MAIN FEATURES OF CHARACTER 55 
This journal also shows that he had, since the 
Harris visit, attained to a finer and more poetic 
appreciation of all that was grand and beautiful in 
JNature. The mountains especially were drawing 
him to them with an ever-increasing fascination 
and intensity of reverential feeling. Although year 
after year, during his educational period in Aber¬ 
deen, he had passed on foot through various parts 
of the Scottish Highlands to and from his annual 
holiday in Harris, they never became commonplace 
to him. This is well illustrated by that splendid 
passage in his journal already referred to, which 
describes his night’s experience on his way across 
the Grampians from Braemar to Speyside in the 
course of his walk to London. 
These two journals taken together reveal to 
us the mind and life of the young naturalist 
as he then thought and wrought from day to day. 
They show him to have been a very unusual 
type; and it is only by a perusal of them in 
detail that one can fully realise what his youth¬ 
ful personality was. Yet the passages which I 
have quoted will afford the reader a fair idea of 
the main features of his mind and character. 
Such as he was in his youth, he continued to 
be, in all that was strongest and best in him, 
throughout life. His dominating love of truth was 
the same from first to last, while his character for 
continuous persistent effort towards the attainment 
of clearly defined purposes, however discouraging 
the circumstances, and however great the obstacles, 
