tf: $l\T> RECOLLECTIONS PAST LIFE. LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUAR AND PARLIAMENT STREET RECOLLECTIONS OF PAST LIFE. BY SIR HENRY HOLLAND, Bart. M.D. F.R.S. D.C.L. &c. &c. PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN : PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN. Hoc est Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui. Martial. LONDON : LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1872. IOAN *™<* *\ PREFACE. Some preface is needed for this little volume, to explain the origin of the narrative it contains, and the motives which have led, though not without some reluctance, to its present publication. Auto- biography, where justified at all, may generally best be left to the discretion of those who come after the subject of it. The estimate a man makes of himself, and his concerns in life, is often a very mistaken one. The ' Recollections ' embodied in this narrative were first put into writing about four years ago. This was done at the solicitation of my children, and several friends, who desired to obtain some record of a life, already long in its duration, and possessing a certain interest beyond that personal to myself, from its relation to many others of more note in the world. As I saw that a mere manuscript would not satisfy this desire, I printed privately a small number of copies, which I was 738 vi Preface. led subsequently to reprint with considerable additions, finding that many beyond those for whom I originally wrote were interested in the narrative, and seeking to obtain it The few copies so printed have long been exhausted ; and I have been urged by friends whose judgment I rightly respect, to publish the volume at once, with larger additions than those hitherto made. This, I am aware, is a very old and often abused plea for publication. But in the present instance other motives concurred to justify what indeed may almost be deemed a posthumous act, seeing that I go to the press when already advanced in my eighty-fourth year. It has been told me — and I welcome the opinion as my best justification — that there is much in this narrative which may be practically useful to those entering upon life, or going through its later stages ; and that I should be too nicely scrupulous if halting on a mere question of propriety as to the time of publication. I can only state here, that I shall rejoice if this anticipation be fulfilled. Another motive influencing me is the know- ledge that no one but myself could make the additions that have been suggested, and which from the method of my original narrative require to be interwoven into every part of the volume. Preface. vii Presuming it likely, from the copies already printed, that the book might be published after my death, I have naturally felt desirous to give it a final form beforehand, and while yet having the faculties needful to do this. Looking generally at the contents of the sheets as they pass through the press, I cannot but see that there are some things for which explanation is due to those who may be readers of them. First of these is, the large proportion of the narrative occupied by myself and my personal concerns. This is a rock I saw, and sought to shun ; but a general revision of the volume tells me that I have failed in doing so. It was hardly a fault when writing, as I first intended, for my family only ; but becomes such when what I then wrote has been thus enlarged and published. A second matter for which apology may be needful is, the broken and desultory form of my narrative ; embarrassing probably to many, dis- tasteful to those who look for a clear and connected story of events. Here, again, I must seek excuse in the limited design with which these ' Recol- lections ' were originally written and privately printed. Were I to compose the whole again, I might be able in some degree to remedy this fault, and at the same time to correct any ana- c viii Preface. chronisms or incongruities arising out of the en- largement of the volume at successive periods. But I could not bring myself to undertake the total remodelling of what was already thus written ; and I must commit the whole as it now stands to the good will of the reader. Some excuse may perhaps be required for the number of notes appended to the narrative, many of which, as far as the subjects are concerned, might have been embodied in it. I was not fully aware of their amount until the printing of the volume had already far advanced. But even had I been so, I should have felt some scruple in withdrawing them from their present place. The narrative itself is long enough for its subject ; and those who are not wearied with it may be led to cast an eye upon the notes below, as some little addition to what is related in the pages above. Brook Street : Dece7nber 9, 1871. RECOLLECTIONS OF PAST LIFE. CHAPTER I. SOME FORM of embodiment must be given to every narrative of life, however desultory; and though my professional life has been more variously blended with other objects and interests than is usual, I believe I may best make this the foundation of what I am about to write. I have, even from an early age, travelled much and lived much in society ; but I have never allowed these collateral interests to interfere with the objects or duties of my profession ; and, by what I regard as a singular happiness, I have been enabled so to combine these conditions that nothing has been for- feited by their conjunction. My narrative then will follow in the track thus indi- cated, annexing the other incidents of life to those which especially regard my professional course from its beginning to its close. Travel, as I have just stated, holds so large a place among these incidents, that I must necessarily give it some special and commensurate place in what I write of myself. But, nevertheless, here also I B 2 Recollections of shall abstain from any formal narrative. In these days of universal movement over the earth, little that I could say would be new or worthy of relation. I put aside therefore all local description and commonplaces of tra- velling adventure ; limiting myself mainly to those parts of my various journeys marked by any special incident, or coming into connection with persons or events re- markable in the history of the time. It is right to say in the outset that this Memoir, as its title implies, is founded almost wholly on recollec- tions. I have never kept a journal of the ordinary events of life, deeming -this generally a profitless em- ployment of time, and, in the case of a physician, endangering a breach of professional good faith. Ex- cepting references to my earlier journals of travel for incidents belonging to that time, and other references for dates, all that I relate comes mainly from present memory of the past. From anecdotes pertaining to medical practice I have almost wholly abstained, under the consideration just stated. This is all I need state in explanation of the matter and method of my narrative. I have sought to define the outline distinctly to myself, deeming this a matter of some moment, where my own personality enters so largely into the subject, and where much caution is needed to prevent its usurping too continually upon what I have to relate. Even under this caution, how- ever, I cannot think it amiss, when writing in my eighty- third year, to preface my narrative by a few words touching the totality of this long life. Such general Past Life. 3 retrospect every reasonable man must needs make from time to time, even when the remnant has become thus short, and the habits of mind so deeply rooted that little of practical effect can be drawn from the retro- spection. I have much cause to say, on thus looking back upon it, that my life has been a prosperous and happy one. But for the loss — inevitable as time goes on — of many endeared to me by the ties of family and friendship, I might fairly speak of it as untouched up to this moment by any serious misfortune. My health, with rare ex- ceptions, has been singularly good, enabling me to maintain to this advanced age most of the habits and interests of earlier life, even those in which physical activity is chiefly concerned. Except in the single in- stance of a severe surgical operation, which confined me for some weeks, I have never, in more than fifty years of practice, been prevented from attending to the mala- dies of others