LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF THE REVEREND 
 
 ADAM SEDGWICK 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
Hontion: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 
 
 AVE MARIA LANE. 
 
 : DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO. 
 : F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
 
ADAM SEDGWICK, XET. 47. 
 
 From a portrait painted by Thomas Phillips, R.A. 1832, in the 
 possession of John Henry Gurney, Jr. Esq. 
 
 Frontispiece to Vol. I. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE REVEREND 
 
 ADAM SEDGWICK, 
 
 LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., 
 FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 PREBENDARY OF NORWICH, 
 WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY, 18181873. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN WILLIS CLARK, M.A. F.S.A. 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 MUSEUM OF ZOOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, 
 
 AND 
 
 THOMAS M C KENNY HUGHES, 
 
 M.A. TRIN. COLL. F.R.S. F.S.A. F.G.S. 
 
 PROFESSORIAL FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE, 
 WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1890 
 
 \The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved. ,] 
 
 LiliKA,-. 
 I1N1VEKSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
TO 
 
 HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN 
 
 THIS RECORD 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF ONE 
 FOR WHOM 
 
 H.R.H. THE PRINCE CONSORT 
 
 HAD THE GREATEST ESTEEM 
 
 IS 
 
 BY HER MAJESTY'S GRACIOUS PERMISSION 
 RESPE CT FULLY DEDICA TED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE cause of the delay in the publication of 
 Sedgwick's Life and Letters demands a short 
 explanation. Soon after his death, in January, 1873, 
 Professor Hughes, his successor in the Woodwardian 
 Chair, undertook to become his biographer. No man 
 was better qualified, by geological knowledge, and by 
 affectionate regard for Sedgwick, to perform the task 
 adequately ; and, had he been able to command 
 sufficient leisure, he would doubtless have produced 
 a very admirable piece of work. He carefully studied 
 the materials placed in his hands, and made consi- 
 derable progress with different portions. But, as time 
 went on, and the duties of his Professorship increased, 
 he found himself, year after year, less able to cope 
 with the difficulties of a task which demanded a long 
 and patient research. It became gradually obvious 
 that if the book was to be written at all, either it must 
 be put into the hands of some one else, or Professor 
 Hughes must obtain assistance. In 1885 Miss Sedg- 
 wick applied to me ; but, as I was at that time fully 
 occupied with my edition of Professor Willis' Archi- 
 tectural History of the University and Colleges, I was 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 year 1832 until his death, Mr Romilly wrote down an 
 account, more or less minute, of each day, the names 
 of those whom he met, and often the subject of their 
 conversation. Unfortunately he does not say much 
 about what was going on in the University, so that the 
 Diary has a personal, rather than a public, interest. 
 But, it is an invaluable record of what Sedgwick was 
 about ; for he never fails to record his movements, 
 his employments, and his almost daily visits to him- 
 self. 
 
 Further, my best thanks are due to Dr Robinson, 
 Master of S. Catharine's College, for writing a chapter 
 on Sedgwick's life at Norwich ; and to my friend 
 Dr Jackson, Fellow of Trinity College, for revising 
 and correcting the proof-sheets. 
 
 In conclusion, I have to thank the Syndics of the 
 University Press for their liberality in enriching the 
 work with numerous illustrations ; and the staff of the 
 Press for much kindness to myself personally during 
 its progress. 
 
 JOHN WILLIS CLARK. 
 
 SCROOPE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 26 May, 1890. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introduction. Sedgwick's birth-place. Geographical position of Dent. Descrip- 
 tion of it at the beginning of this century. Ancient manners and customs. 
 Spelling of the name Sedgwick. Origin and history of the family. Imme- 
 diate ancestors of Adam Sedgwick. His brothers and sisters. His own 
 account of his father. ........ pp. i 44. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1785-1804.) 
 
 Birth of Adam Sedgwick. Childhood and boyhood at Dent. Love of his native 
 Dale. His sister Isabella. Goes to school at Sedbergh. His master and 
 schoolfellows. Selection of a College at Cambridge. Reads mathematics 
 with Mr Dawson. Account of him. .... pp. 45 70. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (18041810.) 
 
 Begins residence at Trinity College, Cambridge (1804). The Rev. T. Jones. 
 Christmas at Whittlesea. College Examination (1805). Summer at Dent. 
 Fever. Life and friends at Cambridge (1806). Preparation for degree 
 (1807). System of Acts and Opponencies. Sedgwick's first Act. Univer- 
 sity election for M.P. His Father's account of the Yorkshire election. 
 Scholarship at Trinity College. Blindness of his Father. Senate-House 
 Examination (1808). Revisits Dent. Reading party at Ditton. Classical 
 work (1809). Fellowship (1810). . . . . . pp. 71 100. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (18101818.) 
 
 Work with pupils. Reading for ordination (1810). Visit to London. Society 
 at Cambridge. Contested election for Chancellor and M.P. for University. 
 Installation of Chancellor. Reading party at Bury St Edmunds. Christmas 
 at Dent (1811). Winter visit to Lakes. Visit to London. Petition against 
 Roman Catholic claims. Reading party at Lowestoft. Appointed sub- 
 lecturer at Trinity College. Second petition against Roman Catholics (1812). 
 Serious illness. Summer at Dent (1813). Severe frost. Visit of Marshal 
 Blucher. Summer at Dent. Excursion in Yorkshire (1814). Projected 
 tour on the continent. Parish's lectures. Cambridge fever. Goes home to 
 Dent. News of Waterloo. Assistant tutorship at Trinity College (1815). 
 Tour on continent (1816). Ordination. Summer at Dent. Hard work in 
 Michaelmas Term (1817). Elected Woodwardian Professor of Geology 
 (1818) pp. 101 165. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Sketch of the life and works of Dr John Woodward. His testamentary 
 provisions. Arrival of his cabinets. A room constructed for their 
 reception. Sedgwick's predecessors: Conyers Middleton; Charles Mason; 
 John Michell; Samuel Ogden; Thomas Green; John Hailstone. Orders 
 and regulations sanctioned in 1818. . . . . pp. 166 198. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (18181822.) 
 
 Excursion to Derbyshire and Staffordshire (1818). First course of Lectures. Visit 
 to Isle of Wight with Henslow. Foundation of Cambridge Philosophical 
 Society. Visit to Suffolk coast. Commencement festivities. Geological 
 tour in Devon and Cornwall. Henslow's work in the Isle of Man (1819). 
 Geological tour in Somerset and Dorset. Acquaintance with Rev. W. D. 
 Conybeare. Death of his mother (1820). Visit to the Isle of Wight. 
 Geological tour in Yorkshire and Durham (1821). Controversy respecting 
 Professorship of Mineralogy (1822 1824). ... pp. 199 245. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (18221827.) 
 
 Geological exploration of the Lake District (18221824). Contested election for 
 University (1822). Death of his sister Isabella (1823). Geological papers. 
 Work in the Woodwardian Museum (18231827). Lecture to ladies. Visit 
 to Edinburgh with Whewell (1824). Visit to Sussex with Dr Fitton (1825). 
 Contested election for University. Visit to Paris with Whewell (1826). 
 Elected Vice President of Geological Society. Contested election for Univer- 
 sity (1827). Social life at Cambridge. Hyde Hall. Review of Sedgwick's 
 Geological work (18181827) pp. 246 297. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 (18271831.) 
 
 The Geological Society. First acquaintance with Murchison. Tour with him in 
 Scotland. Office of Senior Proctor (1827). Joint papers with Murchison. 
 Summer in Cornwall. Dolcoath Mine. Visits Conybeare in South Wales 
 (1828). Sedgwick President of Geological Society. Divinity Act. Mr 
 Cavendish elected University representative. Summer in Germany and the 
 Tyrol with Murchison. Joint paper on the eastern Alps (1829). Address to 
 Geological Society. Summer in Northumberland. Contested election for 
 President of Royal Society (1830). Addresses to Geological Society 
 (1831) pp. 298 371. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 (18311834.) 
 
 The Reform Bill. Contested election for University. Geological papers. Tour 
 in Wales with Charles Darwin (1831). Declines the living of East Farleigh. 
 Mrs Somerville's visit to Cambridge. British Association at Oxford. Summer 
 and Autumn in Wales. President of Cambridge Philosophical Society. 
 Discourse on the Studies of the University (1832). British Association at 
 Cambridge. The Beverley Controversy (1833). Dislocates right wrist. 
 Petition against Tests. British Association at Edinburgh. Made Prebendary 
 of Norwich (1834) pp. 372437- 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 (18351840.) 
 
 Cambridge occupations. Election at Dent. Presentation at Court. British 
 Association at Dublin. Skeleton of Irish Elk. Visit of Agassiz to Cam- 
 bridge (1835). Lectures and Society at Norwich. Geological tour in 
 Devonshire with Murchison. Death of Mr Simeon (1836). Ill health. 
 Paper on Geology of Devonshire. Criticism of Babbage. Death of Bishop 
 Bathurst. Foundation of Cowgill Chapel. Geology in Devonshire. British 
 Association at Liverpool. Inundation of the Workington Colliery (1837). 
 Explorations at Bartlow. Devonian Paper. Queen's Coronation. British 
 Association at Newcastle. Open-air Lecture ( 1 838). The Silurian System 
 published. Foreign tour with Murchison (1839). Ill health. Cheltenham. 
 Paper to Geological Society (1840) pp. 438 528. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Geological work accomplished between 1828 and 1838. The Devonian 
 System pp. 529539. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. SEDGWICK'S BIRTH-PLACE. GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION 
 OF DENT. DESCRIPTION OF IT AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS 
 CENTURY. ANCIENT MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. SPELLING OF 
 THE NAME SEDGWICK. ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 
 IMMEDIATE ANCESTORS OF ADAM SEDGWICK. His BROTHERS 
 
 AND SISTERS. HlS OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS FATHER. 
 
 IT is proposed, in the following pages, to give some account 
 of the life and labours of Adam Sedgwick. To the world he 
 is best known as Woodwardian Professor in the University of 
 Cambridge from 1818 to 1873, and as one of the founders of 
 modern geology. But, eminent as he was in the subject of 
 his choice, it would be a great mistake to suppose that he 
 was a geologist and nothing more. Geology, it is true, was 
 rarely absent from his thoughts. So long as his health 
 permitted, he devoted himself, with untiring energy, to the 
 investigation of some of its least-known formations ; to the 
 establishment of fixed principles for its study ; to the defence 
 of it against bigotry and ignorance ; to the instruction of 
 students; and to the extension of the Museum connected with 
 his chair. But, on the other hand, his mind was far too active, 
 his nature too warmly sympathetic, to suffer him to be content 
 with the claims of a single science, however attractive. He 
 took a keen interest in all that was going forward, whether in 
 his own University, or in the world at large. In his younger 
 S. I. I 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 days he was an ardent politician on the Liberal side, and 
 played a prominent part in the reforms, or attempts at 
 reforms, which distinguished that period of academic history; 
 and in later years, as a member of the Royal Commission of 
 1850, he was enabled to exercise a considerable influence on 
 the legislative changes afterwards introduced. To the end of 
 his life he watched public affairs, both at home and abroad, 
 with unabated zeal ; and his letters will show how heartily he 
 rejoiced over a national triumph, how bitterly he mourned a 
 national disaster. Nor did he forget that there were other 
 fields of research besides his own. He was fond of meta- 
 physical and moral speculations, as we shall see when we come 
 to speak of his Discourse on the Studies of the University of 
 Cambridge ; and no less an authority than Dr Whewell has 
 admitted that had not Sedgwick's life " been absorbed in 
 struggling with many of the most difficult problems of a 
 difficult science," he would have been his own "fellow-labourer 
 or master " in the work which he was then publishing, The 
 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences^. History too especially 
 the history of his own country was one of his favourite 
 pursuits ; he took a genuine interest in archaeology and 
 architecture, though he had no leisure to study either 
 thoroughly ; and, from his earliest years to extreme old age, 
 no visits gave him so much pleasure as those which he paid 
 to English Cathedrals. 
 
 Again besides the subjects here indicated he was an 
 omnivorous reader of general literature. Nothing came amiss 
 to him. Travels, biography, novels, poetry, even contro- 
 versial theology, were all at least looked into. Like most 
 men born in the last century, when light reading was 
 comparatively unknown, and the multiplicity of modern 
 books had not yet come into being, he delighted chiefly in 
 the masterpieces of our older literature. He revelled in 
 Chaucer and Shakespeare ; he could quote long passages 
 
 1 Letter to Rev. A. Sedgwick, prefixed to The Philosophy of the Inductive 
 Sciences, by the Rev. W. Whewell, ed. 1840. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 from Milton, Cowley, and Dryden ; and he was never tired of 
 reading and re-reading, till he must have known them almost 
 by heart, the novels of Walter Scott, with which, as he often 
 said, "he had been driven half-mad as a young man." The 
 amount of information acquired through this incessant miscel- 
 laneous reading, taken together with a rich natural humour, 
 and a copious flow of language and illustration, lent a 
 singular charm to his conversation. Few have ever told a story 
 so vividly as he did, or with such a marvellous combination 
 of the dramatic, the humorous, and the pathetic. He knew 
 how to invest incidents which, had they been told by anybody 
 else, would have seemed common-place, with the most thrill- 
 ing interest. He placed himself in the circumstances of those 
 whose adventures he was relating ; he thought as they did, 
 felt as they did ; and whether he was speaking of an old 
 woman buried in a snow-drift, or a dog guarding a bag of 
 stones, his hearers were fascinated by the truth of the picture, 
 and carried away by the rare power of the narrator. One or 
 two of his most celebrated stories will find a place in this 
 narrative ; but it is to be feared that without his flashing eye, 
 and the passionate earnestness of his voice, they will hardly 
 justify their celebrity. 
 
 And herein lies the principal difficulty with which 
 Sedgwick's biographer is confronted. He may well despair 
 of being able to set before a reader, who never saw him, 
 possibly never even heard of him, his remarkable personality. 
 Engravings may give a fairly accurate idea of his features and 
 his figure ; criticism may determine the exact value of his 
 contributions to science ; his occupations from day to day 
 may be accurately discovered ; and yet the reader may still 
 be left in ignorance of Sedgwick as a man. Some effort must 
 be made though the colours may be faint, and the brush 
 unsteady to make posterity realise his rare originality of 
 character, which commanded the admiration of all who knew 
 him, from the Queen to the humblest of her subjects; his 
 absolute sincerity, which Mr Justice Maule summed up in the 
 
 I 2 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 forcible remark : " Sedgwick is one of those men who, if they 
 ceased to believe in God, would tell you so directly;" his 
 kindly sympathy with the pursuits, the sorrows, and the joys 
 of others ; his unselfishness ; his boundless liberality ; his 
 enthusiasm for all that was good and noble ; his hatred of 
 wrong-doing and oppression in whatever form they presented 
 themselves ; his conscientiousness in the discharge of duties 
 which might at first sight appear so incompatible as a 
 Professorial Chair at Cambridge, and a Prebendal Stall 
 at Norwich ; and lastly, the firmness of his belief in a 
 personal Redeemer, which animated him through the whole 
 of his active life, and cheered him in the loneliness of his 
 declining years. Nor is this all. His humour when he 
 told a story has been already alluded to. But it was not 
 reserved for those special narratives which became insepar- 
 ably connected with his name ; it manifested itself in all his 
 occupations, even the most serious. His animal spirits rarely 
 flagged ; he was the life and soul of every company in which 
 he found himself, whether it were a knot of children at a 
 Christmas party, or a meeting of their seniors convened for 
 important business. If he were present the gravest unbent 
 their brows the most serious forgot their solemnity. It was 
 impossible to resist the infection of that boisterous laugh ; 
 that cheerful geniality ; that persistence in looking at the 
 bright side of things ; in a word that union of all that was 
 cordial and generous and friendly which gained for him the 
 appropriate name of " Robin Goodfellow 1 ." 
 
 Fortunately he dearly loved writing letters not short 
 letters after the fashion of the present day, but long compo- 
 sitions in which he wrote as he talked, with that combination 
 of playfulness and seriousness which made his conversation 
 
 1 A paper was circulated at the Installation of the Prince Consort in 1847, 
 entitled : Sporting Intelligence. University Sweepstakes, Cambridge. Several of the 
 most prominent members of the University were supposed to be running horses, 
 the names of which were intended to hit off their obvious characteristics. We find 
 Dr Whe well's Rough Diamond; Prof. Sedgwick's Robin Goodfellow; Mr W. H. 
 Thompson's A-don-is; Dr Archdall's Mrs Gamp, etc. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 so delightful. It will be remarked that the best of these 
 letters are usually those addressed to ladies. Sedgwick 
 compensated himself for the want of children of his own 
 by adopting those of his intimate friends ; and he probably 
 selected the daughters instead of the sons as his correspon- 
 dents, because he felt that when addressing them he could 
 find unreserved expression for feelings which had no other 
 outlet and which, had his circumstances been different, 
 would have made him the most tender of husbands, and the 
 most considerate of fathers. It is much to be regretted that 
 some of the most interesting of these letters are known to 
 have been destroyed, while others cannot now be traced. 
 Enough, however, survive to show a side of Sedgwick's 
 character, the existence of which, without them, might have 
 been wholly unsuspected ; and, it may be added, to make us 
 regret more bitterly the loss of the remainder. 
 
 Another of Sedgwick's most marked characteristics was his 
 attachment to his birth-place, Dent in Yorkshire. Most men 
 who go out into the world from a distant corner of England, 
 and make themselves famous in new surroundings, either forget 
 their birth-place altogether, or revisit it only at rare intervals. 
 Sedgwick, on the contrary, did not merely feel affection for 
 the place where he had spent the first nineteen years of his 
 life, but he regarded it as his home, from which he might be 
 separated for the greater part of each year, but which he was 
 bound to revisit at the first opportunity. " For more than 
 three-score years" he wrote in 1868, "Cambridge has been 
 my honoured resting-place, and here God has given me a 
 life-long task amidst a succession of intellectual friends. For 
 Trinity College, ever since I passed under its great portal, for 
 the first time, in the autumn of 1804, I have felt a deep and 
 grateful sentiment of filial regard. But, spite of a strong and 
 enduring regard for the University and the College, whenever 
 I have revisited the hills and dales of my native country, and 
 heard the cheerful greetings of my old friends and countrymen, 
 I have felt a new swell of emotion, and said to myself, 'Here 
 
SEDGWICK'S BIRTH-PLACE. 
 
 is the land of my birth ; this was the home of my boyhood, 
 and is still the home of my heart 1 '." Nor is it a mere fancy 
 which traces a connection between his rugged nature and 
 the crags of that wild mountain-valley. To the end of his 
 days he was at heart a Yorkshire Dalesman. 
 
 On this account it will be a peculiarly interesting task to 
 dwell at some length on the natural features of Sedgwick's 
 birth-dale, and the old-world manners of its inhabitants, as 
 he remembered them. And here, fortunately, he can speak 
 for himself; for, in the supplement and appendices to his 
 Memorial by the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel, he amused 
 himself by setting down, for the information of his fellow 
 dalesmen, not only his own personal recollections, but the 
 traditions which he had gathered from men who were old 
 when he was himself a boy. 
 
 The dale of Dent is situated in the westernmost extremity 
 of Yorkshire a corner of the county which runs forward, 
 wedge-like, into Westmoreland, by which it is bounded on 
 the west and north. The dale descends, as does the neigh- 
 bouring Garsdale, from the lofty mountain-range called " the 
 backbone of England," towards what Sedgwick terms the 
 "great basin or central depression," in the upper part of which 
 stands the town of Sedbergh. Five distinct valleys are 
 there united. Down four of them the waters descend into 
 the central basin ; down the fifth they make their final escape. 
 The position of these valleys will be better understood from 
 the accompanying map than from any elaborate description. 
 The Rawthey, a stream which rises in the fells near Kirkby 
 Stephen, is joined, at a short distance above Sedbergh, by 
 the Clough, or Garsdale-beck, which drains Garsdale ; and, 
 at an almost equal distance below it, by the Dee, which 
 drains the dale of Dent. The united streams, still called 
 the Rawthey, fall into the Lune at about two miles below 
 
 1 A Memorial by the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel, with a preface and appendix, 
 on the climate, history, and dialects of Dent. By Adam Sedgwick, LL.D. Svo. 
 Cambridge, 1868. Privately printed, p. vi. 
 

 MAP OF THE DALE OF D 
 
 To face page 6, Vol. I. 
 
 1 
 
jfitoWM 
 
 
 AND SURROUNDING COUNTRY. 
 

THE DALE OF DENT. 
 
 Sedbergh. From the point of junction the name Rawthey 
 disappears, and it is the Lime which flows past Kirkby 
 Lonsdale into Morecambe Bay. The whole district is 
 remarkably picturesque; but it is from the hills on the 
 right bank of the Lune, just opposite to its junction with the 
 Rawthey, that the finest views of the five valleys can be 
 obtained. Those who have personally enjoyed them can best 
 sympathise with Sedgwick's enthusiasm, when he exhorts his 
 " younger countrymen and countrywomen " to scale these 
 heights, and then to " warm their hearts by gazing over this 
 cluster of noble dales, among which Providence placed the 
 land of their fathers, and the home of their childhood 1 ." 
 
