] 
CONVERSATIONAL POWERS. 
35 
“ There was,” says Mr. Ruskin in his “ Praeterita,” 1 “ a 
more humane and living spirit, however, inhabitant of the 
N.W. angle of the Cardinal’s square ; and a great many of 
the mischances which were only harmful to me through 
my own folly may be justly held, and to the full, counter¬ 
balanced by that one piece of good fortune, of which 
I had the wit to take advantage. Dr. Buckland was a 
Canon of the Cathedral, and he, with his w r ife and 
family, were all sensible and good-natured, with originality 
enough in the sense of them to give sap and savour to 
the whole College. . . . All were frank, kind, and clever, 
vital in the highest degree ; to me, medicinal and saving. 
Dr. Buckland was extremely like Sydney Smith in his staple 
of character; no rival with him in wit , but like him in 
humour , common sense , and benevolently cheerful doctrine of 
Divinity. . . . Geology was only the pleasant occupation 
of his own merry life.” 
Another distinguished Oxonian speaks enthusiastically 
of Buckland’s vivacity, mirthfulness, and power as a 
talker. Writing in 1892, Professor Storey Maskelyne 
says :— 
“ Dr. Buckland’s wonderful conversational powers were 
as incommunicable as the bouquet of a bottle of champagne, 
but no one who remembers them as I do, can ever forget 
them. 
“ It was indeed at the feast of reason and the flow of 
social and intellectual intercourse that Buckland shone. 
‘ A merrier man within the limit of becoming mirth I 
never spent an hour's talk withal.’ Nothing came amiss 
to him, from the creation of the world to the latest news 
in Town ; from the flora and fauna of ages long past to 
the last horticultural meeting at Chiswick or Exhibition 
at the Zoological Gardens ; through all intermediate time 
he was equally at home. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit , 
1 Ch. xi., pp. 375, 376-7, 381. 