by my own illness. The travels, which taken collectively form so large a portion of my life (a rough calculation would make it more than. twelve years) have only once or twice been interrupted by illness ; and never marred by any serious accident, though several times menaced by the urgent danger of such. . These travels, repeated every year, while maintaining my health, have had an inexhaustible interest for me. The liberality of an excellent father, and my early pro- fessional success, saved me, even from the beginning, from those pecuniary anxieties of early life which so often for a time painfully fret the minds even of those B 2 4 Recollections of who eventually reach professional fame and fortune. This exemption from pecuniary cares has continued to the end, and enabled me to follow my professional career, and to withdraw from it in the manner most consonant to my wishes. What may well rank higher in the scale of human blessings, my children have never been other than a source of satisfaction and happiness to me. I may further note it as a fortunate condition in life, that, with one exception hardly worth remembrance, I have been wholly free from any personal controversy or quarrel during this long period of years — a benefit best understood by those who have themselves suffered under such social or professional turmoils. This exemption may have been due to several causes, but chiefly perhaps to those peculiar circumstances in my London practice of which I shall have occasion afterwards to speak. If I can rightly judge myself, I make this slight retrospect in no ostentatious spirit. Looking around me, and to the various experience my profession has afforded, I have sometimes felt a certain vague alarm in this comparative exemption from the ills commonly besetting life ; not due to any deserts of my own, though doubtless peculiarities of personal temperament may have had their share in the result. But on these points, though serving in some sort as preface to my narrative, I have no desire to dwell further. I was born October 27, 1788, at Knutsford, in Che- shire. If venturing to associate this insignificant fact Past Life. 5 with the history of the time, I might say that I was born on the very verge of the first French Revolution. Of how many later revolutions of that great country has my long life made me the spectator ! — one of them, and perhaps the strangest in all its circumstances, actually in progress while I am penning this paragraph. Con- cerning the first ten years of my life I can say but little ; nor indeed do I recollect much — perhaps less than is usual in the common memories of childhood. If this be so, it is probably owing to the multiplicity and rapid change of objects which have crowded succeeding years, erasing impressions which a quieter life might have preserved. The field of memory, large though it be in many cases, has yet its limits in all ; and the events of infancy and boyhood come back to myself dimly and without continuity — a straggling one now and then darting through the mist of years, evoked by those strange associations which link together things the most remote in the history of life. These early years were passed in my native town of Knutsford ; with no other absence than an occasional visit to my maternal grandmother at Newcastle-under- Lyne, and to her brother, Josiah Wedgwood, at Etruria. This admirable man, to whose memory a high public tribute has recently been paid, was endeared to all around him in domestic and social life. Even as a child I received kindnesses from him which I gladly keep in remembrance, and which made my Etruria visits always pleasant to me. Through him I come into family con- nection with his eminent grandson, Charles Darwin — a 6 Recollections of long and intimate friendship with whom I have more pleasure in recording than any mere family tie. What- ever be the fate of his doctrines, he has given to the greatest problem of Natural History a new framework and direction of research, which will ever remain a monument of his genius and persevering labours. A year or two of this first period of life I passed at a private school at Knutsford, learning as much perhaps as such schools generally teach, but this very little. Like most boys of the same age, I had a transient fit of military ardour, fostered by attending the sword exercises of a troop of yeomanry, raised in the town at this time of threatened invasion. I have since seen much of actual military life and battle-fields in various countries, but always looking on them from without — spectator tantum — as in these early days of boyhood. A more tranquil pleasure at this time was that ot frequent visits to my paternal grandfather at the old family house of Sandlebridge, between Knutsford and Alderley. His was an admirable example of old age rendered venerable by all the gentler qualities of human nature. He was the most perfect practical optimist I have ever known. Living on and farming his own land, he put to shame the many sayings, ancient and modern, as to the querulous nature of the agricultural mind. He never could be got to complain of the change or ' distemperature of the seasons.' If a particular season was quoted to him as bad for one crop, he always vindi- cated it as good for another. I never visit this old and picturesque house of Sandlebridge, now belonging to Past Life. 7 me, without some remembrance of him coming to my mind, either as walking cheerfully over his fields, or tranquilly smoking his pipe in an arm-chair coeval with himself. I have added three other farms to this Che- shire property, more than doubling its extent. Though visiting the place only once a year, it is pleasant to me to retain the old family farm in my own hands, confess- ing at the same time that my tastes and habits are little suited to the condition of a landed proprietor.* Even in this early boyhood, certain other tastes showed themselves, which afterwards mingled largely with the incidents of life. I can recollect the pleasure I had in exploring the country round Knutsford ; visit- ing the little lakes or meres in this neighbourhood, and following the windings of the brook which supplies water to my Sandlebridge mill — the miniature precursor to the many great rivers whose courses I have since followed. I made myself also a frequent guide to those who came to obtain specimens of the Saxifraga Hirculus, growing on a small detached spot in a marsh close to Knutsford ; — the most southern English locality, as I believe, in which this plant nas been found. Years after, when I came to look for it on the well-known place, it had wholly disappeared. In January 1799, having entered my eleventh year, I went to Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the pupil of the Rev. W. Turner ; and in the house and under the care of this excellent man I resided four years. The love of travel,. * My cousin, Mrs. Gaskell, who knew Sandlebridge well, has pictured the place by some short but very descriptive touches in one or two of her novels. 8 Recollections of even thus early awakened, has left on my mind several traces of this first journey, made more than seventy years ago. I remember well the interest I felt in cross- ing for the first time the summit of Blackstone Edge, then a long and hard horse-labour above ground, now accomplished by a few minutes of railroad tunnel under- neath. Next came the sight of a tide-river and ships, also new to me ; and, a few months later, my first view of the Sea from the edge of the cliff at Tynemouth Castle, to which spot I was led blindfold, to enhance the effect of the sight by its suddenness. I attach a certain sentimental interest to this particular memory, associated as it has become with that of my numerous voyages in after years, and their various incidents of peril or enjoyment. Visiting Tynemouth a little more than a year ago, I stood for a while on the exact spot whence I thus looked on the Sea for the first time precisely seventy years before. A few days afterwards I embarked on a voyage of 5,000 miles to Jamaica. Such relations of time to events are not common in the his- tory of a single life. I pass rapidly over these four years of boyhood at Newcastle, marked only, as far as I can tell, by a fair amount of bodily and mental activity. There was very little constraint upon me, quiet instruction, and a cheerful home. The knowledge I gained was