 At its origin the dale of Dent is a mere gorge, leading to 
 a mountain-pass ; and, in fact, the whole upper portion, for a 
 distance of between five and six miles (all of which is included 
 in the hamlet of Kirthwaite) is narrow and contracted, and 
 the boundary-hills are bare and rugged. The climate of this 
 part of the dale is much more severe than that of the lower 
 part ; the rainfall is greater ; and " it is sometimes in the winter 
 season much obstructed by ice and snow, when the roads in 
 the lower part of the valley are quite free 2 ." It was in this 
 hamlet that a destructive avalanche or, as they would have 
 said in Dent, a 'gill-brack' took place in January, 1752, by 
 which seven persons lost their lives 3 . As a traveller descends 
 the dale, the ruggedness gradually disappears, the hills 
 become less precipitous and more cultivated, and when 
 the village of Dent, or, as the dalesmen call it, Dent's Town, 
 is reached, they are green to their summits, and their sides 
 are dotted with homesteads, divided, sometimes by stone 
 walls, but more frequently by rows of trees, into plots of 
 
 1 Supplement to the Memorial of the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel, with an 
 appendix, etc., printed in 1868. By Rev. Adam Sedgwick, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 Printed for private circulation only. 8vo. Cambridge, 1870. p. 48, note. 
 
 2 Memorial, p. 4. 
 
 3 Ibid. pp. 36 50, where a letter written by one of the survivors to his brother 
 is printed. This letter will also be found in the Philosophical Magazine for 1866, 
 xxxi. 80; and in the Cambridge Chronicle, 9 December, 1865. 
 
8 SEDGWICK^S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 pasturage. Here the dale is nearly a mile in width ; and, at 
 a short distance from the village, it is joined by a short 
 subsidiary dale, called Deepdale. This wider part of the 
 dale is about two miles long. Below it, through nearly the 
 whole of the four miles which have to be traversed before 
 Sedbergh is reached, the boundary-hills again converge, and 
 the river-channel is deep and narrow, so that "in ancient 
 days, when the hill-sides were covered with dense forests, 
 Dent must have been more retired from sight, and perhaps 
 more difficult of access, than any of the other valleys within 
 the parish of Sedbergh 1 ." 
 
 At the present day, Dent is a small picturesque village, 
 with a single paved street; but in 1801, when the first census 
 was taken, its population was considerably larger than that 
 of Sedbergh 2 . Various causes have contributed to this decay, 
 as Sedgwick's narrative will show ; and, as he mournfully 
 admitted, " there is no sign of hope that Dent may hereafter 
 regain its lost position." His reminiscences have therefore 
 an historical importance quite independent of his own 
 biography. 
 
 " Dent was once a land of statesmen, that is, of a rural and 
 pastoral yeomanry, each of whom lived on his own paternal 
 glebe. The estates were small ; but each of them gave a right 
 to large tracts of mountain pasturage ; and each statesman had 
 his flock and herd. A rented farm was once a rare exception 
 to the general rule; but now (1868) nearly the whole dale, 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 48. 
 
 2 Sedgwick makes the following remarks on the diminished population of 
 Dent in the Supplement (1870), p. 24, " In the previous pamphlet there are 
 several mournful notices of the gradual decay in the prosperity of Dent, and of 
 the diminution in its population. To obtain a numerical test of this fact, during 
 my short visit to Dent in the summer of 1 868 I examined the Parish Register of 
 Baptisms and Burials. Counting all the Baptisms from 1 747 to 1 766 inclusive, I 
 found that they amounted to 985 : but counting the Baptisms from 1847 to 1866 
 inclusive they amounted only to 529. In like manner, taking the corresponding 
 periods in the two centuries, I found that the Burials amounted to 671 in the last 
 century ; and in the present century to 383. In both these periods the Registers 
 appear to have been very carefully kept : and the numbers seem to prove even a 
 greater diminution in the population than I had stated." 
 
MANNERS OF THE STATESMEN. 
 
 from end to end, is in the occupation of farmers with very 
 small capital, and living at a high rack-rent 1 ." 
 
 The statesmen, it must be understood, were the aristocracy 
 of the dale ; they stood somewhat aloof from their fellow- 
 dalesmen, and affected a difference in thoughts, manners, 
 and dress. It used to be said of a lad who was leaving his 
 father's home : "He's a deftly farrand lad, and he'll du weel, 
 for he's weel come, fra staetsmen rf baith sides" i.e. "He is a 
 well-mannered lad, and. he will prosper, for he is well 
 descended, from statesmen on both sides 2 ." But, though the. 
 statesmen might be somewhat exclusive, " they never passed 
 a neighbour, or even a stranger, without some homely words 
 of kind greeting. To their Pastor, and to the Master of the 
 grammar-school, they did not grudge any known address of 
 courtesy ; but among themselves the salutations were at once 
 simple, frank, and kind ; and they used only the Christian 
 name to a Dalesman, no matter what his condition in life. 
 To have used a more formal address would have been to 
 treat him as a stranger, and unkindly to thrust him out from 
 the Brotherhood of the Dales. And were they not right in 
 this ? What name is so kind and loving as the dear Christian 
 name, excepting the still dearer and more revered names of 
 Father or Mother ? They are the names by which we speak 
 to our brother or sister, or friend who is near our hearts. 
 
 "In former times I never returned to Dent without hearing 
 my Christian name uttered with cheerful face and rung with 
 merry voice by all the upgrown persons whom I encountered 
 on the highway. But nearly all my old friends are gone; 
 and, to my deep sorrow, I no longer hear my Christian name, 
 but am welcomed by words that pronounce me to be a 
 stranger, and no longer a brother living in the hearts of the 
 Dalesmen. 
 
 " I will explain my meaning by two recent examples, 
 which were exceptions to the above remark ; but they will, 
 I trust, prove that I am rightly interpreting the ancient 
 
 1 Memorial^ p. vii. 2 Memorial, p. 65, note. 
 
io SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 manners and feelings of my countrymen. There was an 
 aged soldier in Dent, poverty-stricken and desolate, having 
 neither wife nor daughter to cheer him. Several times I 
 gave him a trifle by way of remembrance when I visited 
 Dent ; and for a while he had from me a small weekly 
 allowance for tobacco. When in extreme old age he was 
 removed to the Union Workhouse ; and he then requested 
 me to exchange the tobacco for a small daily glass of grog. 
 In the discipline of his regiment he had learned a more smart 
 and formal address than was usual in the Dales, but all this 
 wore away when he tried to express his thanks to me, 
 whenever I called on him. I was then sure to hear my 
 Christian name sounded from his aged lips. The last time I 
 saw him he was above ninety years of age and bedridden, yet 
 apparently happy and in good hope ; and when the master of 
 the Union made him understand that a gentleman had called 
 to see him, he said, ' Is it Adam ? ' I did not remain long with 
 him ; and as I left him he pressed my hand, and said : ' Oh, 
 Adam, it is good of you to come and see me here ! ' 
 
 " The other case tells the same truth that the Christian 
 name was the name of loving memory but it is told in a 
 merrier tone. There were in my childhood two well-known, 
 cheerful-mannered women living in Dent a mother and 
 daughter employed in the carrying trade 1 old Peggy Beckett, 
 and young Peggy Beckett. Young Peggy won my child's 
 heart by playing with me, and helping me to leap over the 
 tombstones in the church-yard. But she married, and dis- 
 appeared from Dent ; and many years, I think not less than 
 seventy, passed away before, in extreme old age, she returned, 
 to end her days at her son's cottage. The first time I found 
 
 1 At the time of which Sedgwick is speaking all external produce came into 
 Dent, by carriers from Hawes, Kendal, or Kirkby Lonsdale. Women were 
 carriers as well as men, and were indeed preferred, because they could match 
 draper's goods, and choose provisions, better. Mrs Beckett and her daughter 
 were carriers to Kendal, 16 miles distant from Dent. They used to leave Dent on 
 Friday, attend Kendal market on Saturday, and get back to Dent late on Saturday 
 night. 
 
MANNERS OF THE STATESMEN. u 
 
 my way to Dent, after her return, I went, along with some 
 young nieces, to call upon her. She received our party with 
 a bright and respectful cheerfulness ; but perhaps with more 
 formality than was usual in the Dale ; and she spoke to me 
 as a stranger. But when they told her who I was, her fine 
 old face lighted up. She looked earnestly at me for about 
 two seconds, and then said : ' Oh, Adam, it is lang sin* I 
 tought ye to loup off Battersby's trough ! " (Oh ! Adam, it is 
 long since I taught you to leap off Battersby's tombstone 1 ) ! 
 This address brought back to my memory a pleasant passage 
 in the life of my childhood ; and it proved that the young 
 Peggy Beckett of early years, by this use of my Christian 
 name, no longer thought me a stranger, but welcomed me 
 again as a brother of the Dale. 
 
 " Do not these two examples prove what I contend for ? 
 That the Christian name was not used as a word of thought- 
 less familiarity ; but as a word of confiding, brotherly, love 2 ." 
 
 " Many of the old statesmen in the higher parts of Kirth- 
 waite were numbered in the Society of Friends. Excellent 
 men they were, and well-informed in matters of common 
 life ; lovers of religious liberty ; of great practical benevolence, 
 and of pure moral conduct ; and they were among the 
 foremost in all good measures of rural administration 3 ." 
 
 " Though the population of the dale has diminished, I 
 believe, by more than one-third since the middle of last 
 century, yet the poor-rates are enormously increased. It was 
 
 1 Sedgwick adds the following note: " Battersby was an early Master of the 
 Chartered Grammar School, and had in his day the reputation of being a 
 "conjurer." A large and ugly monument had been erected to his memory near 
 the south-west angle of the new steeple ; and, being partly in ruins when the 
 builders began, some of its larger blocks of stone were placed in the new ground- 
 works. When this desecration was discovered, an old man came in terror to my 
 father, affirming that the steeple would never stand. My father partly allayed the 
 old man's fears, and told him it was foolish and wrong to think that a part of 
 God's house could not stand against the power of a dead conjurer. For a while 
 the old man was pacified, and seemed half ashamed of himself; but shortly 
 afterwards he returned with a blank, doubting face, and said : ' I's feard, Sir, 
 the bells when put in the new steeple 'ill be ringing when they sud'nt.' " 
 
 2 Supplement, pp. 44 47. 3 Memorial, p. xii. 
 
12 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 once a place of very active industry ; well known as a great 
 producer of wool, which was partly carded and manufactured 
 on the spot for home-use ; but better known for what were 
 then regarded as large imports of dressed wool and worsted, 
 and for its exports of stockings and gloves that were knit 
 by the inhabitants of the valley. The weekly transport of 
 the goods which kept this trade alive, was effected, first by 
 trains of pack-horses, and afterwards by small carts fitted for 
 mountain-work. 
 
 "Dent was then a land of rural opulence and glee. Children 
 were God's blessed gift to a household, and happy was the 
 man whose quiver was full of them. Each statesman's house 
 had its garden and its orchard, and other good signs of do- 
 mestic comfort. But alas, with rare exceptions, these goodly 
 tokens have now passed out of sight ; or are to be feebly 
 traced by some aged crab-tree, or the stump of an old plum- 
 tree, which marks the site of the ancient family orchard. 
 
 "The whole aspect of the village of Dent has been changed 
 within my memory, and some may perhaps think that it has 
 been changed for the better. But I regret the loss of some 
 old trees that covered its nakedness ; and most of all the two 
 ancient trees that adorned the church-yard, and were cut 
 down by hands which had no right to touch a twig of them. 
 I regret the loss of the grotesque and rude, but picturesque 
 old galleries, which once gave a character to the streets ; and 
 in some parts of them almost shut out the sight of the sky 
 from those who travelled along the pavement For rude as 
 were the galleries, they once formed a highway of communi- 
 cation to a dense and industrious rural population which lived 
 on flats or single floors. And the galleries that ran before 
 the successive doors, were at all seasons places of free air ; 
 and in the summer season were places of mirth and glee, and 
 active, happy industry. For there might be heard the buzz 
 of the spinning-wheel, and the hum and the songs of those 
 who were carrying on the labours of the day ; and the merry 
 jests and greetings sent down to those who were passing 
 
HOUSES AND GALLERIES. 
 
 through the streets. Some of the galleries were gone before 
 the days of my earliest memory, and all of them were 
 hastening to decay. Not a trace of them is now left. I 
 regret its old market-cross, and the stir and bustle of its 
 
 The street of Dent, looking east : from a water-colour drawing by Mr William Westall, taken 
 
 about 1820. 
 
 market-days. I regret its signboards dangling across the 
 streets ; which, though sometimes marking spots of boisterous 
 revelry, were at the same time the tokens of a rural 
 opulence 1 ." 
 
 Some traces of this peculiar feature of Dent were still in 
 
 1 Memorial, pp. vii ix. 
 
14 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 existence so late as 1820, when the water-colour drawings 
 were made from which our woodcuts are taken. Both 
 represent the main street of Dent. The first cut shows 
 one of the external flights of stairs which led up to the 
 galleries ; and from the walls on both sides of the street 
 project stone brackets that once supported similar structures. 
 In the second cut the opposite end of the gallery ap- 
 proached by the stairs of the former drawing occupies the 
 left corner of the picture ; and facing it is a conspicuous row 
 of brackets on which imagination can place another. 
 
 In the first year of King James the First the principal 
 land-holders of Dent obtained a royal charter for their 
 grammar-school, the endowment of which had been collected 
 by subscription. This school " has had a very healthy 
 influence upon the education and manners of the valley. 
 The leading statesmen's sons attended it, and acquired a 
 smattering of classical learning ; and if a statesman's younger 
 son, or the son of a cottager, were a lad of good promise, his 
 education was pushed forward into a higher course, and he 
 was trained for the Church. And many so trained, and 
 without any other collegiate education, did enter the Church, 
 and filled the retired curacies in the north of England. 
 
 " The necessities of the country soon led to an extension 
 of the course of teaching at the grammar-school. It had 
 large English classes, in which writing and arithmetic were 
 taught to young persons of both sexes ; and there were also 
 itinerant masters, of good repute among the northern dales, 
 who visited certain schools in a regular cycle, and were 
 chiefly employed in teaching writing, arithmetic in all its 
 branches, and the principles of surveying. 
 
 " Nor must I omit to state that at all the knitting-schools, 
 where the children first learnt the art many of them were 
 to follow through life, the Dames always taught the art of 
 reading 1 ." 
 
 " Trusting in the traditions of family history, we may 
 
 1 Memorial, p. 54. 
 
ED UCA TION, IND US TRIES. 
 
 affirm, that after the Reformation, and down towards the 
 concluding part of the last century, Dent was in the enjoy- 
 ment of happiness and prosperity; in a humble and rustic 
 form, it might be, but with a good base to rest upon the 
 intelligence and industry of its inhabitants. The statesmen 
 were long famous for their breed of horses. The farms were 
 
 The street of Dent, looking west: from a water-colour drawing by Mr William Westall, taken 
 
 about 1820. 
 
 providently managed ; and the valley was well known for its 
 exports of butter, which, from defect of ready transport, was 
 highly salted, and packed in firkins. The art of the cooper 
 became then of importance. Dent was supplied in abundance 
 with the materials and the workmen ; and the cooper's art 
 flourished in it for several generations, by works both for 
 home use and for export. 
 
16 SEDGWIGK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 "The management and economy of the good housewives 
 of our valley became notorious, and often was the subject of 
 some good-humoured jest on the part of the lazy lookers on. 
 Jests seldom bear repeating ; but I will repeat one which I 
 have heard in my boyhood. A clever lass in Dent can do 
 four things at a time, was said of old : 
 
 She knaws how to sing and knit, 
 And she knaws how to carry the kit, 
 While she drives her kye to pasture. 
 
 " Wool must have been a great staple produce of the valley, 
 from its earliest history. The greater part of it was exported ; 
 but some of it was retained for domestic use; then worked 
 into form by hand-cards of antique fashion (which, in my 
 childhood, I have seen in actual use) ; and then spun into a 
 very coarse and clumsy thread ; and so it supplied the 
 material for a kind of rude manufacture, that went, I think, 
 under the elegant name of Bump. 
 
 " But, as art advanced, our Dalesmen gradually became 
 familiar with the fine material prepared by the wool-comber ; 
 and, before the beginning of last century, Dent became 
 known for its manufacture and export of yarn-stockings of 
 the finest quality. Some of the more active and long-sighted 
 statesmen of the Dales, taking upon themselves the part of 
 middle-men between the manufacturers and the consumers, 
 used occasionally to mount their horses, and ride up to 
 London to deal personally with the merchants of Cheapside, 
 and to keep alive the current of rural industry. 
 
 " At a further stage in the industry of our countrymen, 
 worsted, that had been spun by machinery, came into common 
 use ; and the knit worsted-stockings were the great articles of 
 export from the Northern Dales. Such became the im- 
 portance of this export, about the middle of last century, that 
 Government Agents were placed at Kirkby Lonsdale, Kendal, 
 and Kirkby Stephen, during ' the seven years' war,' for the 
 express purpose of securing for the use of the English army 
 (then in service on the Continent), the worsted stockings knit 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE DALE. 17 
 
 by the hands of the Dalesmen ; and in this trade Dent had 
 an ample share. 
 
 " In the last century there was another source of industry 
 in Dent, which I must not pass entirely over I mean its 
 minerals and its coal-works. All the mountains of Dent, to 
 the east of Helm's Knot and Colm Scar, are composed of 
 nearly horizontal beds of limestone, sandstone, and flagstone ; 
 and of dark shale, here and there showing traces of coal. 
 And the whole series is surmounted by a coarse gritstone, 
 called the Millstone Grit. The limestone beds are arranged 
 in six groups ; of which the lowest, called the great Scar 
 Limestone, is several times thicker than all the other groups 
 put together. The top of it is seen just above the village of 
 Flintergill ; and its upper beds are finely exposed in the 
 river-course of Kirthwaite. Its lower beds are nowhere seen 
 in our valley ; but they are grandly exposed in Chapel-le- 
 Dale, where they rest upon the greenish slate-rocks. All the 
 limestone groups of Dent are separated by thick masses of 
 sandstone, flagstone, and shale ; and, as the top of the great 
 Scar Limestone is only seen near the river-course, the other 
 five groups are to be looked for on the mountain-sides. The 
 lowest of the five contains the black marble beds ; and under 
 the highest of the five, sometimes called the upper Scar 
 Limestone, is the only bed of coal that has been worked in 
 Dent for domestic use. The upper Scar Limestone is sur- 
 mounted by a bed of shale, which is capped by the lower 
 beds of the great group called Millstone Grit. This part of 
 the Millstone Grit forms the flat top of the hill called Crag, 
 and the top also of Ingleborough ; and over this grit (at 
 Great Colme, Whernside, etc.) is a shale with beds of coal 
 that is too poor (in the hills of Dent) for domestic use, but 
 which might, I think, be profitably employed in burning 
 lime. 
 
 "These facts may be seen by any one who will use his 
 senses ; and indeed it seems to have been generally known, 
 before the beginning of last century, that a profitable bed of 
 S. I. 2 
 
1 8 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 coal was often to be found under the upper Scar Limestone. 
 At what time the coal-beds in Dent were first opened I do 
 not know ; but it is said that they were first considered an 
 object of profit in Kirthwaite. Early, I believe, in the last 
 century a small statesman called Buttermere found the bed 
 of coal under the upper Limestone of the Town-Fell, just 
 under the last rise of the Crag. The bed appeared at first 
 sight too thin to be worked for profit ; but on examination it 
 proved to be free from sulphur, and well fitted for the works 
 of the whitesmiths in Kendal. He therefore engaged the 
 help of the country miners, and carried on his work for years 
 conveying to Kendal, by a train of pack-horses (seventeen 
 miles over the mountains), the coal which he drew from a 
 bed not more than six or seven inches thick. And, spite of 
 the smallness of his produce, and the cost of its primitive 
 mode of transport, he went on till he had realised a fortune 
 not small, according to the humble standard of his country- 
 men and he ended as a public benefactor to his valley. 
 Joseph Buttermere's coal, as a matter of export, would now 
 be scouted as a mere worthless mockery. Yet I think the 
 tale deserves notice as a curious record of one of the primitive 
 modes in which our old statesmen dealt with those who, to 
 them, were in a kind of outer world. But I will return to the 
 craft more peculiar to our valley. 
 
 " It may have seemed, at first sight, almost incredible 
 that one of our old statesmen should have thought it worth 
 his while to mount his little, tough, but active horse, and to 
 ride up to London to make bargains with the merchants of 
 Cheapside for a supply of goods manufactured in his Dale. 
 Such however was the fact, as I have already stated ; and I 
 well remember that, in my early boyhood, there were three 
 men, living at, or near, our village, who had many times 
 made these journeys some before, and some more than 
 twenty years after, the time of the 'seven years' war.' 
 Changes of manners and of times had put an end to such a 
 primitive mode of dealing some years before I saw the light. 
 
