THE DEAN’S ILLNESS. 
269 
increased. Sir Roderick Murchison would often visit his 
well-beloved friend, and endeavour to interest him in 
his old pursuits ; but nothing roused him. The “ Leisure 
Hourl' Frank Buckland says, “ was the only publication 
my dear father would read during his illness, and the 
volumes were always on the table; he would look at 
nothing else, save the Bible.” 
During the Dean’s illness Mrs. Buckland and her 
daughters lived chiefly at Islip, within reach of all the 
old Oxford friends, and constantly visited by Murchison, 
Owen, Harcourt, Conybeare, and others. In a letter of 
invitation to Faraday she writes :— 
“ This place has no fine scenery, but I think you and 
Mrs. Faraday will like the village quiet and the sunny 
terrace. I shall not attempt to lionise you, far less to 
make lions of you ; but you shall have the sincere welcome 
which I have so much pleasure in offering to my poor 
husband’s valued friends. He is, as usual, well, and not 
unhappy when left in perfect repose—a strange contrast to 
his former existence ! ” 
rise to all symptoms; this irritation being considerably augmented 
by continuous and severe ‘ exercise of the brain in thought.’ My 
parents, when travelling to a scientific meeting in Berlin, met with a 
severe accident; the diligence was overturned, my father fell from 
the top and was stunned, and unable to render any assistance to my 
mother, who received a deep cut on her frontal bone. Professor 
Ehrenberg, who fortunately was with them, attended to the injuries 
they there received, which proved the ultimate cause of death in 
both. Dr. Buckland’s vertebrae were injured, and a bony tumour was 
discovered to have formed at the back of the cut on Mrs. Buckland’s 
frontal bone, which, for the last two years of her life, occasioned 
attacks of unconsciousness, in one of which she died.” 