perhaps somewhat vague and general, but such in kind as to give the appetite for more — an important step in every case in the process of education. Two short courses on Chemistry and Electricity, by Past Life. 9 an itinerant lecturer here, formed my first introduction to physical science ; a very feeble foreshadowing of what these two Sciences have now become, but enough to awaken the interest I have ever since felt in their pro- gress. The nitrous oxide {laughing gas) had just been discovered, and the exhibition of its strange effects, at which I was often an eager spectator, mixed a little metaphysical thought, such as might occur to a boy, with the mere amusement of the spectacle. The wonder indeed is simply the same as that of common intoxica- tion, or the innocuous phenomena of dreams ; but the familiarity of these and other kindred conditions dis- guises much that bears upon the deepest problems of mental philosophy. I may notice here also my many pedestrian excursions round Newcastle, fostering the tastes which at a later time I carried with me to the more remote parts of the world. I have often amused myself by bringing into comparison events thus widely different in place, time, and degree, yet all having kindred with the same tem- perament of mind, passing on from boyhood into adult age. The neighbourhood of Newcastle was one singu- larly favourable to these juvenile propensities. The collieries, with their vast and various machinery — the Tyne, with its crowded navigation, and its then perilous opening to the sea — the chemical and other manufactures (now multiplied fourfold) which already lined its banks ; — these gave objects to my youthful excursions, the same in kind as those which still especially interest me. In visiting the principal coal-mines, I descended and io Recollections of explored thoroughly one or two of the deepest of them — those which, under the name of Wallsend, have so long fed the London fires. My walks, often of great length, led me also to visit the great iron bridge at Sunderland, and the more picturesque structure of Tanfield-arch ; noted at that time as the two largest arches in England, now dwarfed into insignificance by the marvellous works of modern engineers. The same comparative fate has attended the old colliery horse-railways of this district, then regarded with some admiration. Among these rude wooden railroads, however, was nurtured that genius of George Stephenson which has since done so much to change the face of the world. The villages of Wylam and Newburn, where he passed all the early parts of his life, were familiar to me in my excursions ; and, comparing dates, I find I must have been often at Newburn when he was still living there as a common workman. Faber ipse fortunes sua, one may well say of this remarkable man. One of these excursions comes to my memory as having been made in the Mayor's barge in the annual survey of the Tyne by the Mayor and Corporation of Newcastle. This was followed by a public dinner at the Mansion House, at which I was a guest — a somewhat rare festivity for a boy of fourteen. What led to my being thus honoured I do not remember, but I name it as the first of a long series of such dinners in after lifr in conformity to a usage which, while fulfilling some useful purposes, has in its frequency become rather a heavy tax on English social existence. Past Life. ii Another incident in the early part of my Newcastle life was a visit to Mr. George Taylor at Middleham in Durham. This I note, because here I saw, lying in his cradle, a week only after his birth, Henry Taylor, the author of the finest dramatic poem of our time. More than twenty years elapsed before I saw him again, when I had the satisfaction of aiding him in the first step of his honourable public career. Since that time our friendship has been unbroken. In 1803, I finally left Newcastle, and went for a year to the school of Dr. Estlin, near Bristol. Here I was placed at once in the position of head-boy ; succeeding as such to John Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, who had just quitted the school. This appointment, coming in exclusion of other boys of elder date there, made me at first some enemies, and led to one or two schoolboy fights ; but I kept my ground well in these contests, and the jealousies so created speedily subsided.* My most intimate friend here was Richard Bright, with whom I afterwards travelled in Iceland, and who as Dr. Bright held such high and well-merited place in the medical world. At this school I gained more of classical knowledge than at Newcastle, but still very little of that exact scholarship which is reached (with disputed advantage) at our public schools. What now * The petty incidents of a schoolboy's life are often a whimsical minia- ture of greater things. In war, the fate of a campaign is sometimes decided by a single bold adventure. At this Bristol school I overcame my first difficulties by challenging two boys to fight at once. The combat, in which I should, doubtless, have been well beaten, was in some way pre- vented ; but such mere act of challenge saved me from all further provoca- tions, and established my position in the school. 12 Recollections of renders the reading of the Greek and Latin classics one of my greatest pleasures was an attainment of later date, and due mainly to private study. The taste was fostered by my early travels in Greece, but it has been ripening ever since ; and I do not mistake my own mind in saying that I have greater enjoyment from this source now than at any earlier period of life. To this subject, however, I shall have occasion to revert hereafter. The Christmas vacation of this Bristol school I passed in London, or rather at Stoke Newington, with Dr. Aikin, a very old friend of my father. His sister, Mrs. Barbauld, who lived close to him, and his daughter, Lucy Aikin, gave a certain literary repute to this then tranquil village ; since absorbed, like so many others, into the huge mass of the metropolis. I met in small parties, at one or other of these houses, several writers of repute of that day, now almost or wholly forgotten, — the warm admirers of Mrs. Barbauld's masculine under- standing and gentle feminine character. She well merited this admiration. Of the excellence of her English prose style it is enough to say that I have heard it warmly praised both by Mackintosh and Macaulay. Each specified the 'Essay on the Inconsistency of Human Expectations' as an example of this excellence. This was my first visit to London, and sixty-six years have since elapsed. Having known our great City through all its intermediate changes, I have some diffi- culty in recalling its exact picture at that time, and the impressions made upon me. Madame de StaeTs descrip- Past Life. 13 tion of it as ' a province of brick ' had not then been given ; but this was undoubtedly a description well merited at the period of my first visit to London, and in truth long afterwards. The newest and best streets (those north of Oxford Street, then terminating in open fields) were remarkable only for their unmeaning length and utter destitution of all architectural character — im- putations still but partially removed. I went through most of the sights of London as they were then cata- logued for strangers. It may give some idea of their comparative paucity and poverty, to say that I was shown the bald frontage of Connaught Place as one of them. I have often sought to recall the aspect of Charing Cross, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, &c, as I first saw these great thoroughfares ; but the memory of the old has been gradually obliterated by living for more than half a century under the growth of the new. I can better recollect the occasional shooting of the Fall at the old London Bridge in a Thames wherry, — the little dash of adventure in this according well with those propensities of character which showed themselves afterwards in more distant places and on a larger scale. The picture too is still before me of the bare and dismal fields lying outside Tyburn turnpike and Hyde Park Corner — now covered by two new cities, each rivalling many Euro- pean capitals in extent and grandeur ; and in the individuality of the dwelling-houses marking at once the wealth which created them, and one of the most notable peculiarities of English domestic life. I have known foreigners