NOTE WORTHY INHABITANTS. 19 
 
 But I have sat upon the knee of old Leonard Sedgwick (my 
 father's cousin) and listened to the tales of his London 
 journeys ; and how, when his horse had carried him nearly to 
 the great city, he saw the dome of St Paul's standing up 
 against the sky, and countless spires and steeples bristling up 
 into the air above the houses. His homely pictures never 
 faded from my memory. He was intelligent and honour- 
 able in his dealings ; a kindhearted and mirthful man ; well 
 content to look on the brighter side of the things around 
 him ; and (a blessing on his memory !) he made all the little 
 children near him right happy by his Christmas feasts. Such 
 a man, and so employed, can never appear again in Dent, 
 unless we could undo the social work of a whole century. 
 
 " And there was another man, old Thomas Waddington 
 a dealer in hats, cloth, drugs, and I know not what besides 
 who had from time to time ridden up to London to obtain a 
 good stock of materials for the use of his countrymen. He 
 was a statesman, and a man of high character; and a great 
 favourite with the public, in spite of a singularly crusty and 
 irritable manner. Upright in person, with a face glowing 
 with the signs of good cheer with a dark wig decorated with 
 many curls, and with a broad-brimmed hat, looped in a way 
 that indicated a former, and more proud, condition, he 
 steadily marched through his walk of life. And where is 
 there one now to represent him ? His shop was the place 
 where all the leading statesmen met to discuss the politics of 
 the day, and the affairs of the parish. 
 
 " And there was a third man whom I must not pass over, 
 if I mean to give any conception of what Dent once was. I 
 well remember Thomas Archer, the prince of rural tailors, 
 with his wig of many curls. In my very early boyhood he 
 was what old Chaucer would have called a ' solempne man ' ; 
 and, whatever he said or did, seemed to take its tone from a 
 feeling of inherent dignity. Ludicrous as the fact may seem, 
 he had been in the habit, in his early days, of going up to 
 London, I know not how ; and there, by the help of some 
 
 2 2 
 
20 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 connexions or relations, he would work for a few weeks on 
 a London tailor's shop-board. And having learnt the last 
 metropolitan mysteries of his art, he would return well 
 primed and loaded to discharge his duties in his native 
 valley. To these mysteries of his skill the old statesmen 
 owed some of those large decorated coat-sleeves and lapped 
 waistcoats which were many years afterwards worn, in a 
 threadbare state, during Dent's decline, by men who had 
 been brought low through poverty. 
 
 "There is no man among my countrymen, or in any 
 neighbouring valley, to match this enterprising old tailor. 
 Many long measures he had ; but not one so long as that by 
 which he measured his own standard. He was made by 
 the times in which he lived ; and the change of times has 
 made it impossible for us to find a recurrence of his 
 similitude. 
 
 " Certainly I have neither room nor time for many 
 biographical notices of my countrymen ; but one more name 
 I must mention that of Blackburne, the barber and wig- 
 maker. To me he was historical, and only known by his 
 works ; for he had been called away some years before I was 
 counted among the living inhabitants of Dent. But he was 
 a man famed in his generation through all the neighbouring 
 valleys. From him proceeded the ample full-bottom; and 
 the three-decker (or more rarely the four-decker), so named 
 from its splendid semicircles of white curls that girt the back 
 of the wearer's pericranium ; and he made also the humblest 
 of all wigs, the scratch fitted for a poor man's head. Nor 
 must I forget, in this list of our native artist's works, the 
 formidable tie-wig with a tail like that of a dragon, and with 
 winged curls at the ears. I have heard this wig called, by the 
 school-boys of my day, the flying dragon ; and let that be its 
 name, for it well deserved it. All such capital monuments 
 of art were turned out in their glory by the man who with 
 cunning hand and head had built up the crowning decora- 
 tions of our countrymen. The place of his ancient shop 
 
NOTEWORTHY INHABITANTS. 21 
 
 was marked by a great pole, with its symbolical fillet and 
 basin; which I used, in my childhood, to look up to with 
 respectful wonder. But the genius of the place was gone; 
 and I saw only the decayed monuments of the great wig- 
 maker's constructive skill. 
 
 " I have not stated such facts as these that I might hold 
 up our ancestors of a former century to ridicule ; but in the 
 hope of giving my countrymen a graphic proof of the great 
 change of manners wrought by time ; and of a sorrowful 
 change in the fortunes of the inhabitants of Dent, that drove 
 many of them away from their early homes, and sank others 
 into a state of depression against which they knew not how 
 to struggle. I well remember (and I first made the remark in 
 my very childhood) that many of the old-fashioned dresses, 
 seen on a holiday, were the signs of poverty rather than of 
 pride. The coats were threadbare, and worn by men who 
 had seen better days. The looped broad-brim was seen, but 
 as a sign of mourning, like a flag hoisted half-mast high ; for 
 it was the half-fallen state of the triple cock (still worn by one 
 or two in the parish) with its three outer surfaces pointing 
 to the sky. And, in the same days, old Blackburne's full- 
 bottoms had lost all their crisp symmetry ; and the lower 
 hairs of their great convexity were drooping, as if in sorrow, 
 upon the wearers' necks. The three-deckers showed broken 
 lines and disordered rigging ; and as for the flying dragons, 
 they had all, like autumnal swallows, taken themselves away. 
 But there were many exceptions to these mournful signs of 
 decay. There still remained many Dalesmen with old- 
 fashioned dresses, and with cheerful, prosperous looks, among 
 the Sunday congregations at Dent ; but the ancient fashions 
 were wearing fast away 1 . 
 
 " Let me here add a word or two on the domestic state 
 and habits of our countrymen, before their old social isolation 
 had been so much broken in upon by the improved roads and 
 rapid movements of modern times. With the exception of 
 
 1 Memorial, pp. 57 64. 
 
22 SEDGWICICS RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 certain festive seasons, their habits were simple, primitive, and 
 economical. The cottager had, as his inheritance, the labour 
 of his own hands and that of his wife and children : and, in 
 the good old times, that labour made him quite as inde- 
 pendent as one of the smaller statesmen. In manners, 
 habits, and information, there was, in fact, no difference 
 between them. Even in the houses of the clergymen and of 
 the wealthier statesmen, there was kept alive a feeling of 
 fraternal equality; and, although external manners were more 
 formal and respectful than they are now, yet the servants, 
 men or maids, sat down at the dinner-table, and often at the 
 tea-table, with their masters and mistresses. 
 
 " The dress of the upper statesman's wife and daughters 
 was perhaps less costly than that of the men who affected 
 fashion ; and according to modern taste we should call it 
 stiff and ugly to the last degree, as was the fashion of the day. 
 There was one exception however, both as to cost and beauty : 
 for the statesman's wife often appeared at Church in the winter 
 season in a splendid long cloak of the finest scarlet cloth, 
 having a hood lined with coloured silk. This dress was very 
 becoming, and very costly ; but it was carefully preserved ; 
 and so it might pass down from mother to daughter. 
 Fortunately, no genius in female decoration (like the Archers 
 and Blackburnes of the other sex) seemed to have brought 
 patches and hoops into vulgar use (as in the preposterous 
 modern case of crinoline). 
 
 "Among the old statesmen's daughters hoops did however 
 sometimes appear, as one of the rarer sights of the olden time; 
 and I have heard an aged statesman's daughter tell of her 
 admiration, and perhaps her envy, when she saw a young 
 woman sailing down the Church with a petticoat that 
 stretched almost across the middle aisle. That decoration 
 shut her out from a seat on any of the Church forms ; but, by 
 a dexterous flank movement, she won a position among the 
 pews ; and then, by a second inexplicable movement, the 
 frame-work became vertical, and found a resting-place by 
 
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 23 
 
 overtopping the pew-door to the great amazement of the 
 rural congregation. 
 
 "All the women, with very rare exceptions, learned to 
 read ; and the upper statesmen's daughters could write and 
 keep family accounts. They had their Bibles, and certain 
 good old-fashioned books of devotion ; and they had their 
 cookery-books; and they were often well read in ballad 
 poetry, and in one or two of De Foe's novels. And some of 
 the younger and more refined of the statesmen's daughters 
 would form a little clique, where they met during certain 
 years of last century and wept over Richardson's novels. 
 But this sentimental portion was small in number ; and it 
 produced no effect upon the rural manners of the valley ; 
 which were fresh and cheerful, and little tinged with any dash 
 of what was sentimental. 
 
 "While speaking of the habits and manners of my country- 
 women, I may remark that their industry had then a social 
 character. Their machinery and the material of their fabrics 
 they constantly bore about with them. Hence the knitters of 
 Dent had the reputation of being lively gossips ; and they 
 worked together in little clusters not in din and confinement 
 like that of a modern manufactory but each one following 
 the leading of her fancy; whether among her friends, or 
 rambling in the sweet scenery of the valley ; and they were 
 as notable for their thrifty skill as for their industry. And 
 speaking of both sexes, the manners of our countrymen may 
 have been thought rude and unpolished from lack of commerce 
 with the world ; and their prosperity in a former century may 
 sometimes have roused the envy, and the jests and satire, 
 of those who were less handy than themselves ; but for many 
 a long year theirs was the winning side. 
 
 " Their social habits led them to form little groups of 
 family parties, who assembled together, in rotation, round one 
 blazing fire, during the winter evenings. This was called 
 ganging a Sitting to a neighbour's house ; and the custom 
 prevailed, though with diminished frequency, during the early 
 
24 SEDGWICK^S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 years I spent in Dent. Let me try to give a picture of one of 
 these scenes in which I have myself been, not an actor, but a 
 looker-on. A statesman's house in Dent had seldom more 
 than two floors, and the upper floor did not extend to the 
 wall where was the chief fire-place, but was wainscoted off 
 from it. The consequence was, that a part of the ground- 
 floor, near the fire-place, was open to the rafters ; which 
 formed a wide pyramidal space, terminating in the principal 
 chimney of the house. It was in this space, chiefly under the 
 open rafters, that the families assembled in the evening. 
 Though something rude to look at, the space gave the 
 advantage of a good ventilation. About the end of the 
 1 7th century grates and regular flues began to be erected ; 
 but, during Dent's greatest prosperity, they formed the excep- 
 tion, and not the rule. 
 
 " Let me next shortly describe the furniture of this space 
 where they held their evening Sittings. First there was a 
 blazing fire in a recess of the wall ; which in early times was 
 composed of turf and great logs of wood. From one side of 
 the fire-place ran a bench, with a strong and sometimes 
 ornamentally carved back, called a lang settle. On the other 
 side of the fire-place was the Patriarch's wooden and well- 
 carved arm-chair ; and near the chair was the sconce^ adorned 
 with crockery. Not far off was commonly seen a well-carved 
 cupboard, or cabinet, marked with some date that fell within a 
 period of fifty years after the restoration of Charles the 
 Second 2 ; and fixed to the beams of the upper floor was a row 
 of cupboards, called the Cat-malison (the cat's curse); because, 
 
 1 In north-country dialect, a low partition. 
 
 2 Sedgwick notes: " One or two of the Belgian refugees, who had been driven 
 from London by the great Plague in 1664, are said to have found, for a while, a 
 home in Dent, and there to have practised their art of wood-carving; and one of 
 them is said to have settled in Kirthwaite. The art of wood-carving, at any rate, 
 flourished within the period above indicated ; and I remember many good 
 specimens of it in the old statesmen's houses in Dent. The art existed, however, 
 in Dent at an earlier period. For there was, in my Father's time, at the old 
 parsonage, a set of oak bed-stocks, which he had brought from his birth-place. 
 They were vigorously though rudely carved, and had the date of 1532." 
 
SITTINGS, KNITTING. 25 
 
 from its position, it was secure from poor grimalkin's paw. 
 One or two small tables, together with chairs or benches, 
 gave seats to all the party there assembled. Rude though 
 the room appeared, there was in it no sign of want. It had 
 many signs of rural comfort : for under the rafters were 
 suspended bunches of herbs for cookery, hams, sometimes for 
 export, flitches of bacon, legs of beef, and other articles salted 
 for domestic use. 
 
 " They took their seats ; and then began the work of the 
 evening; and with a speed that cheated the eye they went on 
 with their respective tasks. Beautiful gloves were thrown 
 off complete; and worsted stockings made good progress 1 . 
 There was no dreary deafening noise of machinery; but 
 there was the merry heart-cheering sound of the human 
 tongue. No one could foretell the current of the evening's 
 talk. They had their ghost-tales ; and their love-tales ; and 
 their battles of jest and riddles ; and their ancient songs of 
 enormous length, yet heard by ears that were never weary. 
 Each in turn was to play its part, according to the humour of 
 the Sitting. Or, by way of change, some lassie who was 
 bright and reliable* was asked to read for the amusement of 
 the party. She would sit down ; and, apparently without 
 interrupting her work by more than a single stitch, would 
 begin to read for example, a chapter of Robinson Crusoe. In 
 a moment the confusion of sounds ceased ; and no sound was 
 heard but the reader's voice, and the click of the knitting 
 needles, while she herself went on knitting: and she would 
 turn over the leaves before her (as a lady does those of her 
 music-book from the stool of her piano), hardly losing a 
 second at each successive leaf, till the chapter was done. Or, 
 at another and graver party, some one, perhaps, would read 
 a chapter from the Pilgrim's Progress. It also charmed all 
 
 1 A less agreeable picture of this continual knitting is drawn in A true story of 
 the terrible knitters e Dent, in Southey's Doctor, Inter-chapter xxiv. Vol. vii. p. 78, 
 ed. 1847. Miss Sedgwick remembers that boys and old men knitted as well as 
 women. 
 
 2 Loquacious. 
 
26 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 tongues to silence : but, as certainly, led to a grave discussion 
 so soon as the reading ceased. 
 
 "In all the turns of life the habits of our countrymen were 
 gregarious. A number of houses within certain distances of 
 one another were said to be in the lating rd (the seeking row), 
 and formed a kind of social compact. In joy or sorrow they 
 were expected to attend, and to give help and comfort. To 
 follow this subject out would lead me into details too long for 
 my present purpose. But I may mention how it told upon 
 the customs of Dent, on occasions of great domestic joy. 
 Before the birth of a new inhabitant of the hamlet, all the 
 women of mature life within the lating rd had been on the 
 tip-toe of joyful expectation : and the news of the first wail- 
 ing (the crying-out, as called in the tongue of Dent) the sign 
 of coming life ran through the home-circle like the fiery 
 cross of the Highlanders ; and, were it night or day, calm 
 sunshine, or howling storm, away ran the matrons to the 
 house of promise, and there, with cordials, and creature 
 comforts, and blessings, and gossip, and happy omens, and 
 with no fear of coming evil for the women of the valley 
 were lively, like the women in the land of Goshen they 
 waited till the infant statesman was brought into this world 
 of joy and sorrow, in as much publicity as if he were the heir 
 to the throne of an empire. This custom was upheld with 
 full tenacity during the younger years of my life 1 . 
 
 " There were in ancient times, few observances in the 
 conduct of a funeral, which are not known at the present day. 
 Formerly, however, they kept a watch in the house, with 
 burning lights in the room of death. This passed under the 
 name of the Lyk-wake : but the custom had become very 
 rare, and I believe entirely went out before the end of the 
 last century ; and at no period of our history were there 
 hired professional ' mourning women, skilful in lamentation,' 
 as among the Jews of old, to give effect to the wailings of 
 sorrow. As a prevailing custom, many were ' bidden to the 
 1 Memorial, pp. 68 73. 
 
FUNERALS, FESTIVITIES, HORSE-RACES. 27 
 
 funeral'; and there was a peculiar refreshment called the 
 arval, offered even at a poor man's funeral, before they went 
 with the coffin to the church ; and, after the interment, if the 
 mourning family belonged to the better class of statesmen, 
 those who had been bidden to the funeral had a dinner pro- 
 vided at one of the inns, which the immediate mourners did 
 not attend. The fact is nothing new to my countrymen ; and 
 I only mention it now, because I have many times heard it 
 sneered at, and shamefully misrepresented. I never knew a 
 single case in which this truly kind and hospitable mode of 
 celebrating a funeral led to intemperance or abuse. It may 
 be better now to conduct a funeral with more quiet simplicity. 
 But so long as there was a large gathering of those who had 
 been the neighbours and friends of the deceased, there was 
 nothing unseemly in giving a poor man a dinner, for which 
 he was thankful, or in offering refreshment to friends who 
 had come from afar, and stood in need of it. 
 
 " The festivities of Christmas, and other holiday seasons, 
 were kept up among our countrymen with long-sustained, and 
 sometimes, I fear, intemperate activity. They had their 
 morris-dances ; their rapier-dances ; and their mask-dances. 
 These grotesque and barbarous usages of a former age disap- 
 peared a considerable time before the end of the last century. 
 I believe I saw the end of them full eighty years since, while 
 I was in my nurse's arms. Dent was long famous for its 
 Galloway ponies ; and its race-course had its celebrity in 
 former centuries. I believe I saw, in my very early boyhood, 
 the last race ever run upon the old course. Since then, the 
 old ground has been so cut up and changed, that, happily, it 
 would be impossible to re-open it as a race-course, were the 
 old taste to come to life again. 
 
 " I should think myself ill-employed were I to dwell long 
 upon the by-gone vices and follies of my countrymen : but I 
 should be disloyal to the cause of truth were I only to hold 
 up to the light of day the fairer and brighter side of their 
 character. Among the vulgar sports of England, especially 
 
28 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 during Shrovetide, were matches of game-cocks, which for 
 centuries had kept their place. Nowhere did this vile and 
 cruel sport flourish more than among the Dales of the north 
 of England. Men of character joined in it without compunc- 
 tion ; and so thoroughly was it ingrained among the habits of 
 society, that the Masters of the chartered grammar-schools 
 received a Shrovetide fee from their scholars ; and in return 
 gave game-cocks to the boys, to be matched for the honour of 
 the school ! This fee (known by the boys as the cock-penny] is 
 given to the present day 1 ; and I have paid it myself many 
 times. But, for about a century and a half, the Master has 
 ceased to give any return beyond an acknowledgement of 
 thanks. I have been present during some of these matches 
 as a looker-on in my early days (what school-boy will not get 
 into mischief if he can?); and I have witnessed their fruits; 
 which were reaped in gambling, quarrels, drunken riots, and 
 bellowings of blasphemy. Thank God, they have gone from 
 sight ; and will never again, I trust, defile the light of day. 
 So far as Dent is concerned, this form of cruel sport died 
 away in the unhappy years that closed the last century. 
 
 " In conclusion, I will add a few words more upon the 
 social decline of my countrymen, which no ingenuity on their 
 part could have averted ; for the gigantic progress of mechan- 
 ical and manufacturing skill utterly crushed and swept away 
 the little fabric of industry that had been reared in Dent. 
 Many of the inhabitants gradually sunk into comparative 
 poverty. The silken threads that had held society together 
 began to fail; and lawless manners followed 2 . 
 
 " Through all the years of my boyhood and early manhood, 
 the Magistrate, nearest to Dent, who acted for the West 
 Riding of Yorkshire, lived at Steeton (in the valley of the 
 Aire), which was about forty-two miles from Dent, and forty- 
 seven or forty-eight from Sedbergh. In those years several 
 well-educated men of ample fortune lived within the parish 
 
 1 This was written, it must be remembered, in 1868. 
 
 2 Memorial, pp. 74 77. 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 29 
 
 of Sedbergh, but not one of them was in the Commission of 
 the Peace. Whether from want of patriotism, or love of ease, 
 or a too modest estimate of their own powers, they refused 
 the office. My Father, through all the vigorous years of 
 his very long life, refused to act as a Magistrate, believing 
 its duties inconsistent with those of a Parish Priest. My 
 brother John thought differently, and obtained his Com- 
 mission soon after he became Vicar of Dent, to the real 
 benefit of the country. For he knew the people well ; knew 
 how to temper justice with mercy; and, without flinching from 
 his duty in its sometimes painful exercise, he was honoured, 
 trusted, and beloved ; and to the end of life was called the 
 poor man's friend a character engraven on his monument by 
 those who knew him well 1 . The cost and trouble of seeking 
 justice put law for awhile in abeyance ; or, if a check were 
 put upon coarse manners and a disorderly life, it was some- 
 times done in the way of lynch-law, like that which on 
 occasion has reigned in the back-settlements of America. I 
 could tell some tales of this kind that might raise a laugh ; 
 but in very truth they ought to be called tales of sorrow 2 . 
 
 " I remember, one Sunday evening, when I was a young 
 school-boy, seeing a man in a brutal state of drunkenness, 
 tumbling and bellowing like a maniac among the graves and 
 tombstones of the church-yard, and challenging any one in 
 Dent to fight him. He was a man of very great strength, and 
 of considerable pugilistic skill, which he had gained in London, 
 where he had resided for some time with a relation, but had 
 been sent back to Dent for insubordination and intemperance. 
 When sober he was a good-tempered cheerful man, and a 
 (so-called) 'good companion'; but he had not one grain of 
 principle. He had learnt to regard sin as life's jest, and good 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 30, note. The words of his epitaph, in Dent Church, here 
 referred to, are: " His manners and temper were gentle and kind, And endeared 
 him to all who were under his pastoral care : Nor did he forfeit their love while 
 Faithfully discharging the duties of a magistrate, For he was merciful, as well as 
 
 just." 
 