come to London, and quit it without having 14 Recollections of even seen these city creations of our own time, still augmenting rapidly under our eyes. I am not one of those inclined to undervalue the changes which time and the growth of arts and taste have wrought in our great metropolis. I believe these changes, present or in progress, to be greater and more substantial improvements than any other city — Paris excepted — can bring into comparison ; improvement, moreover, only in small part the work of Government, but due infinitely more to the wealthy munificence of corporations, companies, and individuals. The large substitution of stucco for brick, the removal of the taxes on windows and glass, and the increased height and ornamentation of private houses, have made a marvellous change in general aspect ; but a change so gradual that it needs a memory of the dreary colouring of the old London streets by day, and of the lurid light of their oil lamps by night, fully to appreciate it. Much, indeed, still remains to be effected for the well- being of London as a city ; and the faults of ancient construction, as well as of climate and coal fuel, render impossible much that might be desired. But the spirit of the time (greatly embarrassed indeed at all times by the disputes so promptly evoked, on points of taste) is fully awake to the object and its fulfilment. The last ten years especially have been prolific of these improve- ments. Two hours now passed on the Thames between Lambeth and London Bridge, and in that circle of the City surrounding St. Paul's and the Exchange, will show some of the wonderful changes effected during this Past Life. 15 period — sights almost unknown indeed to those who crowd the drawing-rooms of the West End, yet better worthy of being studied than many of the objects which our continental tourists rush impetuously, and often ignorantly, to see. I claim a certain right to this short parenthesis from my long and intimate knowledge of London, and from my having visited at various times every single Euro- pean capital — many of them so frequently as to be familiar with all that has progressively been done for their embellishment. But I have ever maintained true allegiance to our own great City, and note unwillingly that fashion for depreciating it which has grown up in these days of indiscriminate travel, when hasty impres- sions, often due to novelty alone, are put down and printed as deliberate judgments. After living in London some sixty years, I would willingly endorse Dr. John- son's opinion as to this City ; uttered indeed when it numbered scarcely a fourth of its present population, and when individual life was less lost in the crowd of human existence than it now is. Those who depreciate what London has done for its own improvement would do well to read Gay's ' Trivia/ and mark the changes that have occurred since the date of that curious poem — not in size alone, but in all that constitutes the true grandeur of a metropolis.* * I recollect one of Gay's couplets, singularly applicable to the two most recent among London improvements : — ' Where common sewers a lulling murmur keep, And torrents rush from Holborn's fatal steep.' 1 6 Recollections of I returned to Bristol to complete my allotted year there, and with this my very short school life came to an end. Though I cannot say that I have myself suffered by this curtailment of the common form of Eng- lish education, and the total omission of a public school afterwards, yet I have thought it well to provide other- wise for my Sons ; and the event has justified me in doing so. It is seldom that an individual case can wisely be confronted with general usage. When leaving Bristol, I made the journey to Knutsford wholly on foot. Setting out thus with the view of seeing Tintern Abbey only, and the valley of the Wye, the sense of pleasure in bodily prowess urged me on- wards to complete the journey as a pedestrian. I refer with some interest to this trifling matter, as the early expression of a particular temperament, which has con- tinued through a long life. Much, indeed, of the philo- sophy of the human mind, both practical and theoretical, lies in these inborn specialities of character, which time and events may modify, but can never wholly eradicate. Though not yet sixteen at this time, I was called upon for some decision, conditional at least, as to my future course in life. I can scarcely now say whence the in- clination came (possibly from the better promise it gave of voyage or travel at a time when Englishmen were almost wholly excluded from Continental Europe) ; but, whatever the cause, my leaning at this period was to a mercantile life. My father yielded, though somewhat reluctantly, to this wish; and I became an articled clerk in a great Liverpool house, with the privilege Past Life. 17 reserved to me, through the friendship of a principal partner, of passing two sessions at the Glasgow Univer- sity, in furtherance of my general education. These two sessions (1804-5 an d 1805-6) virtually decided the course of my future life. I went back indeed to the office in Liverpool in the interval between them; but the suspicion gradually ripened into certainty, that I had greatly erred in this my first independent judgment ; and at the close of the second session at Glasgow, I sought and obtained a release from the articles which had bound me to a merchant's desk. It would be well if all mistakes in the great adventure of life could be thus early and easily retrieved. This decision, which was simultaneous with the choice of medicine as a profession, I have never had a moment's cause to regret. I even look back sometimes, especially during the commercial crises which periodically invade us, with a sort of nervousness at the alternative I so narrowly escaped. This feeling came strongly upon me in 1866 (a year notorious for great commercial disasters), at the time of my penultimate voyage to America; when, passing through Liverpool to the place of em- barkation, I found myself accidentally in the street, and on the very spot, where my short mercantile career began and came to its end. It was an emotion almost akin to that created by coming suddenly to a place where at some former time life has been in pressing physical peril. Without predicting what might have happened if I had persevered in this first plan of occupation for life, the c iS Recollections of contrast must have been a strange one with all that has since actually ensued. The benefit I derived from these two sessions at Glasgow was not limited to the result just noticed. Though a private student — one of the non-togati of the College — I was favourably noticed by several of the Professors (Mylne, Young, Jardine, and Millar), and associated with a class of students for the most part older than myself, some of whom afterwards attained eminence in different positions of life. Within the walls of a College so recently boasting the names of Adam Smith, Hutcheson, and Reid, a body of debating youth was sure to be found ; and the questions of metaphysics and theology, then rife in Scotland, furnished ample aliment for discussion. When Sir Isaac Newton de- scribes philosophy as ' an impertinently litigious lady/ he is giving good reason why she should be eagerly courted by clever youths of eighteen or twenty in a Scotch University, many of them destined to the Minis- try of that native Church which was cradled amidst controversies, and has fondled them as a luxury ever since. I recollect well the earnestness and heat of these debates, and the utter unconsciousness that many of the questions discussed had been fully argued by philosophers two thousand years before, and some of them wisely recognised even then as impossible of solu- tion. Voltaire's famous definition of Metaphysics, sup- posing it had been known to them, would have been speedily put aside by these half-fledged and eager disputants Past Life, 19 Among the youths at Glasgow with whom I was thus associated, was one who afterwards attained high and merited reputation as the occupant of Dugald Stewart's Chair, and as the most learned of Scotch metaphysical writers. This was Sir W. Hamilton. Exactly of the same age, we became intimate, and I well recollect our frequent arguments on those subjects which gave occupa- tion and fame to his later life. He died seventeen years ago, after an attack of paralysis. It may be that his life was thus shortened by its devotion to topics requiring intense and concentrated thought. The mind can seldom be turned inwards upon its own workings without a sense of confusion speedily coming on, suggesting or com- pelling a cessation of this effort of reflex consciousness. I discovered a short time ago, among some old books, two essays which I wrote at Glasgow in connection with these metaphysical controversies — one ' On Liberty and Necessity,' the other ' On the Passions in their Relation to the Intellectual Nature of Man.' It interested me to find in one of these essays the passing discussion of a subject on which I have since much more largely written, viz. ' On Time as an Element in Mental Functions,' showing that this curious topic— too little regarded in its bearing on Mental Philosophy — had even then engaged my mind.* Looking at these papers after the lapse of sixty-five years, I detect in them a certain amount of juvenile pedantry ; yet sufficient thought, it may be, for the age at which they were written. Until now I had almost forgotten their existence. * Chapters on Mental Physiology, ch. iii. and iv. c 2 <20 Recollections of Another composition during my stay at Glasgow was a translation of the Second Chorus of the ' CEdipus Tyrannus/ in competition for a public University prize. The prize I gained, but not improbably from the scanty amount and quality of the competition. Notwithstand- ing the eloquent lectures of Professor Young, who had the art of giving a sort of poetical pathos to the niceties of the Greek Grammar, the Glasgow youth generally had slender knowledge of Greek, and little taste for versifica- tion.* The commercial ^genius of the place already lorded it over the academical. My poetical success on this occasion, though pleasant at the time, did not seduce me into the paths of poetry. With one exception, I believe I have never since put two lines of rhyme toge- ther ; though my travels in Greece brought me, while yet young, under the local seductions of Helicon, Parnassus, and the Castalian Spring, as well as of that fountain of Arethusa, and those fair slopes of Hybla, where Theo- critus and Bion poured forth their gentle strains, the Ao)ph aoiSd of Grecian song. A very different literary occupation, if such it may be called, fell in my way at the moment of quitting Glasgow. Released now from mercantile trammels, six months of interval occurred before beginning my medi- cal studies at Edinburgh. At this time the Board of Agriculture was engaged in completing their valuable * There was one particular lecture in Professor Young's annual course (I think that on the Dual Number) in which he was wont to move himself to tears, by his own eloquence, and the beauty of the passages he cited in illustration. This was irreverently called by the students the crying or greeting lecture. Past Life. 21 series of County Reports ; and through the suggestion of my friend Sir John Stanley (afterwards Lord Stanley of Alderley), I was entrusted to draw up that of Cheshire, founded upon a short Report of earlier date. Variously and efficiently aided in this work by those more compe- tent than myself, I completed it within the six months of my vacation. The volume was published in the ensuing year ; and I received from the Board 200/., being double the sum proposed — a substantial satisfac- tion to the pride of authorship at eighteen, even thus prosaically directed. This, however, was not my earliest adventure in print. Some years before, while yet at the Bristol school, I hazarded a letter to the ' Morning Chronicle ' on some current topic of the day. Though forgetting the sub- ject, I do not forget the surprise and pleasure I felt in seeing it in the newspaper a few days afterwards, nor my satisfaction in making it known in the school. I suppose some such emotion to be usual to all who see themselves for the first time in print, and very frequent therefore in these days of almost univer- sal authorship.* * It was some surprise to me, [at a later time, to see this letter of my boyhood in a Collection of Extracts from the Public Journals published by Cobbett. The name and works of this man are now nearly stranded on the stream of time ; but they long exercised a powerful influence on the public mind in England, due partly to his opinions, but yet more to the hardy simplicity and vigour of the style in which he embodied them. I well recollect the eagerness with which Cobbett's * Register ' was looked for and read on every day of its publication. 22 Recollections of CHAPTER II. I WENT to Edinburgh, then the medical school in highest repute, in October 1806, when exactly eighteen years of age ; and at this point my medical life may be said to begin. I shall make it, as already proposed, the foundation of my narrative ; but without any close adherence to dates, and blending the incidents of travel, society, and other occupation with those more strictly of professional kind. A large digression indeed I must indulge in even thus early, in reference to one of these objects. Enough of my life has been spent as a tra- veller by land and sea to warrant some more especial notice of this part of it — of the causes which led me so far to deviate from the ordinary course of a London phy- sician — and of the method and direction of the journeys thus mingling with the other concerns of life. The narrative, if it can be so called, must needs be a very desultory one ; but so, in truth, were the travels them- selves. Their chief peculiarity consists in having been thus closely blended with a profession to which, in all other ways, I steadily and successfully adhered. A fondness for travel, as already mentioned, .1 can trace back even to the memories of my earliest boyhood. Jt is more strongly marked in my recollections of the Past Life. 23 four years I passed at Newcastle-on-Tyne. I have mentioned the excursions on foot or by water, which made me so familiar with the neighbourhood of that town, that I could have mapped it from memory with- out other aid. Geography, especially in that connection with the physical sciences too little regarded hitherto in our English education, has ever been a favourite study with me.* Even at this early time of life I had a sin- gular pleasure in all that belonged to the Tyne — its tidal changes, floods, and windings — and I was accus- tomed to pursue even to their sources many of the small streams (the burns and deans of Northumbrian speech) which run into this river. The phenomena of the tides had a particular interest for me. I well recollect the pleasure I felt in following their flow upwards along these little streams ; marking the points to which they severally reached at spring and neap tides ; and their various conflict with the waters flowing downwards. These juvenile recollections are not effaced even by what I have since seen of the gigantic tides in the Bay of Fundy, at St. Malo, in the Severn, and elsewhere. It is not mere magnitude indeed which gives its interest to these phenomena. The tidal flow, even in its feeblest * A few words more as to the imperfect manner in which Geography is dealt with in English education, both public and private. It cannot be - taught, in any proper sense of the word, by mere maps, or a bald and wearisome nomenclature of countries, cities, mountains, and rivers. What is wanted is that these should be intimately blended with the history of the world of nature,' and the history of mankind; thereby better fixing the whole in the memory, and giving to Geography its true rank among the sciences. The change thus indicated is in progress, but much is still wanted for its full accomplishment. 