 2 Manorial, p. 77. 
 
30 SEDGWICK^S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 manners as a mask or mockery, put on to serve a purpose. 
 When under excitement he became fierce and dangerous, and 
 for several years he was the terror of the Dale. 
 
 " On the occasion just alluded to, the constable of the 
 parish came with a pair of handcuffs and one or two assist- 
 ants to secure the drunken maniac. After looking at the 
 formidable brute for a few seconds, the constable said, ' If I 
 fix these things on, I dare not tak 'em off without ganging 
 to th' Justice, and that will cost the parish I kna not what. 
 He is oe'r drunk to be dangerous, and I'll give him a good 
 basting.' So he laid down the handcuffs upon a tombstone, 
 and being himself a man of activity and great strength, and 
 no mean artist, he had, in less than a minute, so pounded the 
 maniac's face that it lost all semblance of humanity, and the 
 monster, for a while, had got his quietus. The constable then 
 walked home with his handcuffs, cheered and thanked by his 
 neighbours for his cheap way of doing justice. 
 
 "Of this strange scene, acted in our quiet village on a 
 Sunday evening, I was a witness. And on another occasion, 
 at one of our annual Fairs, I saw the same drunkard put in 
 handcuffs by the same constable. The day following, the 
 constable and his prisoner, and an assistant, each well 
 mounted, began their journey towards Steeton. The horses 
 required food ; the men regarded such excursions as a kind 
 of holiday-keeping, and lived well ; and the party could 
 not return before the third day. This was not called cheap 
 justice. The magistrates hated dealing with country brawls, 
 and often quashed the cases with the cheap benefit of some 
 good advice. And, if the case led to the prisoner's committal, 
 there were two more very long journeys for the parish officer, 
 and more cost for the parish 1 ." 
 
 " The great French Revolution seemed to shake the whole 
 fabric of society to its foundation ; and the shock was felt 
 even in the retired valleys of the north of England. But the 
 inhabitants of Dent, though sorely lowered in position, had 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 31, note. 
 
DEPRESSION, IMPROVEMENT. 31 
 
 learnt no lesson of disloyalty. They burnt Tom Paine in 
 effigy a kind of fact sure to fasten itself upon the memory 
 of a boy ; and one of the statesmen, who had inherited a 
 fortune far above any previously known in the valley, engaged 
 the parish singers, and others with lungs that were lusty and 
 loyal, to make nocturnal parades about the parish, singing 
 melodies like Rule Britannia and Hearts of Oak ; and when 
 the parade was over, they were allowed to crown the day 
 with squibs, crackers, loud cheers, and deep potations. Such 
 fooleries could do no good ; and they did much harm to 
 those who acted in them. 
 
 " The war that followed brought new taxes, and increased 
 poor-rates ; and no new gleam of reviving hope shone upon 
 our countrymen. I was still living at the Parsonage at the 
 end of last century ; and I well remember the two years of 
 terrible suffering, when the necessaries of life were almost at 
 a famine price, and when many of the farmers and land- 
 owners before that time hardly able to hold up their heads 
 had to pay poor-rates that were literally more than ten 
 times the weight of what they had been in former years. It 
 was indeed a time of sorrow and great suffering. But I will 
 not end with notes of such a dismal sound. 
 
 " Dent has again revived, and taken a new position. 
 Emigration has relieved the burthen of the five hamlets. 
 Education has made good progress. Roads are greatly 
 improved 1 . I remember some roads in Dent so narrow that 
 there was barely room for one of the little country carts to 
 pass along them ; and they were so little cared for, that, 
 in the language of the country, the way was as 'rough as 
 the beck stae'ns.' I remember too when the carts and the 
 carriages were of the rudest character; moving on wheels 
 which did not revolve about their axle ; but the wheels and 
 their axle were so joined as to revolve together. Four strong 
 pegs of wood, fixed in a cross-beam under the cart, embraced 
 the axle-tree, which revolved between the pegs, as the cart 
 
 1 Memorial, pp. 77, 78. 
 
32 SEDGWICK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DENT. 
 
 was dragged on, with a horrible amount of friction that 
 produced a creaking noise, in the expressive language of the 
 Dales called Jyking. The friction was partially relieved by 
 frequent doses of tar, administered to the pegs from a ram's 
 horn which hung behind the cart. Horrible were the creakings 
 and Jykings which set all teeth on edge while the turf-carts or 
 coal-carts were dragged from the mountains to the houses of 
 the dalesmen in the hamlets below. Such were the carts that 
 brought the turf and the coals to the vicarage, during all the 
 early days of my boyhood. But now there is not a young 
 person in the valley who perhaps has so much as seen one of 
 these clog-wheels, as they were called ; and our power of 
 transport, to be more perfect, only wants a better line of 
 road, that might easily be made to avoid those steep inclines, 
 which are now a grievous injury to the traffic of the valley. 
 But, with all our modern advantages of transport, Dent has 
 lost the picturesque effect of its trains of pack-horses : and 
 many times, on a Sunday morning, I have regretted that I 
 could no longer see the old statesman riding along the rough 
 and rugged road, with his wife behind him mounted upon a 
 gorgeous family pillion ; and his daughters walking briskly 
 at his side, in their long flowing scarlet cloaks with silken 
 hoods 1 ." 
 
 The ancestors of Adam Sedgwick have been statesmen 
 of Dent for more than three centuries, but their origin, the 
 orthography of their name, and its etymology, have occasioned 
 many rival theories. In 1379 the name is spelt Syggheiswyk, 
 Seghewyk) Segheswyk* ; in 1563 Seeggeswyke ; between 1611 
 and 1619 the parish registers of Dent give Sidgsweeke ; in 
 1624, Siddgswicke ; between 1645 an d 1696, Sidgwick or 
 Sidgswick. Between 1700 and 1737 the name is entered 
 
 1 Supplement ', p. 41. 
 
 2 From the rolls of the collectors of the subsidy granted to King Richard II. in 
 the West Riding of Yorkshire 1378 79, printed in The Yorkshire Archaeological . 
 and Topographical Journal, Vol. v. pp. 151. These and the succeeding 
 references to the spelling of the name are due to the kindness of Arthur Sidgwick, 
 M.A., Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 
 
THE NAME SEDGWICK. 33 
 
 thirty-six times. Of these entries, two in 1701, and one in 
 1736, give Sidgwick; all the rest Sidgswick. The earliest 
 Sedgwick at Dent appears on the tomb of the Rev. James 
 Sedgwick, great-uncle to Adam Sedgwick, who died in 1780; 
 but in his register of baptism, 30 Sept. 1715, he is entered 
 as son of John Sidgswick. Adam Sedgwick maintained 
 that the spelling of the family name was deliberately changed 
 by this James Sedgwick, at the suggestion of the then Master 
 of Sedbergh school. On the other hand, a branch of the 
 family who had settled at Wisbech in the Isle of Ely called 
 themselves Sedgewick at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century 1 , and they are said to have adopted a characteristic 
 crest, a bundle of sedge bound up in a form like that of a 
 wheat-sheaf. Hence it became natural to seek for the origin 
 of the family in 'a village built on fenny ground, with an 
 abundance of the water plant called sedge ' ; and Sedgwick 
 in Westmoreland, near the head of Morecambe Bay, was 
 fixed upon as the birth-place of the clan, from the similarity 
 of sound, though it does not fulfil the other conditions. 
 Adam Sedgwick rejects these theories for the following 
 reasons : 
 
 " i. Because the word sedge is, I think, unknown in the 
 dialect of the northern Dales. 
 
 " 2. Because the well-known village, Sedgwick, is built 
 upon a high and dry soil that is washed by the beautiful waters 
 of the Kent, a stream that runs brawling over the rocks. 
 
 "3. Because the word Sedgwick does not give the sound 
 of the name as it was uttered among the ancient inhabitants 
 of the mountains ; nor does it come near to the spelling used 
 in former centuries. The name is at this time commonly 
 pronounced Sigswick by the natives of the Dales 2 ." 
 
 The same information is cast in a more humorous form 
 in the following letter : 
 
 1 Visitation of Cambridgeshire, made 1619 by Henry St George, Richmond 
 herald; printed by Sir Tho. Phillips, Middle Hill Press, 1840. 
 
 2 Supplement, p. 18. Miss Sedgwick informs me that the name is still 
 commonly pronounced Sigsick. 
 
 s. i. 3 
 
34 THE NAME SEDGWICK. 
 
 "The Sidgwick you mention is of the Dent stock. His 
 great-grandfather was brother to my great-grandfather. It 
 may be one step higher ; for I am a sorry genealogist. In 
 the old Parish Register the spelling was always with two z's. 
 My father's uncle altered the spelling, and adopted the 
 Cyclopic form (at the foolish suggestion of an old pedant of 
 Sedbergh School), when he was a boy. He afterwards 
 educated my father and sent him to College; and so it came 
 to pass that all my dear old father's brood were born with 
 the one i ; or at least were so dockited on all high-ways, and 
 in all post-towns. 
 
 "The name is still pronounced (except where children's 
 tongues have been doctored by ' pupil teachers') Siggswick, 
 and has nothing to do with Sedge. Neither the name nor the 
 plant are known among my native hills 1 ." 
 
 The etymology of the word Sedgwick has been most 
 kindly investigated by Professor Skeat, with the following 
 result. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that Sedgwick 
 was at first a place-name, and then a personal name. ' Wick ' 
 is not a true Anglo-Saxon word, but simply borrowed from 
 the Latin uicus, a town, or village. * Sedge," or ' Sedj ' or 
 ' Sedg ' is simply the later spelling of the Anglo-Saxon secg. 
 Two distinct words were spelt thus : (i) the modern 'sedge' ; 
 (2) a word which has now become quite obsolete, but was 
 once in common use, like uir in Latin. It is a derivative from 
 secg-an, to say, and meant say-er, speak-er, orator, and generally 
 man, hero, warrior. It could easily be used as a personal 
 name, as ' man ' is now ; and Secg-wic is therefore a town 
 built by Mr Secg or Mr Mann, as we should say at the 
 present day 2 ." 
 
 When Sedgwick was making a geological tour in Saxony, 
 he met a gentleman who was both a geologist and an 
 antiquary. They fell into conversation about the etymology 
 
 1 To Archdeacon Musgrave, 13 March, 1862. 
 
 2 In the same way Sedgeberrow, in Worcestershire, is Secges-bearuwe, i.e. Secg^s- 
 grove ; and Sedgeleigh, in Hampshire, is Secges-leah, which means Secg's-lea, not 
 a sedge-lea. 
 
THE NAME SEDGWICK. 35 
 
 of his name, and it was decided that it might originally have 
 been sieges-wick, ' village of victory ' ; whereupon, taking 
 into account the position of the village of Sedgwick, they 
 amused themselves by inventing the following story : 
 
 " Soon after the abandonment of England by the Romans, 
 the Anglo-Saxons invaded the valley of the Kent, and settled 
 there after they had driven out the ancient Britons. Then 
 came successive crews of new invaders, Danes and Norsemen ; 
 and, during a lawless period, there were many conflicts 
 between the earliest settlers and the piratical crews, which 
 landed and were engaged in the highly exciting work of 
 burning, plundering, and cattle-lifting. On one of these 
 occasions, the plundering sea-rovers were repulsed by the 
 older Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, in a battle fought on the 
 banks of the Kent ; and the victory was commemorated, at 
 first perhaps by a heap of stones, and then by a village built 
 near the spot, which took the name of Siegeswick, or village 
 of victory 1 ." 
 
 Professor Skeat rejects this etymology, and Sedgwick did 
 not advance it seriously ; but, even if it be erroneous, it may 
 still be admitted that the hero who gave his name to the 
 village may have established his reputation by an achieve- 
 ment not so very different from that which Sedgwick and 
 his friend invented ; and, in fact, there is still to be seen a 
 large cairn or tumulus near the village in question, under 
 which those who fell in some such raid may have been in- 
 terred. Moreover the presence of northern invaders in old 
 days is amply attested by traces of their language still to be 
 met with in the dales. 
 
 Here, however, we must leave these interesting specula- 
 tions for the surer ground of legal documents still in the 
 possession of the Sedgwick family. From these it can be 
 ascertained that towards the end of the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth a Sedgwick was in possession of an estate in Dent 
 called Bankland. His son Leonard, who owned, besides 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 19, note. 
 
 32 
 
3 6 THE SEDGWICK FAMILY. 
 
 Bankland, a second property in Dent, called Gibshall, had 
 twin sons. The elder of these inherited Bankland, the 
 younger Gibshall, of which, at the end of the seventeenth 
 century, a John Sedgwick was in possession. He was a man 
 of energy ; and, having a grove of oak trees on his property, 
 turned tanner, and realised a handsome fortune out of their 
 bark. He had two sons, Thomas, born 1705, who followed 
 his father's trade, and James, born 1716, who took Holy 
 Orders, and became Master of the endowed Grammar-school 
 at Horton in Ribblesdale. The former, grandfather to 
 Adam Sedgwick, had an only child, Richard, born 7 March, 
 1736. He was educated at Dent Grammar School until the 
 age of fifteen or thereabouts, when he was sent to his uncle at 
 Horton for more advanced instruction. After spending some 
 months at Horton, he was removed to the school at Sedbergh, 
 at the suggestion of his uncle, who has the further credit of 
 having persuaded his brother to give his son the benefit of 
 a University education. But, as he had not enjoyed that 
 privilege himself, while Mr Wynne Bateman, then Master of 
 the school, had graduated at St John's College, Cambridge, 
 in 1734, it is surely more probable that the step was taken 
 in consequence of his advice. Be that as it may, Richard 
 Sedgwick, after a few months instruction in mathematics 
 from Mr John Dawson of Garsdale (of whom more below), 
 matriculated at Cambridge in 1756 as a sizar of St Catharine's 
 College, or, as it was then called, Catharine Hall. It has 
 been recorded that before starting he bought a horse, rode 
 it to Cambridge, and there sold it at a profit. There was 
 nothing unusual in this at that time. His cousin, another 
 Richard Sedgwick, went up to St John's College, Cambridge, 
 in the following year in the same manner; and when 
 Mr Paley, Master of Giggleswick School, took his son to 
 Cambridge in 1758, he rode on horseback, with the boy on a 
 pony beside him. The future archdeacon was a bad rider, 
 and at first got a good many falls. His father paid but little 
 attention to his misfortunes, merely turning his head and 
 
THE SEDGWICK FAMILY. 37 
 
 exclaiming: "What, William, off again! Take care of thy 
 money, lad ! " 
 
 Richard Sedgwick proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts in 1760, when he was placed seventh in the second class of 
 the Mathematical Tripos. He was ordained in that year or the 
 next, and from 1761 to 1768 held the curacy of Amwell near 
 Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire. He was also assistant-master 
 in a boarding-shool at Hoddesdon, kept by Dr James Bennet, 
 a gentleman of some distinction in the literary world, for he 
 not only published an edition of Roger Ascham's English 
 works, but obtained the collaboration of Dr Samuel Johnson, 
 who is said to have written for him a life of the author and a 
 dedication to the Earl of Shaftesbury. In 1766 Sedgwick 
 married Dr Bennet's daughter Catherine, and in 1768 was 
 presented to the living of Dent by the patrons, twenty-four of 
 the leading statesmen of the Dale a strong proof of the 
 popularity of the family, for they could have known little or 
 nothing of him personally. His young wife accompanied her 
 husband to Dent, where she died before the end of the 
 summer (31 July, 1768), leaving one child, who survived her 
 mother for some years. After her death (28 June, 1777) her 
 father married a distant cousin, Margaret Sturgis, by whom 
 he had seven children: Margaret (1782), Thomas (1783), 
 Adam (1785), Isabel (1787), Ann (1789), John (1791), James 
 
 (1794). 
 
 The names of Adam Sedgwick's brothers and sisters will 
 occur so frequently in the course of our narrative that it will 
 be best to mention in this place the leading events in the 
 lives of each of them. Margaret married late in life a distant 
 cousin, the Rev. John Mason, Vicar of Bothamsall in Notting- 
 hamshire, and chaplain to the Duke of Newcastle. She 
 became a widow, 29 October, 1844, ancl returned to Dent, 
 where she resided till her death, 13 January, 1856. Thomas 
 passed his whole life in Dent, and died, unmarried, 19 Sep- 
 tember, 1873, aged 90. Isabel died unmarried, 18 January, 
 1823. Ann married, 22 September, 1820, Mr William Westall, 
 
38 SEDGWICK'S FATHER. 
 
 an artist of considerable reputation in his day, and died in 
 1862. John was admitted a sizar of St John's College in 1810, 
 and proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1814, but 
 without obtaining Honours. He was ordained immediately 
 afterwards, and became curate of Stowe in Lincolnshire. 
 Ultimately, in 1822, he succeeded his father as Vicar of Dent, 
 an office which he held till his death, 9 February, 1859. 
 James, like his brother, was admitted a sizar of St John's 
 College, Cambridge in 1813, and proceeded to the degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts in 1817. He was not deficient in ability, and 
 it was hoped that he might take a good degree, and perhaps 
 be elected to one of the Fellowships then appropriated to 
 Sedbergh School. But he lacked industry ; was placed no 
 higher in the Tripos than sixth in the third class, and subse- 
 quently failed in the Fellowship Examination. Soon after 
 taking his degree he was ordained, and in March, 1818, 
 became curate of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, where he 
 remained until June, 1839. He then removed to Downham 
 Market in Norfolk, and in 1840 was presented by the Dean 
 and Chapter of Norwich to the vicarage of Scalby near 
 Scarborough. He died, 28 August, 1869. 
 
 No son ever spoke or wrote of his father with greater love 
 and respect than Adam Sedgwick ; and, when it is remem- 
 bered that the old man lived till 1828, when his son was 
 forty -three years of age, everything that he says about his 
 public character, his management of the parish, and his 
 influence in the dale, may be accepted as the deliberate 
 judgment of one man by another. Numerous allusions to 
 him, and anecdotes illustrating the fervid religious feeling, 
 tempered by sound common-sense, for which he was so 
 remarkable, will be found scattered through the letters printed 
 below. For the present we will select the following passages 
 from the Memorial and its Supplement. They are not only 
 interesting in themselves, but reveal the source of many of 
 the convictions which were most deeply engrained in his son's 
 character. 
 
MR WILBERFORCE. 39 
 
 " When in my childhood I saw, on a Sunday morning, 
 the ample convexity of my father's well-dressed and well- 
 powdered wig, I thought it one of the most beautiful sights 
 in the world. I remember too, as he went, with his usual 
 light step, towards the church, and saluted his friends who 
 were come to join in the sacred services of the day, that each 
 head was uncovered as he passed. They loved my Father, 
 because by birth he was one of themselves, and because of 
 his kindness and purity of life. They were proud of him too, 
 because he was a graduate of the University of Cambridge, 
 and had been living in good literary society some years before 
 he fixed his home in Dent. Part of his influence arose, also, 
 from the reputation of his skill in athletic exercises ; and 
 from a principle of action which he carried out through his 
 long life never to allow his conception of his sacred duties 
 to come, on questions of moral indifference, into a rude 
 collision with the habits and prejudices of the valley. The 
 consequence was that he held an almost unbounded influence 
 over his flock. Of this I will mention one example ; for 
 it deserves notice as a fact of which it would be in vain to 
 look for a match in the present condition of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 " Some years before I ever saw the light there was an 
 unexpected contest for the county of York. Mr Wilberforce, 
 a young man of bright presence and great eloquence, was 
 then first named as a candidate ; and he had even then 
 become famous as an enthusiastic advocate for the abolition 
 of the Slave Trade. This fact set every chord of my father's 
 heart in motion. He consulted his early friends, the good old 
 Quakers in Kirthwaite, and his other friends in all the five 
 hamlets ; and he personally canvassed the valley from house 
 to house. Then at least the inhabitants of the valley formed 
 an united Christian brotherhood. At that time the free- 
 holders abounded, and every vote was pledged for Mr Wilber- 
 force. Soon afterwards came a solicitor to canvass on the 
 other side ; but he soon left his canvass, finding himself 
 
40 SEDGWICK^S FATHER. 
 
 unable to advance a single step. For wherever he asked for 
 a vote the reply was, Nae use Sir, we d here gang wi tK 
 Parson. So the solicitor left the field ; mounted his horse at 
 the door of the Sun Inn; and, uttering an anathema, cried 
 
 out aloud, that Dent was "the Priest-ridden hole in 
 
 England 1 ." 
 
 " Great injustice should I do to the memory of my Father, 
 were I to describe him as turning his influence as a Parish 
 Priest to serve the purposes of a political movement. The 
 Slave Trade he regarded as a foul national sin, which (how- 
 ever deep its roots might be struck into the policy of the 
 State) every man, who believed in the over-ruling Providence 
 of God, was bound, by all lawful means within his reach, to 
 root out and trample under- foot. The influence he had over 
 the minds of his flock rested on his humble teaching of 
 Gospel truth ; on the cheerful simplicity of his life ; and on 
 his readiness, at every turn and difficulty, to be in true 
 Christian love an adviser and a peace-maker. 
 