24 Recollections of form, expresses the periodical changes of the great globes of our system, and the action of that mighty Force which pervades all we know of the Universe be- yond. Here, as in so many other instances, familiarity disguises the wonder that lies underneath. We look upon the Ocean swell, and the flow of rivers inverted twice a day, without thinking of that mysterious power from which these effects proceed, and are maintained without interruption from age to age. I cannot, how- ever, but anticipate a time when the tides will be re- garded not in reference to navigation only, but as a great material Power, unceasingly present, and, through the principle of Conservation of Forces, and under the direction of human genius, capable of being variously applied to the mechanical and other uses of man. This fondness for streams, large or small, has clung to me ever since my youth, and often given express direction to my line of travel. The Danube I have fol- lowed, with scarcely an interruption, from its assumed sources at Donau-Eschingen to the Black Sea — the Rhine, now become so familiar to common travel, from its infant stream in the Alps to the ' bijidos tracUis et jnncta palndibus ora ' which Claudian, with singular local accu- racy, describes as the end of Stilicho's river-journey. The St. Lawrence I have pursued uninterruptedly for nearly 2,000 miles of its lake and river course. The waters of the Upper Mississippi I have recently navi- gated for some hundred miles below the Falls of St. Anthony. The Ohio, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Connecticut rivers I have followed far towards their Past Life. 25 sources ; and the Ottawa, grand in its scenery of water- falls, lakes, forests, and mountain gorges, for 300 miles above Montreal. There has been pleasure to me also in touching upon some single point of a river, and watching the flow of waters which come from unknown springs, or find their issue in some remote ocean or sea. I have felt this on the Nile, at its time of highest inundation — in crossing the Volga, when scarcely wider than the Thames at Oxford. — and still more when near the sources of the streams that feed the Euphrates, south of Trebizond. Of these several rivers the St. Lawrence is that most familiar to me, and that which has left strongest impres- sions on my memory. If not ministering, like the Nile, to history and imagination by the monuments of past ages, there is a grandeur of nature in its origin and course which comes in compensation for this. The creation, it may be said, of great inland Seas, it passes from one to another under various names ; throws its vast volume over the precipices of Niagara ; pauses awhile in the deep basin of Ontario, and issues thence with that blue transparency of water which gives such marvellous beauty to the Lake of a Thousand Isles. Rapids, mag- nificent in their impetuosity, again occur at intervals, even to the vicinity of Montreal. No traveller ought to leave America without having descended the St. Law- rence and its rapids from Kingston to Montreal, the latter among the fairest and most prosperous of Ame- rican cities* Nor should anyone neglect to see those * The population of Montreal has more than doubled since I first visited the place. No city has nobler scope for future extension. Whether 26 Recollections of grand heights of Quebec, underneath which the river flows in its nearer approach to the sea. In the confluence of rivers I have always found ob- jects of interest, and even of instruction. Stranded at one time for some hours on a sandbank in the Missis- sippi, at the very point where it receives the vast and turbid volume of the Missouri, I witnessed such conflu- ence on its largest scale. It might be called a huge struggle for supremacy. But in streams far inferior to these great rivers, the commingling of waters in their various relations of volume, impetus, and angle of direc- tion, presents striking and ever-changing pictures to the eye. Even the diversities of colour give character to these confluences ; showing the various sources whence the waters come, and the strata through which they flow ; and curiously exhibiting the manner in which they commingle, often tardily and as it were reluctantly, into a common stream. Much more could I say of rivers as giving to travel the greatest charm of landscape, while affording lessons in geology and physical geography invaluable to science. Even the simple brook, followed step by step to its source, illustrates in the windings of its channel, its depths and deposits, and the sections which its banks disclose, many of the grandest phenomena and conclu- sions of geology. In the poetry of every age the flow of river waters has been a favourite theme — one symbol of the life and destinies of man. it might not have been better as the capital of the Dominion than Ottawa, is a point still doubtful and debated upon. Past Life. 27 Akin to this fondness for river scenery, and not with- out some similar justification, is the interest I have always felt in the scenery of Islands, especially when small, and grouped together by the same natural con- ditions. Whether of volcanic or other formations, they often best expound those great physical changes which have successively altered the relations of land and sea over the surface of the globe. As the remnants of older continents, or the projections of new land by forces from underneath, they form in each case the most impressive memorials of antecedent convulsion and change. And naturalists now recognise the value of the information they afford (the Oceanic Islands more especially), through their floras and faunas, in aid of those inquiries into the origin and distribution of species which play so im- portant a part in the science of our day. Mr. Darwin first taught us to appreciate adequately this method of research. The Isles of the Archipelago and Levant, irrespec- tively even of their names and history, have ministered often and largely to this fondness of mine for island scenery. A like interest I have felt in the grand vol- canic group of the Canaries, with their monarch moun- tain of Teneriffe ; in the Lipari Isles, with their ever- living volcano of Stromboli ; and in the wonderful islands, gorgeous with tropical vegetation, which form the northern boundary of the Caribbean Sea. I have found pleasure too, though of more sober kind, in frequent passages among the innumerable pine- covered isles of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Norway coasts ; and pleasure also, 28 Recollections of nearer home, in repeated visits to the Channel Islands, to the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Isles, to that whimsical little group of the Scilly Isles, seeming as if torn off from the parent peninsula of Cornwall ; and, latest of all, to the Faroe Isles, that wonderful outbreak of volcanic rocks from beneath the ocean bed. I must quit this topic, however, to return to the inci- dents of much earlier date. During the four years of interval between Newcastle and the commencement of my medical studies in Edinburgh, my taste for travel testified itself in various excursions, often on foot and alone, in different parts of England, Wales, and Scot- land. Among other places, I visited Loch Katrine and Glenfinlas, then solitary spots known only to some stray tourist of the day, who came back enraptured with his discovery. Other places, since made familiar by the genius of Walter Scott, were reached in these pedestrian excursions, for which I had trained myself by early exercise. I have already mentioned one instance of this training ; and the habit is one which has served me in good stead in many journeys of later date and in more distant localities. Strangely have all the fashions and appliances of English travel changed since the time of which I am now speaking. The topic is too familiar to need illus- tration, else I could bring many curious instances from my own experience. The mail-coach, as devised by Palmer, was brought into use in 1788, the year in which I was born ; and forty years sufficed to raise it to per- fection in speed and punctuality, though by no means Past Life. 29 in comfort. Displaced by the gigantic rivalry of the rail and locomotive, all has changed with this change. The average rate of speed on English roads has become four times as great as before. On most parts of the Continent, the alteration effected much exceeds this amount. Those who may have travelled, as I have done in 1 8 14 and 181 5, over the sands of Brandenburg and Hanover, at the utmost speed of three or four miles an hour (accidents excluded), or even in the central provinces of France, will well appreciate the difference. These things are an index, among so many others, of the vast changes which half-a-century has produced in all the conditions of human life on the earth — beneficial, I willingly believe, in their totality and ultimate issue, yet involving some present drawbacks, and many mighty and unseen contingencies in the future. The ocean telegraph and the steam-engine by land and sea place Man in a new relation to