 " Were then the inhabitants of Dent, in any high sense, 
 religious men during the old times of their prosperous 
 industry ? They were honourable in their dealings, active in 
 their daily work, steady in the external observances of the 
 Church Services, and without the bitterness of controversial 
 spirit. They had an ancient custom which I may mention 
 here, (and many times when I have thought of it I have 
 felt sorrow that it had ever been abandoned), of assembling 
 and holding a Communion in the Church at a very early 
 hour on Easter Sunday morning. The custom had come 
 down to them from ancient times, probably before the 
 Reformation. There was nothing superstitious in such an 
 observance ; and it was well fitted to touch the conscience 
 
 1 This story refers to the general election of April 1784, when Parliament 
 had been dissolved on the recommendation of Mr Pitt. Mr Wilberforce, then a 
 young man of 25, successfully contested the county of York, with Mr Buncombe, 
 in opposition to Mr Weddell and Mr Foljambe, the nominees of the great Whig 
 families. Life of Wilberforce, by his sons. 8vo. London, 1838: i. 5064. 
 
OLD CUSTOMS OF THE DALE. 41 
 
 of any one who believed in his heart that his Saviour had, 
 at an early hour, as on that day, triumphed over the grave, 
 and opened to the race of fallen man the gate of everlasting 
 life. 
 
 " They had some customs that raised in their hearts no 
 reproach of conscience, but which in our day would, by 
 many, be thought inconsistent with the conduct of a man 
 who professed to be leading a Christian life. I will mention 
 one notorious example. It had been a custom, dating from a 
 period, I believe, long before the time of James the First, for 
 the young men of Dent to assemble after Sunday Evening 
 Service, and finish the day by a match at foot-ball. My 
 father might perhaps have put down this ancient custom ; 
 but he did not interfere, because he thought the contest, if 
 carried on in good-will, tended to health and cheerfulness : 
 and he knew well that it was not thought sinful or indecorous 
 by the old inhabitants of Dent. He dreaded, too, the acts of 
 intemperance and drunkenness which might arise out of the 
 sudden suppression of a generous and healthy exercise in the 
 open field. 
 
 " There was often at the old Parsonage, on a Sunday 
 evening, a small tea-party for those whose homes were distant 
 from the Church ; and, later in the evening, my Father read, 
 to a small assembled circle, from some serious book (it might 
 be an extract from one of Bishop Wilson's sermons) ; and the 
 little service ended with a short family prayer. Now it was 
 by no means unusual for one, who had been contending 
 robustly in the foot-ball match, to come and join in the grave 
 and quiet Sunday evening Service at the Parsonage ; and the 
 only kind of question the old Pastor ever asked was one 
 which expressed his trust that the game had gone on in 
 cheerfulness and good-will 1 ." 
 
 " Athletic sports were held in rivalry by different parishes, 
 and were conducted with great spirit. Matches at leaping, 
 foot-racing, wrestling, and foot-ball, were all in fashion among 
 
 1 Memorial, pp. 64 68. 
 
42 FOOT-BALL MATCH. 
 
 the Dalesmen. But the victory of the foot-ball match was 
 regarded as the crowning glory of the rural festival. My 
 father never opposed such games, because he thought 
 they promoted health, temperance, and good social temper. 
 The spirit of parochial rivalry sometimes, however, led to 
 mischief; and in some rare instances the games were carried 
 on with a savage energy. 
 
 " I remember an occasion, in my very early life, when one 
 of the old statesmen, John Mason of Shoolbred, came in 
 great haste and out of breath into the Vicarage, and wished 
 to see my father. ' I hope you will kindly come and help 
 us/ he said, 'or there will be mischief at the field-sports in 
 the Great Holm. At a late parochial meeting there was a 
 sad accident, which led to mutual charges of foul-dealing. 
 Several of us have been asking them to pledge their word, 
 as true men, that all shall be done fairly and kindly; but 
 their blood is up, and they refused with scorn, till one of 
 the men cried out, 'We will play fairly if Mr Sedgwick will 
 come and be the umpire of the foot-ball match.' 'I will go 
 with all my heart,' said my Father, ' that I may be a peace- 
 maker; and I should like to see the game. Come, Adam, 
 take my hand, and you shall walk with me to the foot-ball 
 match.' I right willingly obeyed the order; and though 
 more than eighty years have passed away since that day, yet 
 I remember standing on the high embankment by the river- 
 side, and my father's figure at this moment seems to be 
 living before my mind's eye. I remember his cheerful coun- 
 tenance, beaming with kindness, and lighted by the flush of 
 health ; his broad-brimmed hat, looped at the sides in a way 
 that told of a former fashion ; his full-bottomed wig, well- 
 dressed and powdered ; and his large silver shoe-buckles ; all 
 of them objects of my childish admiration. But what I wish 
 most to notice was the respectful manner of the crowd. 
 Many of them came to thank my Father, and each one 
 spoke with uncovered head. Harmony and good-will were 
 restored to the excited combatants, and the great foot-ball 
 
OLD AGE OF RICHARD SEDGWICK. 43 
 
 match went on and ended in joyful temper and mutual 
 good-will 1 ." 
 
 To these reminiscences may be added another, told by 
 Sedgwick in the presence of Miss Lucy Brightwell, daughter 
 of Mr Brightwell of Norwich, and written down by her shortly 
 afterwards. 
 
 " During one of the last visits the Professor paid to my dear 
 father, then nearly blind from cataract, he was led to mention his 
 own father, who had been similarly afflicted. He told us how the 
 good old man was honoured and loved in his old age ; and concluded 
 with the following story. 
 
 One of his parishioners, an ungodly-minded man who had no 
 faith in the Scriptures, called one day at the Vicarage ; and, being 
 directed to find his way to the study, came unawares upon the aged 
 pastor, whom he heard (as he supposed) conversing. He waited 
 and listened, and found that the converse was in truth Prayer. 
 'My father,' said Professor Sedgwick, 'being absorbed in feeling, 
 was unconsciously uttering aloud the breathings of his soul before 
 his Maker. The man remained spell-bound for some minutes, and 
 then went away, without saying a word. But he had heard what 
 convinced him of the reality of religion he had found true and 
 genuine faith, and from that moment ceased to be an unbeliever.' 
 The Professor, as he told this, was weeping, and we were ready to 
 weep with him." 
 
 During the last twenty years of his life Richard Sedgwick 
 was afflicted with total blindness, and was in consequence 
 obliged to keep a curate. But he knew the different services 
 of the church by heart, and generally took part in them. 
 Those who remember him record that it was especially 
 touching to see and hear him when conducting the service for 
 the Burial of the Dead. Led by one of his sons, or by a 
 friend, he would meet the mourners at the gate of the church- 
 yard, and precede them into the church. He had a clear 
 voice, very sweet in its tones, and pronounced the Lesson 
 in a tone of triumphant exultation, which never failed to 
 make a deep impression on the congregation ; and, when they 
 came to the grave, the prayers were not read, but prayed. 
 " My father," Sedgwick wrote in 1829, ''was a very happy old 
 man, and over and over again said that his blindness was a 
 
 1 Supplement, pp. 42, 4;,. 
 
44 DEATH OF RICHARD SEDGWICK. 
 
 blessing, as it made him more religious and more fit to die. 
 In the last years of his life he was, out of all comparison, the 
 most perfect moral creature I have ever had the happiness of 
 knowing 1 ." 
 
 In 1822 he resigned the Living, and went, with his eldest 
 son and daughter, to live at Flintergill, a small house at no 
 great distance from the Parsonage, where he died, 14 May, 
 1828. His son has recorded that " he was cheerful and happy 
 to his last day, and died as quietly as a child goes to sleep in 
 a cradle 2 ." 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 7 February, 1829. 
 
 2 To Miss Kate Malcolm, 16 April, 1849. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 (17851804.) 
 
 BIRTH OF ADAM SEDGWICK. CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD AT DENT. 
 LOVE OF HIS NATIVE DALE. HlS SISTER ISABELLA. GOES 
 TO SCHOOL AT SEDBERGH. HlS MASTER AND SCHOOLFELLOWS. 
 SELECTION OF A COLLEGE AT CAMBRIDGE. READS MATHE- 
 MATICS WITH MR DAWSON. ACCOUNT OF HIM. 
 
 ADAM SEDGWICK was born at the vicarage of Dent, early I7 s 5 . 
 in the morning of the 22nd March, 1785. The surgeon who &t- i. 
 attended his mother was Mr John Dawson of Sedbergh, 
 already celebrated as a mathematician, as mentioned in the 
 previous chapter, but still compelled by poverty to follow the 
 more lucrative profession of a general medical practitioner. 
 Sedgwick always took a singular pleasure in recording, both 
 in conversation and in writing, the circumstances under which 
 he came into the world, and his letters contain several versions 
 of them. Of these by far the most graphic and humorous 
 occurs at the end of a letter to Mr Charles Lyell of Kinnordy, 
 father of the geologist. He had been one of Mr Dawson's 
 pupils, and had written to Sedgwick urging him to draw up 
 a memoir of him, and asking for some information respecting 
 his life and writings 1 . "A fourth sheet! I had no notion 
 that I had finished a third till I tried to find a blank page. 
 Well ! as I have a blank page, I will tell you of my very first 
 
 1 The rest of the letter, dated 26 January, 1847, is printed below, pp. 61 69 
 A few details have been added from a letter to Miss F. Hicks, 28 March, 1841. 
 
46 BIRTH. 
 
 1785. acquaintance with our old Master, and I will tell it you as 
 ^t. i. nearly as I can in his own words: 'On the 2ist of March, 
 1785, I was called to attend your mother. The night was 
 tempestuous, and I had much difficulty in making my way to 
 Dent through the thick snow ; and when I got to the old 
 vicarage I found that my difficulties were not over. The 
 moment was critical ; and though you seemed anxious to 
 show your face in the world, you were for doing it in a 
 strange preposterous way.' Here he referred me laughing to 
 an early page of Tristram Shandy. 'Sol sent ' said he ' your 
 Father's servant to knock up old Margaret Burton to help me 
 to keep you in order.' She was a celebrated midwife, of 
 firmer nerves than the old mathematician. Between them 
 the work was done, and by hook or by crook, I was ushered 
 into the world at about 2 o'clock, a.m. on March 22nd, 1785. 
 I was then carried downstairs, in old Margaret's apron, 
 to the little back-parlour, where my Father was sitting in 
 . some anxiety, as he had been told that his youthful son was 
 beginning life badly, and not likely to take good ways. 
 Margaret threw back the corners of her apron and cried out : 
 ' Give you joy, Sir, give you joy ! a fine boy, Sir, as like you 
 Sir, as one pea is to another.' My Father looked earnestly 
 at me for a moment or two, kissed me, and then, turning to 
 the old midwife exclaimed : * Like me do you say, Margaret, 
 why he is as black as a toad ! ' ' Oh ! Sir ! don't speak ill of 
 your own flesh and blood, if I have any eyes in my head he 
 is as white as a lily/ she replied, much shocked, while old Mr 
 Dawson shook his sides, as much, I dare say, as he did when 
 he told me the story. To stumble on the threshold was of 
 old counted a bad sign, and what I have told you may be 
 the reason why I am sticking as a Senior Fellow without 
 getting on in the world." 
 
 Sedgwick's complexion, though not so black as to justify 
 his father's comparison, was still extremely dark. He in- 
 herited it from his mother. Mrs Burton acted as nurse to 
 young Adam for a short time, but she died when he was still 
 
CHILDHOOD. 47 
 
 quite a boy, and he lost sight of her family for many years. 1785 to 
 
 In 1840, however, an accident made him acquainted with her _. I/93 ' 
 
 JT^A., i 8. 
 
 great-granddaughter, and they soon became sworn friends on 
 the strength of their common obligations to the skill of the 
 same person 1 . 
 
 As a child, Adam was active and merry, fond of play, and 
 given to tearing his books rather than reading them. When 
 he was five years old, his godfather Mr Parker, then Master 
 of the Grammar School at Dent, gave him a new and 
 handsomely bound spelling-book, which the little fellow 
 thought too good to be torn. So he set to work, and soon 
 learnt to read it. Like his father before him, he was sent, 
 probably at a very early age, to the public grammar-school, 
 to be educated with the other boys of the Dale. Mr Parker 
 was much attached to his godson ; and in the summer of 1793, 
 when Adam was eight years old, he took him, riding behind 
 him on horseback, to visit his friends at Hesket-Newmarket in 
 Cumberland. The events of this summer made an indelible 
 impression upon Sedgwick's memory. He refers to it again 
 and again in his letters, and always with pleasure. He was 
 shown Carlisle, and remembered that at that time the old 
 walls were standing, and that he had walked all round the 
 city on the ramparts; and he spent a few days at Scaleby 
 Castle, an old place of strength about six miles from Carlisle 2 , 
 the occupier of which was Mr Fawcett, a distant cousin. 
 But the most delightful reminiscences of all occur in a letter 
 which he wrote in 1853 for the amusement of one of his 
 nieces, who had just been revisiting her birthplace, the Isle of 
 Wight. " We all delight," he says, " to revisit the scenes of 
 our childhood. Such visits produce emotions, some cheerful 
 and some sorrowful, that do our hearts good, and they 
 ought to teach us healthy lessons. I almost envy you 
 the pleasure of your visit to the sweet Island of your child- 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 23 March, 1840. 
 
 2 To Miss Fanny Hicks, 18 April, 1849. The walls of Carlisle were pulled 
 down in 1811. Life of Isaac Milner, 8vo. Cambridge, 1843, P- 453- 
 
48 VfSITS CUMBERLAND. 
 
 1793. life. When I was a child of eight years old I spent the 
 &* 8 - summer vacation at Hesket, a small village between Penrith 
 arid Carlisle. My schoolmaster took me home with him 
 during his summer holidays, and the Grand Turk does not 
 think himself half so great a man as I then thought myself. 
 Exactly thirty years afterwards, I landed one Saturday 
 evening at Hesket, during my geological tour in 1823. The 
 old man who kept the Inn when I was a child was still 
 living ; and I remembered him by this token, namely, that 
 he had pulled my ears because I had, with a lad older than 
 myself, caught his turkey-cock, and pulled some beautiful 
 feathers out of its tail. I quite rejoiced to see the old man. I 
 forgave the ear-pulling which I had deserved, and he had quite 
 forgotten my theft of the feathers. Next day I went to church. 
 A woman opened the door of a pew, and when I looked round 
 I saw that it was the very seat I used to sit in during my visit 
 in 1793 the year the king of France was beheaded, you 
 know. Of course I knew no one, but I observed that the 
 well-looking middle-aged woman who had received me into 
 her pew went to the house where my old school-master lived. 
 So I followed her, and she proved to be the sister of my 
 master a young woman who in 1793 was very kind to me. 
 I was very sentimental all that day, and in the evening drove 
 to Penrith 1 ." 
 
 When they got home to Dent, Mr Parker told Mr Sedgwick 
 how much everybody had been struck by his son's powers of 
 observation. 
 
 Soon after this, Mr Parker left Dent 2 , and Mr Sedgwick 
 was solicited by the Governors of the school to undertake the 
 Mastership, with one or more under-masters to assist him. 
 After some hesitation he consented, and taught his own boys 
 along with his other scholars. About Adam's progress tradi- 
 tion is silent ; but as, in after years, his knowledge of Greek 
 
 1 To the same, 27 July, 1853. 
 
 2 In 1812 Sedgwick went to stay with him "near Macclesfield ". To Rev. W. 
 Ainger, 14 February, 1812. 
 
BOYHOOD. 49 
 
 and Latin was superior to that of most men as distinguished 179310 
 
 in mathematics as himself, it may be safely assumed that he ,, . 
 
 9 At. 8 16. 
 
 worked hard ; and that he had been well grounded, in the 
 first instance by his godfather, who was a clever man, and 
 afterwards by his father, who is said to have been a very good 
 scholar, and whose early experience under Dr Bennet would 
 now stand him in good stead. 
 
 It is an old story that the boy is father to the man ; and 
 it is interesting to find that the portrait which family tradition 
 has drawn of Adam Sedgwick as a boy would be true had it 
 been drawn of him when he was grown up. He did not give 
 any special promise of future intellectual power, but he was 
 remarkable, we are told, for a frank, genial disposition ; he 
 was full of fun and high spirits ; he delighted in rambling 
 over the fells and climbing the hills which bound his native 
 dale ; his powers of observation were great ; and he had a 
 plentiful share of sound practical common-sense. He was 
 also distinguished for undeviating truthfulness in all that 
 he said and did. Among his brothers and sisters and school- 
 fellows, if Adam said a thing was so, there was no further 
 question about the matter. " I almost lived out of doors,"- 
 he said in conversation with Mr J. W. Salter 1 " at fourteen 
 years old I was trusted with a gun, and coursed over the 
 heathy moors the whole autumn day. I believe I was a 
 tolerably good shot. I was a fisherman too at this age, and 
 was particularly careful to obtain the exact feathers which 
 were considered the most killing flies for trout, grayling, etc. 
 Nor, though I ought to confess it with some reluctance, 
 save that I never had an unworthy selfish thought in the 
 matter beyond the joy of sport was I quite free from the 
 
 1 Mr Salter accompanied Sedgwick to North Wales in 1842 and 1843, and 
 afterwards prepared under his direction A Catalogue of the collection of Cambrian 
 and Silurian Fossils contained in the Geological Museum of the University of 
 Cambridge, 410. Cambridge, 1873. While engaged upon this work he persuaded 
 Sedgwick to dictate to him a few reminiscences of his early life, apparently with 
 the intention of preparing a complete biography; but ill-health and other en- 
 gagements prevented the completion of the task. 
 
 S. I. 4 
 
5 o RECOLLECTIONS OF 1745. 
 
 I793 to crime of poaching. Old and I were great friends, and 
 
 l8oi- many a night have I met him by appointment to try our 
 ' flies, and our snares for rabbits, hares, and pheasants. I 
 believe he always had the game ; the sport was quite enough 
 for me. But to this day I like to hear the click of a fowling- 
 piece; and, as I pass a mountain burn, I can scarcely help 
 speculating in what holes the trout may be lying. 
 
 " But I did not quite forget the rocks and the fossils. 
 One of my early employments on a half-holiday when nutting 
 in Dent woods, was, as I well remember, collecting the con- 
 spicuous fossils of the mountain-limestone on either side of 
 the valley. It was not till many years afterwards that I 
 understood its structure, but these early rambles no doubt 
 aided to establish a taste for out-door observations." 
 
 These geological reminiscences must be received with 
 a certain caution, partly because Mr Salter was not suffici- 
 ently well acquainted with the district to follow Sedgwick's 
 descriptions of it, partly because even the most truthful of 
 men cannot help imparting to events which happened in their 
 early years the colouring derived from fuller study at a later 
 period ; still, as Sedgwick could hardly have drawn upon his 
 imagination, even in extreme old age, for the whole story, the 
 record has been thought worth preserving in this place. 
 
 As might be expected from the recollections of Dent in 
 former days which have been printed in the previous chapter, 
 he loved to talk with the old statesmen, and to hear their 
 stories of the Scotch incursions, and of the rebellion of 1745. 
 Some of them, his father among the number, had been at 
 Kendal in that eventful year, and seen the disorderly retreat 
 of the remnant of the Pretender's army. Two incidents of 
 the '45 can fortunately be reproduced almost in the words 
 in which Sedgwick used to tell them. 
 
 "When I was a boy there was living at Dent a certain 
 Matthew Potts, whom we lads looked up to as a hero, because, 
 when he was an apprentice, he and another lad ran away 
 from their masters, and followed the fortunes of the Scottish 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE, 
 
 army on their retreat northward. They were witnesses of 1793 to 
 the battle of Clifton Moor near Penrith, which Scott has ^ g _' i6 
 described in Waverley, and Potts carried off from the battle- 
 field a broadsword, a target, and a tortoise-shell comb stolen 
 from the body of a young Highland officer. The young 
 scamps lived by milking the cows they found upon the 
 moors ; and they grew so familiar with scenes of battle that 
 they boasted of having set a dead Highlander astride of a 
 stone-wall with a pebble in his mouth to keep it open." 
 
 "When the Highlanders marched through Kendal they 
 were very badly shod, and laid hands on all the boots and 
 shoes they could find. One of them went into the stables of 
 the King's Arms and appropriated a pair of boots belonging 
 to the ostler, who was out of the way. As the thief was 
 lagging behind his comrades to put on his ill-gotten spoils, 
 he was overtaken by the owner of the boots, a truculent 
 fellow, who ran him through with a pitchfork and killed him 
 on the spot. My father, who was a boy of ten years old at 
 the time, knew the ostler well, and had often heard the story. 
 I think the histories record that a soldier of the Duke of 
 Perth's regiment met with his death at Kendal, but say 
 nothing of the manner of it 1 ." 
 
 The old men of the village were delighted to have the 
 bright boy as a listener, and used to speak of him afterwards 
 to his father as ' a lad aboon common '. We can readily 
 imagine that "Adam o' the Parson's," as he was called in 
 the dialect of Dent, soon became a leader of the lads of his 
 own age ; but the only records of his youthful prowess that 
 have come down to us are both connected with bonfires. 
 The first of these incidents befel in 1798, when Sedgwick 
 was thirteen. " I well remember," he wrote in 1863, " the day 
 that brought to my native valley the news of the battle of the 
 Nile, and we contrived (for the schoolmaster gave us a 
 holiday) to pile up such a heap of turf, sticks, and tar-barrels, 
 
 1 These stories were told by Sedgwick, about a fortnight before his death, to 
 W. Aldis Wright, M.A. now Fellow and Vice-Master of Trinity College. 
 