the globe he inhabits ; and connect the different races of mankind under con- ditions pregnant of change, whatever be its nature or import to human welfare. My first foreign travel — a voyage to Iceland in 18 10, and a residence of four months in that extraordinary island — had at that time much of adventure as well as novelty about it, according well with the temperament of mind I have described. Various difficulties and pri- vations, now partially removed, beset the Icelandic traveller in those days ; but the alacrity of youth, and great interest in the objects of pursuit, carried me 30 Recollections of through them ; without a moment of ill-health to frus- trate these objects, or mar the pleasure and profit of the expedition. Sir G. Mackenzie and Dr. Bright were my companions in this voyage. We saw much more of the island than had been done by any preceding visitors, and from our protracted stay there, more of its inhabi- tants, I believe, than most of those who have since followed us. This stay indeed had well-nigh been lengthened from four to fourteen months ; the vessel on which we calculated for our return having been disabled at sea, and never reaching the island. After long and anxious expectation, with a shipless sea before us, the days becoming rapidly shorter, and every resource of food and clothing more scanty, we eventually found means of escape in a small brig, the only other vessel which visited Iceland that autumn ; and landed in the Orkneys, after a fortnight's stormy passage, and a narrow escape of shipwreck at the entrance of Hoy Sound. Our arrival relieved much family anxiety, caused by the return of the disabled vessel without us. The method of my narrative, especially as regards the records of travel, has so little concern with dates that I may well pass over per saltum a period of sixty-one years, and speak of a second visit to Iceland, but a few months ago, accompanied by my second Son. Touch- ing at the Faroe Isles and Berufiord, we reached Rey- kiavik on August 22 — a time too late for much travel, yet allowing him an expedition to the Geysers, while I satisfied myself with shorter and less laborious excur r sions. Irrespectively of the strange and striking aspects Past Life. 31 of nature in Iceland, this singular association of the latest with the earliest of * my many voyages was deeply inte- resting to me, in its sudden revival of old memories, and the comparison, as far as such was possible, of juvenile impressions with those, — matured I would fain say, rather than enfeebled, by a long intervening life. Of personal recollections there were none. The generation of those from whom I had received a kind hospitality on my first visit to Iceland had passed away, and the yet greater warmth and kindness of my present reception came from their children or grandchildren. It was strongly testified at a public banquet of the Althing or Parliament of Iceland, then closing its biennial session ; and at other dinners given me by the Governor and Bishop of the island. This feeling, evoked by the fact — a strange one even to myself — of my thus revisiting Iceland after the lapse of sixty-one years, was pleasantly augmented by the remembrance of my having brought vaccine virus into the island at the time of my first visit. In proportion to its population, no country suffered more severely from small-pox than Iceland when first invaded by this pestilence. The course of this voyage showed me parts of the island I had not before seen, especially the magnificent mountains, ice-fields, and glaciers of the eastern and southern coasts ; some of these Jokulls the scene of the most- recent volcanic eruptions. Various changes, still progressive, I had to note in the material condition of the people of Iceland, the result of more frequent intercourse with the continent of Europe. Some of 32 Recollections of these changes, and those especially which concern Rey- kiavik, I have thought it worth while briefly to mention in the subjoined note. Iceland, though more frequently visited than heretofore, is still out of the track of common travel. Its people is one well worthy of study.* But to return now to the date from which I have so widely digressed. In less than two years after my voyage to Iceland, having recently taken my degree in Edinburgh, I devoted a year and a half to a larger and more various scheme of travel, embracing almost all that was then accessible in Europe — Portugal, Spain, Sicily, the Ionian * The total island, larger in surface than Ireland, had a population some- what short of 50,000 when I was there in 1810. It has now been aug- mented to about 70,000. The capital, Reykiavik, has grown in greater proportion, from less than 1,000 to 2,000 inhabitants — an increase due to steam communication, a growing trade, the transference hither of the College of Bessastad, and other minor causes. The new houses, still of timber, are for the most part better constructed ; and whereas, in 1810, there was not a single garden, or vegetable of any kind growing in the place, there are few of the new dwellings which have not a plot of ground before them, garnished with potato-beds, turnips, or cabbages, and even, in two or three spots, a currant-bush or strawberry-plant, trying to put forth what may be called fruit. The nurture of flowers within doors has now become a matter of familiar interest. These changes, slight though they may seem, are of no small value to the comfort of the people of this solitary little capital. The restored Cathedral (in which I witnessed an impressive service of Ordination by the venerable Bishop Pieterson ), the new College, and the Governor's house, grown out of the old prison, may be called the public buildings of the place. I recognised and visited several of the houses I had formerly known ;— among others that of Bishop Vidalin, now inhabited by my excellent friend Dr. Hyaltalin— a child of three years old when I slept in his father's church on the shores of the Hual-fiord. The sittings of the Althing are held in the great room of the College. We were present at the last of the session, to which the Governor came in form, closing a discussion of two hours, which, though involving some important points of constitu- tional reform, was conducted with great decorum throughout. Past Life. 33 Isles, Greece, and some other parts of Turkey. In 18 14 I published a narrative of the Eastern portion of these travels, relating especially my several journeys in Albania and Thessaly, as the region least familiar to the tra- vellers of that time. Strangely enough, it continues to be so, even to those of our own day, though embracing numerous objects to which the classical traveller, whether poet or historian, might fondly cling. Again quitting England in 18 14, I passed a year in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, in attendance as physician on the Princess of Wales. This, with the exception of a short tour in France and Holland, a few weeks after the battle of Waterloo, was my last absence from England before settling as a physician in London. These early journeys I shall slightly sketch in the course of my narrative, as belonging to a time when travelling was a very different act from that which it has now become — Nature the same, everything else changed. But my life as a traveller was far from being closed at the time of my settling in London. During the more than half-century which has since elapsed, only two years occur — (and these devoted to Scotch and Irish excur- sions) — in which I have not passed two autumnal months in journey or voyage abroad — accomplishing greater dis- tances as nearer objects became exhausted, and finding compensation for growing age in the increased facilities of travel. In the series of these annual journeys, which seldom exceeded the time just mentioned, I have visited (and most of them repeatedly) every single capital of Europe — have made eight voyages to the United States D 34 Recollections of and Canada, travelling over more than 26,000 miles of the American continent — one voyage to Jamaica, and other West Indian Islands — have been four times in the East, visiting Constantinople, various parts of Asia Minor, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo — have made three tours in Algeria, two journeys in Russia, several in Sweden and Norway, repeated visits to Spain, Por- tugal, and Italy, a second visit to Iceland, voyages to the Canary Isles, Madeira, Dalmatia, &c, and other excursions which it would be tedious to enumerate. When first settling in London, I was menaced by the opinion, coming to me from friends, and not without justification from prior experience, that this scheme of annual travel would be injurious to me professionally. I have in no way found it so. Had I not been attached to my profession,, and- had it not happened that my practice lay chiefly among the classes who are absent from London in the autumn, the result might have been different. But my early resolution as to this matter of travel,. steadily persevered in,. has proved a gain to me through all succeeding life. I have come back each year refreshed in health of body and mind, and ready for the ten months of busy practice which lay before me. On the day, or even hour, of reaching home from long and distant journeys,. I have generally resumed my wonted professional work. The new methods of inter- communication since steam and electricity have held empire on the earth, often enabled me to make engage- ments for the very moment of my return. I recollect having found a patient waiting in my room when I came Past Life. 35 back from those mountain heights — not more than 200 miles from the frontiers of Persia — where the 10,000 Greeks uttered their joyous cry on the sudden sight of the Euxine.* The same thing once happened to me in returning from Egypt and Syria, when I found a car- riage waiting my arrival at London Bridge, to take me to a consultation in Sussex Square ; the communication in each case being made from points on my homeward journey. More than once, in returning from America, I have begun a round of visits from the Euston Station. I mention these trifling incidents chiefly as showing the facility that may be gained of taking up instantly an accustomed occupation, after a total abstraction from it by distance, change of scene, and all that concerns the wonted habits of life. And here I may further notice a certain pleasure I have derived from these sudden and strong contrasts — from including, for in- stance, St. Petersburg and Algeria in the same autumnal vacation — or a Sunday Lutheran service, with all its picturesque local adjuncts, at Leksand in Dalecarlia (a sight every traveller in Sweden should see), and a high solemnity in St. Peter's at Rome, exactly five weeks afterwards — or in coming to my arm-chair in Brook Street, a few weeks after I had been in the Hudson- * My friend, Mr. Grote, when recording this memorable march of the Ten Thousand, consulted with me as to the probable spot where this cry of OaAaTTo was first uttered, as he did also respecting the topography of Spacteria, when writing the story of the Peloponnesian war. While aid- ing him with the local knowledge I possessed, I was deeply struck with the minute and exact research he had himself already given to these points, as to every other in his great work. i> 2 **» 36 Recollections of J3ay factories on the Upper Ottawa, visiting beaver-dams, and shooting rapids with Indians in their bark canoes — or, again, in a rapid passage, six years ago, from the: pine-forests of the Glommen and Drammen valleys in Norway, to the vine-covered banks of the Douro and Mondego in Portugal. A later and stranger, though not so instant a contrast, was that between the tropical scenery of Jamaica, as I saw it in 1870, and the rude Arctic region of Iceland, where I was travelling but a few months ago. I might draw upon my memory for others of these sudden changes of scene, which, though attractive to myself, would probably be so to few besides. Nor would many feel the pleasure I have found in the very uncertainty of my manner of travel — in starting fre- quently without any defined .scheme of route, and still more frequently changing in its progress the route I had originally designed. Such changes were made neces- sary by the state of Europe -during my early voyages. Though in some degree modified by increasing age,. they have been more or less habitual to me ever since. One cause of this desultory mode of travelling has been, that until of late years I have generally set out alone, trusting for companionship to the chances my route might afford. Whether wise or not in itself — and I do not seek to vindicate it — this practice has happily had no ill result. Some of these casualties of com- panionship I count among the more agreeable incidents of life. Often, however, it has happened to me to be alone, in places where solitude was rendered somewhat Past Life. 37 severe by the hardships or hazards of the road, and by the absence of all aid, were this required. At such times, and even in the more common case of long even- ings at European city hotels, I have ever found great advantage in some occupation, embracing subjects and scenes wholly alien to those around me. The articles,, chiefly scientific in kind, which during many successive years I contributed to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews — one in the autumn of each year — served me here in admirable stead. I chose my subject before departure (generally one familiar from previous study) — read the work or works to be reviewed- — methodised fairly the matter in hand, and wrote the articles at such times and occasions of my journey as accident or mood of mind might suggest; using the sea-voyage, which often came at the end of my yearly travel, to put together the several scraps written on the road, and filling up after my return any gaps left by this desultory method of composition. Such breach of continuity in writing is not without its advantages. Separate parts' are often moulded together afterwards better than can be done by continuous composition. And, in revision, the wise maxim of Boileau, ' Ajoutez quelquefois et souvent effacez,' applies to prose as well as to poetry ; even in those matters of pure science where human thought and speculation are dealing with the great mysteries of the Universe. Many whimsical differences of scene and subjectarose out of the practice just described. There was some- sort of pertinency in writing on the ' Physical History 38 Recollections of of Man ' when within 200 miles of Mount Ararat, and on Humboldt's 'Cosmos' at the foot of the peak of Tenerifife. But the incongruity became greater in pen- ning part of an article on Modern Chemistry under the shade of fig-trees at the Wells of Moses on the Red Sea — paragraphs of another on Meteors and Aerolites in an Arab hut between Medeah and Boghar in Algeria — and portions of a third on the life and character of Julius Csesar, when travelling on the Illinois prairies.* Such contrasts, not unacceptable in themselves, afforded me a substantial benefit, by diverting those moments of weariness, or even sadness, which occasionally occur to every one in remote and solitary travel. It is a benefit' which can only be duly appreciated by those who have tried this method. Books serve to the sarcTend ; but, according to my experience, less effectually. They do not so entirely disengage the mind from objects pressing closely upon the senses from without. Such separation for a time from the outer world, though little noted from its familiarity, is in itself one of the most inte- resting facts in mental physiology. Among the articles thus written, I would single out one as having given me peculiar pleasure in its com- position. This was upon the Mediterranean Sea ; suc- ceeding to another of which the Atlantic had been the subject. I had ever felt a deep interest in this won- derful inland Sea, as well from its physical features * To this article, published afterwards in a volume with others, I owe the gift I received from the Emperor Napoleon III. of the magnificent folio print of his Histoire de Jules Cesar. 4 Past Life. 39 (among which may be counted four active volcanoes), as from the records its shores afford of all the most signal events of ancient and modern empire. My voyages upon it, during a period of sixty years, have been very numerous ; enabling me to say, that there is scarcely a single one among the many islands in this vast sea-basin which I have not either seen or set foot upon. I never visit Gibraltar without fresh admiration of that magnifi- cent strait, which forms the sole ingress from the ocean to these inner seas. The Calpe and Abyla of this passage might well be fabled as the laborum Herculis met