 4-2 
 
52 VISITS DURHAM. 
 
 1793 to that we had nearly set the village of Dent on fire 1 ." The 
 *' other was an annual celebration. In 1871, having occasion to 
 ' write a letter to Canon Selwyn on the fifth of November, he 
 began as follows : " This was, in my younger days at Dent, a 
 day of joy a holiday, a hunt, and a bonfire. I was busy, 
 with my schoolfellows, a good part of the day in gathering 
 logs of wood, collecting turf, and breaking hedges, with 
 loyalty to King George, and detestation of the Pope and 
 Jesuits. We clubbed from our poor purses, and sturdily 
 begged of those who had a little to spare, to raise a stock to 
 purchase tar-barrels each of which cost about eight-pence 
 and finally used to put old Dent into such a blaze that there 
 was a serious risk of our turning the village itself into a 
 bonfire 2 ." 
 
 An interesting anecdote respecting this period has been 
 preserved by family tradition. When Adam was about 
 twelve years old, the conveyance of a farm in Dent to the 
 trustees of a charity had to be executed by some gentlemen 
 who resided in the north of the county of Durham. There- 
 upon a formidable difficulty presented itself. By what means 
 were the indispensable signatures to be obtained, and the 
 deeds brought back to Dent in safety ? Said one of the 
 trustees : " If anybody can be depended upon, it is Adam 
 Sedgwick; and I, for one, am quite willing to entrust the 
 deeds to his care, if his father will let him go." Mr Sedgwick, 
 to the boy's great delight, made no objection ; and mounted 
 on his father's mare " Bet ", Adam rode off all alone, with 
 the precious deeds secured in saddle-bags. He came back at 
 the end of a week with the deeds in safety, all properly signed 
 and sealed. 
 
 Such an expedition as this, taken together with the sense 
 of importance conferred by it, would have gratified any boy 
 of spirit and intelligence. But, keenly as Adam admired 
 new scenes and fresh objects of interest, we do not hear that 
 
 1 To Dean Trench, 21 April, 1863. 
 
 - To Canon Selwyn, 5 November, 1871. 
 
LOVE OF HOME. 53 
 
 he was fired with any special ambition to leave his native 1793 to 
 
 dale, and try his fortune in the great world beyond it. A few 
 
 ./hit. 8 10. 
 
 years later, when he had tasted the sweets of University life, 
 he was apt to find Dent somewhat dull ; and in middle life he 
 had other objects of interest, and perhaps thought less of his 
 home than of those who lived there. But, when he became 
 an old man, all his boyish fondness for the place returned to 
 him, and he has left many a charming description of its 
 scenery, and of his own feelings towards it. Here is one, 
 written from Dent to Lady Augusta Stanley, 3 July, 1865, 
 v/hich recalls his young days there with singular vividness. 
 
 " I wish I could, for a minute or two, transport you to this 
 place. Not so much that you might look at my rugged old 
 face, as that you might gladden your eyes by gazing over the 
 sweet scenery of this rich pastoral valley. The home scenery 
 is delicious ; and glowing at this moment (6.30 a.m.) with the 
 richest light of heaven ; and from the door of this old home 
 of my childhood I can look down the valley, and see, blue in 
 the distance, the crests of the Lake Mountains which rear 
 their heads near the top of Windermere. All around me is 
 endeared by the sweet remembrances of early life. For here 
 I spent my childhood and my early boyhood, when my 
 father and mother and my three sisters and three brothers 
 were all living in this old house. Our home was humble ; 
 but we were a merry crew ; and we were rich in health, and 
 rich in brotherly love. Forgive me for going on at this rate. 
 I think you are a lover of rural scenery ; and indeed when I 
 return to Dent I feel again as if I were in my true home and 
 I quite naturally talk and think of the joys of boyhood, and 
 begin ' to babble of green fields '." 
 
 Fond as Sedgwick was of his brothers and sisters collect- 
 ively, his chosen friend and companion was his sister Isabella, 
 who, it will be remembered, was just two years younger than 
 himself. She died in 1823, and when we come to that part of 
 his life, we shall see how passionately he mourned her loss. 
 Nor did his sorrow diminish as time went on. Throughout 
 
54 HIS SISTER ISABELLA. 
 
 1801. his life he cherished her memory with the tenderest affection, 
 JEt. 16. an d his letters of sympathy to friends in trouble frequently 
 contain allusions to her, and to their early days together. For 
 instance, in 1849, twenty-six years after her death, he wrote 
 to a lady who had just lost her own sister : " I can feel for 
 your great sorrow. I once lost a sister, the dearest of all my 
 sisters, and the darling companion of all my early years. 
 She was a woman of most placid temper, yet of great personal 
 courage. We had our little squabbles about our toys when 
 children ; but after we reached our teens I think I never heard 
 so much as a word from her lips that was not spoken in 
 kindness. Her death was a grievous blow to me, and I never 
 visit my native hills without being reminded of her at every 
 turn 1 ." And again, writing in 1864 to the mother of one of 
 his numerous godchildren: "My especial love to my dear god- 
 child. I rejoice to know that she is a jolly tomboy. That 
 shows that she has good spirits, good health, and the right 
 use of her limbs. I had a sister, not quite a year younger 
 than myself 2 . When a young girl she was my never-failing 
 companion ; and I taught her, in our wild valley of Dent, 
 all sorts of boys' tricks. For example, she would run like a 
 monkey up a tree to peep into a magpie's nest. The effect of 
 this training gave her excellent robust health and it matured 
 her sweet natural temper and when she grew up she was a 
 mild, gently feminine, unselfish person, beloved by everyone. 
 May my dear god-daughter have health and temper like that 
 of my beloved tomboy and my darling sister, and may God 
 bless her with a longer life 3 ." 
 
 When Sedgwick was sixteen he was sent to the Grammar- 
 School at Sedbergh, the mastership of which was then in the 
 gift of St John's College, Cambridge. At that time the post 
 was held by the Rev. William Stevens, a former fellow of that 
 
 1 To Mrs Horner, 14 March, 1849. 
 
 2 The account of Sedgwick 's brothers and sisters given in the previous 
 chapter, which has been verified from the parish-registers of Dent, shows that his 
 memory was slightly at fault here. 
 
 3 To Mrs Martin, 26 February, 1864. 
 

 
 tl 
 
 sp 
 
SCHOOL LIFE AT SEDBERGH. 57 
 
 house, who had been fifteenth wrangler in 1791. As far as 1801 to 
 mathematics went he must therefore have possessed sufficient 
 
 JEt. 16 
 knowledge for his position ; but the school did not flourish 19. 
 
 under his rule. Indeed it has been whispered that he neglected 
 his duties, and that "for years together he had the school 
 locked up, teaching in his own house a few boys, hardly ever 
 amounting to ten 1 ." Mr Sedgwick, however, must have had 
 confidence in his abilities, for he sent all his sons, one after 
 another, to be taught by him, and the two families were on 
 terms of close intimacy. Adam describes him as "an excellent 
 scholar, and a good domestic and social man 2 ." Perhaps he 
 took "more pains with him than he did with others ; perhaps 
 his social qualities endeared him to his pupils. For it should 
 be mentioned that he had been for a short time a chaplain in 
 the Royal Navy, and had been present at Lord Howe's victory 
 off Cape St Vincent in 1794. In those days of martial enthu- 
 siasm such a man would appear little short of a hero in the 
 eyes of boys, especially if he entertained them with stories 
 of his naval experiences. Indeed it is not improbable that 
 Sedgwick's lifelong interest in all things naval may be traced 
 to the influence of his old schoolmaster. 
 
 Discipline was not strict at Sedbergh School. The boys 
 boarded at the neighbouring farm-houses, and when their 
 work was done, few inquiries were made as to the employment 
 of their time. Half holidays were generally spent in fishing 
 in the Rawthey or the Lune, or in rambles over the mountains. 
 The farm-house called "the Hill", where Sedgwick boarded, 
 along with three other boys, stands a little to the north of the 
 town, just under Winder. As the woodcut shows, it has been 
 but slightly altered from the aspect it bore in his day. The 
 farmer was a quaker named Edmund Foster, a near connexion 
 of the Fosters of Hebblethwaite Hall, who were great friends 
 
 1 History of the Parish and Grammar School of Sedbergh , Yorkshire ; by 
 A. E. Platt. 8vo. Lond. 1876, p. 159. 
 
 2 Supplement, p. 65. Writing to Ainger, 14 Feb. 1812, Sedgwick speaks of 
 Mr Stevens' "zeal for the interest of his pupils"; but adds "there is something 
 about him which I neither like nor understand ". 
 
 
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. 
 
 1801 to of the Sedgwicks. "We were treated", Adam has recorded, 
 
 * 4 ' " with infinite kindness by the family, and our happy freedom 
 
 19. made us the envy of our schoolfellows 1 ." The lodgers were 
 
 of course obliged to accommodate their hours to those of their 
 
 host ; and it was to this training that Adam attributed the 
 
 habit of early rising which he never abandoned 2 . 
 
 The schoolhouse, erected in the last century, has not 
 
 Door of the school-house at Sedbergh. 
 
 been materially altered since Sedgwick's time. It is an 
 oblong stone building in two floors, about sixty feet long 
 by twenty-two feet wide. The west door, long disused, and. 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 55. 
 
 2 To Dr Livingstone, 1865. 
 
SCHOOLFELLOWS. 59 
 
 blocked by slabs of stone, is a picturesque example of the 1801 to 
 classical style prevalent in the early part of the last century 1 . * 4 ' 
 The date, 1716, probably indicates the completion of the 19. 
 existing building. The lower floor is now fitted up as a 
 chapel, and the upper floor 
 as a library and reading- , 
 
 room. The words A. SEDG- /V O . E D> G Vv/fCff t$W, 
 WICK, 1803, are cut on a 
 stone at the south-west ex- 
 ternal corner. The inscription was no doubt intended to 
 commemorate his leaving the school, but whether it was cut 
 by himself, or by some other person, is not now known. 
 
 Of Sedgwick's schoolfellows at Sedbergh two at least must 
 be specially commemorated, William Ainger, and Miles Bland. 
 The former, who in University standing was his senior by one 
 year, was the chief friend of his early life. They lived in close 
 intimacy at Cambridge, and afterwards, though they met but 
 seldom, corresponded with tolerable regularity. Mr Ainger, 
 after holding several pieces of preferment, became Principal 
 of the Theological College at St Bees, and Canon of Chester. 
 He died rather suddenly in 1840, attended by his old 
 friend. Mr Bland became a Fellow of St John's College, and 
 during his residence at Cambridge, he and Sedgwick probably 
 saw a good deal of each other. On the occasion of the death 
 of their old Master, Mr Stevens, in 1819*, they raised, by their 
 joint exertions, a large sum of money for the benefit of his 
 widow and children, for whom he had neglected to make any 
 provision. But their friendship was never very close, and 
 after 1823, when Mr Bland accepted the living of Lilley, in 
 Hertfordshire, and left the University, it ceased altogether. 
 
 Adam Sedgwick's school days were prolonged, we do not 
 know why, until a later period than was usual at that time, 
 for he was not sent to Cambridge until 1804, when he was 
 
 1 The beautiful drawing from which the woodcut was taken is due to the kind- 
 ness of Edward G. Paley, Esq., of Lancaster, Architect. 
 
 2 Mr Stevens died 9 November, 1819, aged 50. 
 
60 CHOICE OF A COLLEGE. 
 
 1801 to well on his way to twenty. In the autumn of the previous 
 1 4 ' year a council was held to determine the particular college at 
 19. which he should be entered. It was composed of his father, 
 Mr Stevens, and their common friend the Rev. D. M. Peacock, 
 then Vicar of Sedbergh, who had been Senior Wrangler in 
 1791, and subsequently a Fellow of Trinity College. Boys 
 educated at Sedbergh were usually entered at St John's 
 College, because on that foundation there were then three 
 Fellowships and ten Scholarships appropriated to the School ; 
 and Mr Stevens urged that his two cleverest boys, Bland and 
 Sedgwick, should both be entered there. But Mr Peacock 
 held a different opinion. "Bland", he said to Mr Sedgwick, 
 "is a better mathematician than your son. He will always 
 " beat him in examinations, and, afterwards, if it comes to a 
 " question of a Sedbergh Fellowship, your son will not be the 
 " successful candidate." Mr Sedgwick assented, and suggested 
 his own college, Catharine Hall. "No!" said Mr Peacock, 
 " Adam is a clever lad, let him go to my college, Trinity, and 
 take his chance 1 ." And so it came to pass that he was entered 
 as a sizar at Trinity College, 18 November, 1803, under the 
 popular tutor Mr Jones 2 . 
 
 During the summer-months of 1804 he became a pupil of 
 Mr John Dawson, the surgeon-mathematician of Sedbergh, 
 who had given similar instruction to his father just forty-eight 
 
 1 This account has been communicated by Miss Isabella Sedgwick, and there- 
 fore represents family tradition. Sedgwick himself gave a different version of the 
 reason why he was not entered at St Catharine's College, which we find stated 
 as follows in a diary kept by the Rev. George Elwes Corrie, B.D., then Fellow 
 and Tutor of that College, and afterwards Master of Jesus College : "16 June, 
 1843. I met Professor Sedgwick in the Library, who, among other things, told 
 me that he was anxious to have been admitted to our College, in consequence 
 of his Father having been of the Society, but that owing to the disputes in 
 College at that time the Master did not allow any admissions." A reference to 
 the Cambridge Calendar for 1803 shows that the offices of Tutor, Bursar, Dean, 
 Lecturer, and Steward were all vacant, and that there was only a single under- 
 graduate on the boards. The Master was the Rev. Joseph Procter, D.D. (1799 
 1845). 
 
 " 18 Nov. 1803. Admissus est sizator Adamus films Ricardi Sedgwick de 
 Dent in Com. Ebor. e Schola apud Sedbergh in eodem Com. sub praesidio Mag. 
 Stevens, ann. nat. 19. Mag. Jones tutore." Admission Book of Trinity College. 
 
MR JOHN DA WSON. 61 
 
 years before. It has been already related that Mr Dawson 1804. 
 had been called upon to use his skill as a surgeon to usher ^- '9- 
 Adam Sedgwick into the world ; and now, by a singular 
 coincidence, he was to use his skill in another department to 
 fit him for his entrance into the University. 
 
 This seems to be the fitting place to give some account of 
 this remarkable man, whose career affords one of the most 
 striking instances on record of self-help, of indomitable 
 perseverance triumphing over difficulties which could hardly 
 have been surmounted by anyone, unless he had belonged, 
 as Sedgwick said, " to the very highest order of intellectual 
 greatness." 
 
 Sedgwick had a warm affection for Mr Dawson, and has 
 left two accounts of him : one in the letter to Mr Lyell, from 
 which a single passage has been already quoted 1 ; the other in 
 the Supplement' 2 ' to the Memorial. These accounts, as might 
 be expected, travel over much of the same ground, especially 
 when describing Mr Dawson's early struggles. An attempt 
 has therefore been made, in the following pages, to combine 
 them into a continuous narrative, of which the letter to Mr 
 Lyell forms the basis. 
 
 " The outline of Mr Dawson's early life I will try to give 
 you in a very few words. He was the son of a very poor 
 statesman in Garsdale 3 , with perhaps not more than 10 or 
 12 a year, and his vocation was to look after the paternal 
 flock of sheep on the mountains. In this situation he remained, 
 I believe, till he was more than twenty years of age. But he 
 was a forgetful shepherd, and was living in an ideal world of 
 his own. He had no money, no friend, and could not there- 
 fore buy books. But he begged them, or borrowed them, or 
 invented them, for he actually worked a system of Conic 
 Sections out of his own brain. Some small sums of money 
 he gained by teaching, and in 1756 three young men went to 
 
 1 See above, p. 45. 2 Supplement, pp. 49 54. 
 
 3 He was born at Rangill Farm in Garsdale, and, as he was baptized 25 February, 
 1734, was probably born in January. 
 
62 MR JOHN DA WSON. 
 
 1804. read with him before they entered the University. My father, 
 t- *9- who often spoke of the Garsdale summer as one of very great 
 happiness and profit, was one of them ; Dr Haygarth 1 , after- 
 wards a physician at Leeds, and in his day a man well known, 
 was one of this happy number ; the third took his degree at 
 St John's College, Cambridge, and afterwards had a living 
 in Leicestershire. This was perhaps the first dawn of the 
 youthful shepherd's fortunes 2 . 
 
 "Soon after this triumvirate went to the University, 
 young Dawson was taken as a kind of assistant he was too 
 old to be a regular apprentice by Mr Bracker an eminent 
 surgeon of Lancaster, a man of science and good sense, who 
 had a name among the northern worthies of last century. 
 There he remained several years, compounding medicines, 
 solving crusty problems on an inverted mortar, and learning 
 the duties of his profession as a surgeon. His condition was, 
 during this time, much improved. He had now no lack of 
 books, or want of sympathy ; and he rapidly made that great 
 and generous progress which marks an intellect of first-rate 
 power, when urged onwards in its work by a never-tiring will. 
 Before long he was capable of holding consultations with 
 good professional men, and of measuring weapons with mathe- 
 matical analysts of the highest name in England. But he 
 had only stolen hours for his favourite studies, as his master 
 I think I may say his master was in great and wide 
 practice. As soon as he thought himself fit for the duties 
 
 1 John Haygarth, M.D. of Leeds, was born in Garsdale in 1740. He was 
 distantly related to Dawson. 
 
 2 Professor Pryme, who read with Dawson during the summer of 1799, gives a 
 somewhat different account of his early years : " He was the son of a yeoman in 
 Garsdale. He had availed himself of some books belonging to his brother, an 
 excise officer, to gain a knowledge of arithmetic, and of the rudiments of mathe- 
 matics, and then became an itinerant schoolmaster ; for many parts of that 
 mountainous district were not sufficiently peopled to maintain one capable of 
 teaching anything beyond mere reading and writing. He stayed two or three 
 months at a time in one house, by arrangement, teaching the children of the family 
 and neighbourhood, and then removing to another. In the meantime he was 
 pursuing his own mathematical studies." Autobiographic Recollections of George 
 Pryme. 8vo. Lond. 1870, p. 29. 
 
MR JOHN DA WSON. 63 
 
 of his profession, before he had attended any regular aca- 1804. 
 demic medical course, and without any medical diploma, &*. 19. 
 he became surgeon and apothecary at Sedbergh. There 
 he remained about a year living on a crust, and saving 
 every farthing he could scrape together, till he was pos- 
 sessed of nearly ^100. This sum he 'stitched up in the 
 lining of his waistcoat' I am telling you his own words, 
 which I have more than once heard from his mouth when I 
 was a schoolboy at Sedbergh. Off he set, staff in hand, and 
 walked to Edinburgh. There he lived, in a cheap garret, 
 upon a sum so incredibly small, that I dare not trust my 
 memory with the mention of it. 
 
 "While making way with the medical cycle, and en- 
 countering a formidable range of severer studies, he lived 
 with the sternest self-denial. But no economy could save his 
 funds from wasting ; and the external sinews of his move- 
 ments were on the very point of failing, when once again he 
 packed up his whole stock, took his good staff in hand, and 
 strode back to Sedbergh. He had then no difficulty in meeting 
 the common wants of life. The country was longing for his 
 return, and professional practice flowed in upon him. But he 
 still lived with great self-denial, and by using all means 
 within his power, both of head and of hand, he amassed a sum 
 I believe about three times as great as that with which he 
 walked to Edinburgh. 
 
 " Again he left his native mountains, and went, partly on 
 foot, partly I believe in a stage-waggon, to London, with all 
 his gold stitched, as before, in small parcels under his waist- 
 coat. 'But I could not', said he, 'live as I had done at 
 Edinburgh.' Neither could he live in the same retirement, 
 for the sound of his name had passed beyond the Dales, and 
 several men of science sought his personal acquaintance. 
 Among the rest he mentioned, I think, the late celebrated Dr 
 Waring, Lucasian Professor at Cambridge 1 . 'My money 
 
 1 Edward Waring was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1760 to his 
 death in 1798. He proceeded M.D. in 1767. 
 
64 MR JOHN DA WSON. 
 
 1804. went from me', said he, 'faster than I wished, but I got 
 i. 19. through one good course of surgical and medical lectures. 5 
 In short, he became a regular member of his profession ; 
 obtained a diploma ; and then returned on foot to Sedbergh. 
 His course was now clear, and he had won a good position for 
 himself. He married, and had one daughter 1 , whom you 
 must well remember ; settled in his own house, and had the 
 command of the best medical practice in all the neighbouring 
 Dales ; and sometimes, to his sorrow, his duties carried him 
 far beyond them. 
 
 " He still went on with his favourite studies, and his mind 
 hardly seemed to have a pause. It was said of him, perhaps 
 in jest, that he could solve a problem better when riding up 
 the Dales on his saddle than when sitting at his private desk. 
 At any rate he made himself master of every standard mathe- 
 matical work known to the scientific literature of this country, 
 and was counted among the very first analysts of his day. 
 This was not the mere admiring gossip of a country town ; 
 its truth is proved by various profound essays on contested 
 points of Physical Astronomy, into which he was led, not 
 through vain-glory, but from the simple love of truth. 
 
 " The rest you know, I think, as well as I. After several 
 years of honourable, and most successful, practice, in a wild 
 and poor country, and amidst a thousand interruptions to his 
 severer studies he gained a small fortune and a great repu- 
 tation. Cambridge undergraduates flocked to him every 
 summer. About 1790 he entirely relinquished his practice as 
 a surgeon, and devoted himself exclusively to mathematical 
 teaching 2 . Between 1781 and 1794 he counted eight Senior 
 
 1 The Sedbergh Registers show that John Dawson married Ann Thirnbeck, 3 
 March, 1767. Their daughter Mary was born 15 January, 1768. Mrs Dawson 
 died 21 January 1812; her daughter, unmarried, 18 July, 1843. 
 
 2 The expense of attending Mr Dawson's class was not great. We have seen a 
 letter written by Dr Butler, Headmaster of Harrow and Dean of Peterborough, 
 who became his pupil in 1792. The letter is dated 17 June in that year. The 
 writer, after describing his journey from London to Sedbergh (which began on a 
 Tuesday at 7 a.m. and ended on the following Saturday at n p.m.), mentions that 
 Mr Dawson charged 5^. per week for instruction ; and that he would have to pay 
 
MR JOHN DA WSON. 65 
 
 Wranglers among his pupils. In 1797, 1798, 1800, and 1807 1804. 
 the Senior Wranglers were also Dawsonians 1 . I only knew &* 1 9- 
 him in his decline ; but he continued, I believe, to have pupils 
 till about 1810". 
 
 " I became a pupil of our late Master in 1804, a few months 
 before I entered at Cambridge ; and at that time he was full 
 70 years of age. His intellect was then as grand as it had 
 ever been, but his memory had begun to fail. I remember a 
 singular example of this in the vacation of 1806, when I was 
 reading with him some of the later sections of the first book 
 of the Principia. You remember his 'Peripatetic' mode of 
 teaching. He came to the back of my chair. * Here is a 
 proposition', said I, 'but no proof, and I think it is by no 
 means self-evident.' He looked at the proposition for a 
 minute, and then took his pencil and worked out a kind of 
 mongrel proof, half analytical, and half geometrical, on a slate. 
 This was done in about ten minutes. Judge of my surprise ! 
 On turning over the leaf I found Newton's proof on the next 
 page ! I called Mr Dawson back, and showed it to him. He 
 was as much surprised as myself, and said, with an expression 
 of sorrow, that he had gone over this section many hundred 
 times, and ought not to have forgotten the proposition. ' But', 
 he added, ' I am beginning to have an old man's memory/ 
 
 at the King's Arms Inn "the best in the town" is. 6d. per week for an excellent 
 room ; for dinner lod. a day, and for breakfast id. "Dinner" he says "consisted 
 of a leg of mutton and potatoes, both hot ; ham and tongue, gooseberry tarts, 
 cheese, butter, and bread: pretty well for lod." The letter is printed in The 
 Sedberghian for December, 1881. 
 
 1 The Senior Wranglers of these four years were: 1797, John Hudson, Trinity, 
 afterwards Fellow and Tutor; 1798, Thomas Sowerby, Trinity, afterwards Fellow 
 and Tutor of Queens' College ; 1800, James Inman, St John's, afterwards Mathe- 
 matical Professor in the Royal Naval College; 1807, Henry Gipps, St John's. 
 The previous eight cannot all be identified, but the following may be safely claimed 
 for Dawson: 1786, John Bell, Trinity; 1792, John Palmer, Professor of Arabic 
 on Sir T. Adams' foundation; 1793, Thomas Harrison, Queens'; 1794, George 
 Butler, Sidney. 
 
 2 There is a slight error here. Miss Ann Sedgwick writes to her brother 25 
 July, 1812 : "James is attending Mr Dawson during Mr Stevens' vacation. It is 
 his last opportunity, as Mr Dawson takes no more pupils after this summer. He 
 has at present fourteen. " 
 
 s.i. 5 
 
66 MR JOHN DA WSON. 
 
 1804. "About twelve or thirteen years afterwards, I called on 
 
 *-. J 9- him during one of my visits to my native valley of Dent He 
 seemed delighted to see me, roused himself, talked of Cam- 
 bridge, of his own early studies, of our change of system, of 
 some new work of analysis, and especially of the Calculus of 
 Variations, with which, he said, he had just begun to be 
 acquainted when his mind began to fail, and he was by old 
 age made incapable of any new and severe study. ' I have 
 sometimes grieved/ he said, ' but perhaps it is ungrateful of 
 me, that I did not know this powerful implement of discovery 
 in early life. I thought that I might have grasped it, and 
 then tried my hand with some of the great problems of physical 
 astronomy ; but now I am a feeble old man, and my days are 
 nearly numbered.' While this conversation was going on, 
 with no small animation on his part to the utter amazement 
 of his daughter and myself, for she told me afterwards that she 
 had hardly heard him talk collectedly for many weeks, and I 
 expected only to see a venerable intellectual ruin, and bid 
 him a sorrowful adieu for ever in came some neighbours and 
 interrupted him. He became silent at once. They went 
 away in ten minutes, and I then tried again to arouse him, 
 and lead him back to the subjects on which he had dwelt with 
 so much energy and apparent delight. But all in vain. He 
 had forgotten every syllable of our conversation, and was 
 become again a mere dotard. I left him with most oppressive 
 feelings of admiration and sorrow, and I never saw his face 
 again. 
 
 " Such is my outline, but I have given it you in more 
 words than I first intended. He published one or two good 
 mathematical tracts in the Manchester Memoirs 1 , which, as you 
 well know, have become famous as the vehicle of Dalton's 2 
 
 1 This is a mistake. Dawson wrote no papers in the Manchester Memoirs. 
 Sedgwick was probably thinking of some letters by him in Mutton's Miscellanea 
 Mathematica, signed " Wadson," in which he attacked a theory advanced by the 
 Rev. C. Wildbore, On the velocity of water issuing from a vessel in motion. 
 
 2 John Dalton, of Manchester, F.R.S., Chemist and natural philosopher, 
 born 1766, died 1844. 
 
MR JOHN DA WSON. 67 
 
 great chemical generalisations. He was engaged in a contro- 1804. 
 versy with that strange but clever mathematical bear Emerson 1 . ^- J 9- 
 Thomas Simpson 2 had shown, in an analytical investigation, 
 that Newton had made a slip in his great problem of Precession. 
 Spite of this blunder it is one of Newton's very greatest 
 triumphs. Emerson worshipped Newton, and abused every 
 other son of man. So on principle he opened a foul-mouthed 
 volley on poor Thomas Simpson. Dawson replied by sending 
 an entirely independent analytical investigation of the same 
 great problem, which gave a result identical with that of 
 Simpson, at the same time modestly pointing out the slip in 
 Newton's demonstration. This produced a volley of abuse 
 and nothing better, from his opponent, and so the matter 
 dropped. 
 
 " At a later period Mr Dawson wrote an excellent memoir 
 on certain problems in the Lunar Theory, in reply to a 
 geometrical essay on the same subject by Matthew Stewart 
 (father of the celebrated Dugald Stewart), of Edinburgh. 
 Our old tutor proved to demonstration that purely geometrical 
 methods must in many approximations necessarily fail, and in 
 nearly all must be unsatisfactory, inasmuch as they do not 
 give us any certain data as to the value of the terms left out 
 in the approximation. This controversy was carried on in the 
 pure love of truth, and in a most excellent spirit. Dawson 
 had the entire victory, and his tract procured him the personal 
 friendship of some of the leading Edinburgh philosophers 3 . 
 
 1 William Emerson, mathematician, born 1701, died 1781. 
 
 2 Thomas Simpson, F.R.S., mathematician, born 1710, died 1761. 
 
 3 In 1763 Mr Stewart published an essay on the "Sun's Distance", which he 
 made out to be far in excess of previous estimations of it. Dr Chalmers (s. v. 
 Stewart) says that " even among astronomers, it was not every one who could 
 judge in a matter of such difficult discussion. Accordingly, it was not till about 
 five years after the publication of the 'Sun's Distance' that there appeared a 
 pamphlet, under the title of Four Propositions, intended to point out certain errors 
 in Dr Stewart's investigation, which had given a result much greater than the 
 truth." After describing the nature of these errors, Dr Chalmers adds: "And it 
 is but justice to acknowledge that, besides being just in the points already mentioned, 
 they [the Four Propositions} are very ingenious, and written with much modesty 
 and good temper. The author, who at first concealed his name, but afterwards 
 
 52 
 
68 MR JOHN DA WSON. 
 
 1804. After this, he was visited at Sedbergh by Playfair 1 , Lord 
 t. 19. Webb Seymour, and Lord Brougham. 
 
 " The pamphlet you inquire after was written, I believe, 
 sometime between 1780 and 1790, in reply to some of the 
 published doctrines of Priestley in his tract on Philosophical 
 Necessity. Dawson thought the doctrine of immoral tendency, 
 and not true. He attacked it with firmness, but with his 
 usual calm temper. Priestley replied, also in a good spirit, 
 and ever afterwards spoke of Dawson in terms of respect 
 and admiration 2 . 
 
 "Our old master was a firm believer, and a good sober 
 practical Christian of the old school. His moral influence 
 was felt by all near him, but he loved a good story, and told 
 his rough adventures among his country patients with infinite 
 humour. I have, however, no time to tell you any of them 
 now. His sphere of usefulness was limited. The wonder is 
 that he could do anything, circumstanced as he was, to make 
 himself a name. On the whole I think him a man belonging 
 to the very highest order of intellectual greatness. 
 
 " I knew him well in his honoured old age, for I was his 
 
 consented to its being made public, was Mr Dawson, a surgeon at Sedbergh in 
 Yorkshire, and one of the most ingenious mathematicians and philosophers which 
 this country at that time possessed. " 
 
 1 John Playfair, mathematician and natural philosopher, of Edinburgh : born 
 1749, died 1819. 
 
 2 Thomas Priestley published, in 1777, a pamphlet entitled The Doctrine of 
 Philosophical Necessity. Dawson's reply was first published anonymously in 
 1781: The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity briefly invalidated, ^\Q. 1781. An 
 answer appeared in The Monthly Review or Literary Journal for July, 1781 
 (p. 66), but Dawson's name is not mentioned. Subsequently Dawson published 
 a second edition : The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity briefly invalidated, by 
 John Dawson of Sedbergh. Second edition, to which is now added an Appendix. 
 " And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will." Pope. ismo. Lond. 
 1803. 
 
 It should be mentioned that Dawson had paid a good deal of attention to 
 metaphysics and theology, as shown by his correspondence with the Rev. Thomas 
 Wilson, who had been his pupil in early life. The quotations in these letters prove 
 that he had at least a respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek, though he 
 laments his inability to read the Fathers in the original. Selections from the 
 Poems and Correspondence of the Rev. T. Wilson, Cheetham Society, 1857, pp. 
 106125. 
 
MR JOHN DA WSON. 69 
 
 pupil during three successive summers of my undergraduate 1804. 
 life, but it is hard for me to do full justice to the head and &*- 1 9- 
 heart of my dear old master. Simple in manners, cheerful 
 and mirthful in temper, with a dress approaching that of the 
 higher class of the venerable old Quakers of the Dales, without 
 any stiffness or affectation of superiority, yet did he bear at 
 first sight a very commanding presence, and it was impossible 
 to glance at him for a moment without feeling that we were 
 before one to whom God had given gifts above those of a 
 common man. His powerful projecting forehead and well- 
 chiselled features told of much thought ; and might have 
 implied severity, had not a soft radiant benevolence played 
 over his fine old face, which inspired his friends, of whatever 
 age or rank, with confidence and love. 
 
 " Happy were the days, both to young and old, when the 
 genial-hearted philosopher walked over the hills, which he did 
 frequently, to spend a few hours at the Vicarage of Dent ! 
 Whenever he and my father met, their hearts seemed to be 
 warmed with the spirits of two schoolboys meeting on a 
 holiday. And well might they be happy in the sweet remem- 
 brances of God's mercies so long vouchsafed to them, and in 
 those firm unflinching Christian hopes that gave a bright 
 colour to the days of their old age 1 ." 
 
 Our portrait of Mr Dawson is reduced from a beautiful 
 water-colour drawing by William Westall who married 
 Sedgwick's sister Ann dated 1817, three years before 
 Dawson's death. It represents him therefore "in his honoured 
 
 1 Mr Dawson died 19 September, 1820. A few years afterwards a monument 
 was erected to his memory, on the south side of the central aisle of Sedbergh 
 Church, by some of his former pupils. It consists of a black marble niche, 
 enclosing a bust, inscribed "Sievier sculp*. Aug. 1825." Beneath, is a 
 white marble tablet bearing the following inscription: "In memory of John 
 Dawson, of Sedbergh, who died on the iQth Sept. 1820, aged 86 years. 
 Distinguished by his profound knowledge of mathematics, beloved for his 
 amiable simplicity of character, and revered for his exemplary discharge of 
 every moral and religious duty. This monument was erected by his grateful pupils, 
 as their last tribute of affection and esteem." The inscription was written by 
 Mr John Bell, the distinguished leader at the Chancery Bar, who had been one 
 of Mr Dawson's Senior Wranglers, as mentioned above, p. 65, note. 
 
?0 MR JOHN DA WSON. 
 
 1804. old age", when advancing years had probably increased the 
 *- '9- natural seventy of his features. An earlier portrait, by the 
 Rev. D. M. Peacock, taken in or about 1809, represents him 
 standing beside a pupil, who is seated at a table, working out 
 a mathematical problem. In this picture the face is thought- 
 ful, but far less severe than in the later work 1 . 
 
 1 In 1809 Mr Joseph Allen, a portrait-painter, having been commissioned to 
 paint Dawson's picture, Mr Peacock, then vicar of Sedbergh, invited him to stay at 
 his house. When the picture was finished, Mr Peacock was not satisfied with the 
 likeness, and being himself an artist of no mean capacity, painted a replica of 
 Allen's work, with the advantage of fresh sittings from Mr Dawson. This picture 
 is now at Ripon in the possession of Miss Cust (Mr Peacock changed his name 
 to Cust on inheriting an estate near Northallerton). Allen's portrait cannot now 
 be traced. Sedgwick gives the following history of it. " It was the property of 
 Mr Leigh of Leeds. This gentleman was unfortunately killed during a furious 
 election riot about the time the Reform Bill was passing through Parliament, and 
 I heard some time afterwards that the portrait was knocked down at a public 
 auction in Leeds, but to whom I never learnt." Fortunately, however, it was 
 engraved ; and a comparison of the engraving with Mr Peacock's portrait shows 
 that the two works are absolutely identical. The engraving is lettered " Painted 
 by Joseph Allen. Engraved by W. W. Burney. To the Friends and Pupils of 
 Mr Dawson, of Sedbergh, this Engraving, from an original Picture in the 
 possession of R. H. Leigh, Esq. is respectfully Inscribed by Joseph Allen." The 
 picture may be thus described: " Canvass, 17^ in. broad, by 21^ high. Dawson 
 is standing up, seen to waist, three-quarters face to the spectator. His right 
 hand, holding spectacles, rests on the back of a chair ; his left on an open folio 
 volume lying on a table covered with a green cloth. The fingers are closed, 
 except the fore-finger, which points to a mathematical figure on the right page. 
 Dawson's figure is tall and spare ; face rather severe, with deep lines on it. 
 Complexion clear and ruddy ; eyes grey ; short grey hair. White neckcloth 
 twisted round his neck ; high black waistcoat ; chocolate coat, with row of five 
 buttons. A pupil is seated at the table, his back turned to the spectator. He is 
 bending over his work ; right elbow on table ; head resting on right hand. 
 Light hair, light brown coat, white neckcloth like Dawson's." The name of the 
 pupil represented is said to have been Litterdale. 
 
JOHN DAWSON, OF SEDBERGH. 
 
 Born 1734; died 1820. 
 
 From a water-colour drawing by William Westall, 1817. 
 
 To face page 70, VoL /. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1804 1810.) 
 
 BEGINS RESIDENCE AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE (1804). 
 THE REV. T. JONES. CHRISTMAS AT WHITTLESEA. COLLEGE 
 EXAMINATION (1805). SUMMER AT DENT. FEVER. LIFE 
 AND FRIENDS AT CAMBRIDGE (1806). PREPARATION FOR 
 DEGREE (1807). SYSTEM OF ACTS AND OPPONENCIES. SEDG- 
 WICK'S FIRST ACT. UNIVERSITY ELECTION FOR M.P. His 
 FATHER'S ACCOUNT OF THE YORKSHIRE ELECTION. SCHOLAR- 
 SHIP AT TRINITY COLLEGE. BLINDNESS OF HIS FATHER. 
 SENATE-HOUSE EXAMINATION (1808). REVISITS DENT. READ- 
 ING PARTY AT DlTTON. CLASSICAL WORK (1809). FELLOW- 
 SHIP (1810). 
 
 SEDGWICK went up to Cambridge, accompanied by his 1804. 
 friend Bland, in October, 1804. They left Dent, or Sedbergh, M *- I 9- 
 on Saturday, 29 September ; spent Sunday with a friend at 
 Kirkby Stephen, and on Monday joined the " Paul Jones " 
 coach at Brough, in which delightful vehicle, " an old 
 six-inside," they passed three days and two dismal nights 1 . 
 
 The fear of a French invasion was at that time uppermost 
 in the minds of Englishmen. As Sedgwick often said ' England 
 looked like a great camp' 1 ; and the occupation of arming 
 and drilling, which had penetrated even to the University, 
 together with the paralysis of trade, and the high prices of 
 
 1 To Miss Sedgwick (U.S.), 12 October, 1853. To Miss Isabella Sedgwick, 
 i October, 1852. 
 
72 ENTERS COLLEGE. 
 
 1804. the common necessaries of life, had seriously diminished the 
 t. 19. number of young men who could afford a University education. 
 In 1804 only 128 presented themselves for matriculation, the 
 smallest number since 1775, when it had sunk as low as 121*. 
 More than one of Sedgwick's contemporaries has been 
 heard to say that when he first made his appearance in 
 Trinity College he was thought uncouth, and that some time 
 elapsed before he was properly appreciated. This unfavour- 
 able judgment need not surprise us. It must be remembered 
 that though he was nearly twenty years of age, he had never 
 quitted his home, or its immediate neighbourhood, for more 
 than a few days at a time. Carlisle was probably the 
 furthest point he had reached in any of his brief excursions. 
 Nor, in that remote corner of England, could he have had 
 any opportunity of associating with men of the world. When 
 we have mentioned his own father, the vicar of Sedbergh, 
 Mr Dawson, and two or three of the neighbouring country- 
 gentlemen, the list of his older friends is exhausted. From 
 the young men of his own age, whose ideas of amusement 
 were confined to sport, wakes, and drinking-bouts 2 , he could 
 have learnt nothing but tastes and customs ' more honoured 
 in the breach than the observance ', and that he never gave 
 way to such himself, to any serious extent, is a proof either 
 of his father's influence, or of his own strength of will. On 
 
 1 In the first six years of the present century, 1800 1805, the average (neglect- 
 ing fractions) was 150: in the last six years of the previous century it had been 
 156. Between 1806 and 1811 it rose to 232 ; and between 1812 and 1817 to 278. 
 
 2 A friend a clergyman writing to Sedgwick 28 July, 1807, records the 
 following experiences : "I had fully determined to write to you immediately after 
 my return from Yorkshire; but a number of Feasts crowded upon me in such 
 quick succession that I found myself unable to devote a single hour to correspond- 
 ents. Mr 's house was filled with company on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 
 
 and Thursday, many of whom never thought of flinching till three or four o'clock 
 each morning; they then staggered home to bed.... We met with the usual 
 hospitality in Dent.... They even kicked up a dance for us in the old school-room 
 on Whit Friday. Your Brother John and I unluckily dined with Thomas 
 Fawcett on that day, where we met a set of rook-shooting Bloods from Kendal. 
 They all drank very freely, and tho' John and I left early in the afternoon, yet we 
 were far from sober. This however did not prevent our joining in the dance, and 
 frisking away as well as the best of them." 
 
REV. THOMAS JONES. 73 
 
 a young man brought up as he had been, the University 1804. 
 would produce the sense of wonder and bewilderment which ^ J 9- 
 we associate with the first sight of a crowded capital. He must 
 have felt out of his element among scenes for which he would 
 be less prepared than most undergraduates even at that time, 
 when journeys were not lightly undertaken, and when most 
 people could say, with the Vicar of Wakefield, that their 
 longest migrations were from the blue bed to the brown. His 
 dress, his manners, and his bearing would bespeak him a plain 
 unsophisticated Dalesman 1 . 
 
 Sedgwick's tutor at Trinity College, as mentioned in the 
 previous chapter, was the Rev. Thomas Jones. It would be 
 difficult, if not impossible, to name any one man, who by force 
 of personal character, vigour of intellect, and unwearied devo- 
 tion to his duties, was enabled to effect a more enduring 
 influence for good on the moral and intellectual life of his 
 college. He had been Senior Wrangler and first Smith's 
 Prizeman in 1779, and was elected Fellow in 1781. A few 
 years after his election he took part in a movement of such 
 far-reaching importance, that we must briefly notice it. For 
 some years the examination for scholarships and fellowships 
 had been conducted in private candidates "went their rounds 
 to the electing seniors' 2 ". This system could never have been 
 a good one, and of late years it had been grossly abused, 
 inasmuch as it was notorious that some of the Seniors had 
 voted at elections without having examined, and others had 
 been personally influenced in favour of particular candidates. 
 In October, 1786, an election to Fellowships, made "exactly 
 in the most improper, as well as the most unpopular, manner 
 possible 3 ", brought matters to a crisis. Ten of the Junior 
 
 1 Unfortunately none of the numerous letters which Sedgwick is known to 
 have written to the home-circle at Dent have been preserved. 
 
 2 Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, 4to, London, 1806, p. 106. The author 
 gives a detailed account of the way in which the whole examination was then 
 conducted, which well deserves careful perusal. 
 
 3 Mr John Baynes to Mr Romilly, in Memoirs of the Life of Sir S. Romilly, 
 ed. 1841, i. 253. The writer, one of the Junior Fellows who signed the Memorial, 
 
74 REV. THOMAS JONES. 
 
 1804. Fellows among whom was Jones addressed to the Master 
 Et. 19- and Seniors a remonstrance, which alleged that the practice 
 was in opposition to the statutes, and tended to destroy the 
 objects of the foundation. The Master and Seniors, greatly 
 incensed, cautioned the memorialists to behave with greater 
 deference to their superiors, and entered an admonition to 
 that effect in the Conclusion Book. From this sentence the 
 Junior Fellows appealed to the Visitor. The appeal was 
 heard by Lord Chancellor Thurlow on behalf of the Crown. 
 His sentence, while condemning the form which the action of 
 the memorialists had taken, condemned the practice com- 
 plained of more strongly still. The result was eminently 
 satisfactory. Not only were the remonstrance and the 
 admonition both withdrawn, but the Master insisted ever 
 after on each elector being a bond fide examiner; and, in 
 the following year (1787), notwithstanding the share which 
 Jones had taken in the memorial, he was elected Senior 
 Tutor an office which he held until his death in 1807, at 
 the comparatively early age of fifty-one 1 . 
 
 It must be recollected that in those days private tutors 
 were not commonly resorted to, and indeed, during the two 
 years which preceded the examinations for degree, were 
 forbidden by Grace of the Senate 2 . In consequence of this, 
 and of the comparatively small number of undergraduates, 
 the college tutors were brought into closer relations with 
 their pupils than is possible at present, for they were not 
 
 takes credit to himself for having originated it. As he and Miles Popple, another 
 of the Memorialists, were parties to the appeal to the Visitor, it is probable that 
 they were the prime movers in the whole matter. 
 
 1 Cooper's Annals, iv. 424; Gunning's Reminiscences, ed. 1855, ii. 100 ; 
 Monk's Life of ' Bent ley, ed. 1833, ii. 423. 
 
 2 Grace, 25 February, 1781. It is printed at length in Whewell, Of a 
 Liberal Education, Part i., p. 220. The time at the end of a student's career 
 during which reading with a private tutor was prohibited, was gradually diminished. 
 By Grace, 9 April, 1807, it was reduced to a year and a half; by a subsequent 
 Grace, 3 July, 1815, to one year. Ibid. p. 221. The Grace of 1781, it should be 
 observed, limits its prohibition to tutors engaged within the precincts of the 
 University (infra Academiam}. A student was at liberty to read with whom he 
 pleased during the vacations. 
 
REV. THOMAS JONES. 75 
 
 only advisers, but instructors. In both capacities Mr Jones 1804. 
 was preeminent. His friend and biographer, the Rev. ^- 1 9- 
 Herbert Marsh, has recorded that in his duties as College 
 Tutor 
 
 "he displayed an ability which was rarely equalled, with an 
 integrity which never was surpassed. They only, who have had 
 the benefit of attending his lectures, are able to estimate their value. 
 Being perfect master of his subjects, he always placed them in the 
 clearest point of view ; and by his manner of treating them, he made 
 them interesting even to those who had otherwise no relish for 
 mathematical inquiries. 
 
 "As a companion, he was highly convivial : he possessed a vein 
 of humour peculiar to himself; and no one told a story with more 
 effect. His manners were mild and unassuming, and his gentleness 
 was equalled only by his firmness. As a friend, he had no other limit 
 to his kindness than his ability to serve. Indeed his whole life was 
 a life of benevolence, and he wasted his strength in exerting himself 
 for others. The benefits which he conferred were frequently so great, 
 and the persons who subsisted by his bounty were so numerous, that 
 he was often distressed in the midst of affluence. And though he 
 was Head Tutor of Trinity College almost twenty years, with more 
 pupils than any of his predecessors, he never acquired a sufficient 
 capital to enable him to retire from office and still continue his 
 accustomed beneficence 1 ." 
 
 To this sober prose may be added a few lines from an 
 elegy by Robert Dealtry, LL.D., written after Jones' death. 
 The verse is poor, but the sentiments have the true ring of 
 sincerity : 
 
 "The wild unbroken boy he led, not drove, 
 And changed coercion for paternal love. 
 By mildness won, youth found resistance vain, 
 Bound in a silken, yet a snapless chain. 
 Around his sacred tomb th' ingenuous band 
 Of sorrowing pupils oft shall pensive stand, 
 Shall hail the Tutor faithful to his trust, 
 Revere his memory, and bedew his dust." 
 
 It is not likely that Sedgwick made many new friends 
 during his first term of residence. His two school-friends 
 Ainger and Bland being both members of St John's College 
 
 1 Memoir of the late Rev. Thomas Jones. Signed, Herbert Marsh, Cambridge, 
 Feb. 19, 1808. 
 
7 6 WHITTLESEA. 
 
 [804. he probably was more frequently in their society than at 
 Mt. 19- Trinity ; and we shall find by and bye that he made 
 several friendships in their college. 
 
 Dent was far too distant to be visited in one of the short 
 vacations; so, when the Michaelmas Term was well over, 
 Sedgwick went, on December the i/th, 1804 (a date he was 
 fond of recalling), to spend Christmas with Ainger at his 
 father's house at Whittlesea. From this memorable visit 
 dates his lifelong friendship with the whole Ainger family. 
 He never forgot the simple pleasures which he there enjoyed. 
 In 1851, forty-seven years afterwards, he could still write to 
 Mr James Ainger, his friend's brother, that " when Christmas 
 came round, I remembered the happy, genial, joyful Christmas 
 I spent in your father's house in 1804". It was on this occasion 
 that he made the acquaintance of Henry Smith, son to the 
 surgeon of Whittlesea, then a boy of sixteen, who afterwards 
 became a distinguished Indian general, and is known to fame 
 as Sir Harry Smith. Sedgwick watched his career with 
 affectionate interest, and his name will frequently recur in our 
 narrative. 
 
 In the College examination held in June 1805, Sedgwick's 
 name appears in the first class, in company with only six 
 others a distinction which shows, to those familiar with the 
 practice of Trinity College at that time, that he must have 
 got up the classical subjects with thoroughness, as well as 
 the mathematical. The ordeal was in those days specially 
 formidable, for a vivd voce examination used to be held in the 
 Hall in the presence of the Master, who sat in the centre of 
 the dais, with the Seniors to his right and left, as Byron has 
 recorded : 
 
 High in the midst, surrounded by his peers, 
 MAGNUS his ample front sublime uprears : 
 Placed on his chair of state he seems a god, 
 While Sophs and Freshmen tremble at his nod 1 ." 
 
 1 Thoughts suggested by a College Examination. The lines were printed in 
 Hours of Idleness, published in 1807, only two years after Sedgwick's first 
 examination. 
 
TYPHOID FEVER. 77 
 
 The persons to be examined stood in front of this awe- 1805. 
 inspiring assemblage, and questions were passed down the ^ 20 
 line from one to another by the presiding examiner, the 
 Master occasionally interposing a word of praise or reproof 
 more frequently the latter. Men have been known to faint 
 with apprehension even before it had come to their turn to 
 be questioned. When the examination was over the names 
 of those only were published whom the examiners thought 
 specially worthy of commendation 1 . A place in the first class 
 was therefore a considerable distinction. 
 
 In the summer Sedgwick went down to Dent, accompanied 
 by his friend John Carr, an undergraduate of Trinity College, 
 one year senior to himself. Carr was a distinguished mathe- 
 matician, who became second Wrangler and second Smith's 
 Prizeman in 1807, and subsequently obtained a Fellowship. 
 Sedgwick's intimacy with him indicates that he was by 
 this time making his way in the College, and had got into 
 the society of men older than himself at all times a sure 
 indication of popularity. The vacation was spent, as re- 
 corded in the last chapter, in reading mathematics with Mr 
 Dawson. 
 
 Soon after Sedgwick's return to Cambridge, he was 
 attacked by a typhoid fever which nearly proved fatal. His 
 medical attendants despaired of his life. They had in fact 
 left his rooms, and were walking up and down on the pave- 
 ment beside the Chapel, waiting to hear the last news before 
 they left College. The news, however, did not come, and it 
 was at last suggested that they should go back and look at 
 their patient again. To their surprise they found him not 
 only not dead, but apparently somewhat stronger than when 
 they had left him. One of them, Sir Busick Harwood, said 
 to the other : " This is a very strong young man, let us try if 
 we can do anything more for him." Accordingly a blister 
 was suggested. The poor patient shrunk from the anticipated 
 suffering, and asked what effect the application would have 
 
 1 Pryme's Recollections \ p. yo. 
 
7 8 BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. 
 
 ,805. upon his flesh. To this very natural question he is said to 
 t. m have received the somewhat brutal answer: "Oh! - the 
 flesh, if we can only save the life ! " The blister was applied, 
 and the patient survived, to tell the story almost as it is here 
 related 1 . He was nursed through his illness with unremitting 
 diligence by his friend Ainger, and he used to say that he 
 owed his life more to him than to his physicians. 
 
 The date of this fever is fixed exactly by an interesting 
 circumstance which Sedgwick recollected when the funeral of 
 the Duke of Wellington reminded him of the death of Lord 
 ! Nelson. News of the success or failure of his operations 
 against the French fleet must have been waited for with an 
 anxiety of which we, in these peaceful times, can form no 
 conception. If he failed, England would almost certainly be 
 invaded ; if he were successful her safety was secured. In- 
 telligence of the battle of Trafalgar reached London on 
 Wednesday, 6 November, 1805, an< ^ Cambridge on the 
 following day. The volunteers assembled in the market- 
 place, and fired three volleys ; the bells of Great St Mary's 
 Church rang a dumb peal ; and in the evening the town was 
 illuminated 2 . Sedgwick resided at that time in a set of 
 garrets between the Chapel and the Great Gate 3 ; and, half- 
 delirious as he was, he insisted, as soon as he heard the bells, 
 on being carried to the window, that he might see the 
 illuminations 4 . In those days the Sun Inn was opposite to 
 the College, and would no doubt be conspicuous for its 
 patriotism. 
 
 Sedgwick's recovery was slow, and it was not till the 
 
 1 This story is taken from an excellent article headed " Adam Sedgwick," by 
 the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, in Macmillarfs Magazine for April 1880. 
 
 2 Cambridge Chronicle, Saturday, November 9, 1805. "At noon yesterday 
 [the column is headed Cambridge, November 8'], the Cambridge Volunteers were 
 drawn up in the Market Place, and fired three feux-de-joie. A dumb peal was 
 rung at Great St Mary's, as a testimony of respect to the memory of the brave 
 Admiral, and in the evening a general illumination took place." 
 
 3 Sedgwick told his niece, Miss Isabella Sedgwick, that his first rooms were in 
 this part of the College. 
 
 4 To Mrs Richard Sedgwick, 21 November, 1852. 
 
KIRKE WHITE. 79 
 
 
 early spring of the following year (1806) that he was able 1806. 
 to leave his rooms. He recollected this in 1871, when fine &* 2I - 
 weather on the last day of the year had enabled him to take 
 a short walk under the shelter of the Chapel : " The bright 
 sunshine ", he wrote, " has tempted me out, and I have had a 
 turn on the flags before our Chapel. I tried the bowling- 
 green, but it was in the shade, and did not suit me. While 
 walking I could not but think of the early weeks of the year 
 1806, when I crawled out of my rooms, one bright sunny day 
 (about February I think) after my long confinement from 
 typhus fever. I had great difficulty in getting back. But 
 then I was young, and my rate of recovery was astonishing. 
 I am not strong now, but I mounted my staircase quite 
 briskly on my return today 1 ." 
 
 The rest of the year 1806 is singularly barren of informa- 
 tion. At the examination in June Sedgwick was again placed 
 in the first class which shows that he had by this time 
 entirely recovered from the effects of his fever and when 
 term was over he went down to Yorkshire, where he spent 
 the summer in reading mathematics with Mr Dawson. We 
 get, however, a glimpse of his Cambridge life and interests, 
 from the following letter, which, though written sixty-one 
 years afterwards, belongs, by its subject-matter, to 1806. 
 
 To Rev. H. C. G. Moule, Trinity College. 
 
 FAKENHAM, Dec. 16, 1868. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I wish it were in my power to give you more 
 information respecting the two very remarkable persons (H. 
 Kirke White and Robert Hall), than I have at my command. 
 Both of them, in their way, were men of great genius. I did 
 not know Kirke White till a little while before his death 
 that is, I never met him and conversed with him during his 
 first academic year. But whenever I met him in the streets 
 I was impressed by his look and bearing. He was a tall 
 
 1 To Miss Isabella Sedgwick, 31 December, 1871. 
 
8o ROBERT HALL. 
 
 1806. thoughtful-looking young man, with fine features, and with a 
 fct.i. complexion that seemed to indicate a life of severe study. 
 In his second year, a month or two before his death, I several 
 times met him in society. His manners well matched his 
 character. They were simple, earnest, winning, and unaffected. 
 He had the look of a man of genius. So far as regards his 
 features, Chantrey's medallion gives, I think, a good general 
 notion of them, so far as can be given by a profile likeness in 
 low relief 1 . 
 
 Robert Hall had ceased to live in Cambridge before my 
 Freshman's year 2 ; and of his manners in society I have no 
 right to speak, as I do not remember to have ever exchanged 
 a sentence with him ; though, on public occasions, I have 
 once or twice met him. But he occasionally revisited Cam- 
 bridge ; and then he always preached at the Baptist Meeting- 
 House in St Andrew's Street ; and whenever I could secure a 
 seat on such occasions, I always attended the Meeting. He 
 always began with a prayer (sometimes of considerable 
 length), uttered with great earnestness and simplicity, but 
 injured in effective power from an apparent asthmatical 
 difficulty of articulation. There was the same constitutional, 
 or organic, difficulty in the commencement of his sermons. 
 But the breathing of his sentences became more easy as he 
 advanced, and before long there was a moral grandeur in his 
 delivery which triumphed over all organic defect or physical 
 weakness. While he rolled out his beautiful and purely 
 constructed sentences one felt as if under the training of a 
 higher nature. In occasional flights of imagination, in dis- 
 cussions of metaphysical subtlety, we were for a while amazed, 
 
 1 Henry Kirke White commenced residence at St John's College in October 
 1805; but he did not matriculate (as a Sizar) until 26 May, 1806. He died 
 19 October in the same year. The medallion by Chantrey is in All Saints' Church, 
 Cambridge. 
 
 2 Mr Hall resigned his duties at Cambridge, owing to ill-health, in November, 
 1804: returned in April, 1805 ; and resigned finally 4 March, 1806. In 1803 he 
 had been advised to reside at Shelford, and his biographer ascribes the mental 
 affection of 1804 to the loss of society occasioned by this removal. Works of 
 Robert Hall, 8vo. Lond. 1843. v. 443, vi. 73 75. 
 
COLLEGE FRIENDS. 81 
 
 and almost in fear for the Preacher. And then he would 1806. 
 come down, with an eagle's swoop, upon the matter he had in ^ 2I 
 hand, and enforce it with a power of eloquence such as I 
 never felt or witnessed in the speaking of any other man. 
 Such is my feeling now. Many a long year has passed away 
 since I last heard Robert Hall. I have listened with admira- 
 tion to many orators in the two Houses of Parliament, and to 
 many good and heart-moving preachers; but I never heard 
 one who was, in my mind, on the same level with Robert 
 Hall. 
 
 I am at a friend's house, and I have very little spare time 
 on my hands ; but I have stolen away from the party for a 
 few minutes, that I might do my best in answering your letter 
 which has just reached me. Alas ! I know too well that this 
 letter is not worth your reading ; but I have, at any rate, en- 
 deavoured to shew my goodwill to a brother-Fellow. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick's recollections of Henry Kirke White, who was 
 of St John's College, confirm what was mentioned above, viz. : 
 that his friendship with Ainger, his senior in University 
 standing by one year, would readily introduce him to 
 Johnian society. Two other men of Ainger's year and 
 college became intimate with him, Robert Bayne Armstrong, 
 and James Tobias Cook, who were afterwards both Fellows 
 of the House. In his own college he knew Charles James 
 Blomfield, afterwards Lord Bishop of London, William Clark, 
 afterwards Professor of Anatomy, Richard Ward, and Edward 
 Peacock. These were all of his own year, and distinguished 
 for their hard- reading and academical success. Of those 
 senior to him, besides Carr, may be mentioned George 
 Pryme, afterwards Professor of Political Economy, who had 
 obtained his degree in 1803, an< ^ ms Fellowship in 1805. He 
 S.I. 6 
 
8 2 EXERCISES FOR DEGREE. 
 
 1807. had been a pupil of Mr Dawson, and while at Sedbergh had 
 
 /Et. 22. played cricket with Sedgwick 1 , but they could hardly have seen 
 
 much of each other at Cambridge before 1808, when Pryme 
 
 gave up the pursuit of the law in London, and returned to 
 
 College. They then became very intimate friends. 
 
 At the beginning of 1807 Sedgwick began to prepare in 
 earnest for his degree. In those days the University required 
 no proof of a student's proficiency until his third year, in the 
 course of which he had to keep two Acts and two Opponencies, 
 as they were called. Of the former the first took place in 
 the Lent Term, the second in the Michaelmas Term. This 
 system has been so long completely obsolete that a descrip- 
 tion of the way in which it was managed is almost indispen- 
 sable. We will try to make this as brief as possible. 
 
 At the beginning of January in a given year the Moderators 
 obtained from the Tutor of each college a list of his pupils 
 who aspired to Honours in January of the ensuing year. 
 Out of these lists each name on which was noted for the 
 Moderators' guidance, reading, non-reading, hard-reading, as 
 the case might be a complete list was formed, and tran- 
 scribed into a book. On the second Monday in the Lent 
 Term the Moderator for the week (the two Moderators 
 divided the term between them) sent a written notice to 
 one of the students on his list who apparently was selected 
 quite arbitrarily to the effect that he was to appear in the 
 Schools on that day fortnight as a disputant. Shortly after 
 receiving this summons, the student, now called a Respondent, 
 waited on the Moderator with three Propositions, usually 
 termed Questions, the truth of which he was prepared to 
 maintain against any three students of the same year, whom 
 the Moderator chose to nominate, and who were called 
 Opponents. The first question was generally taken from 
 Newton's Principia ; the second from some other writer on 
 Mathematics or Natural Philosophy ; the third was called the 
 Moral Question, and, in connexion with it, Locke, Hume, 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 30. 
 
EXERCISES FOR DEGREE. 
 
 Butler, Clarke, Hartley, Paley, were alternately attacked and 
 defended. During the fortnight's preparation, it was usual 
 (at least at the time we are considering) for the Respondent 
 to invite the Opponents to wine, or tea, or breakfast, in order 
 to compare arguments, and generally to rehearse the per- 
 formance 1 . On the day appointed the Moderator entered 
 
 1807. 
 ^ 22> 
 
 The Moderator's seat, from a photograph 2 . 
 
 1 Alma Mater, 8vo. Lond. 1827, ii. 35 38. The system here sketched was 
 abolished in 1839, and for about sixty years previous the disputations had lost 
 much of their original vitality. Compare The Origin and History of the 
 Mathematical Tripos, by W. W. Rouse Ball, M.A., 8vo. Camb. 1880; and The 
 Mathematical Tripos, by J. W. L. Glaisher, Sc.D., F.R.S., 8vo. Lond. 1886. 
 
 2 The seat here figured is that in the Law School, which was somewhat larger 
 than that in the Arts School, but in all other respects resembled it exactly. The 
 photograph was taken in January 1886, just before the Law School was fitted up 
 for Library purposes, as authorised by Grace of the Senate, 17 December, 1885 
 (Cambridge University Reporter , p. 297). 
 
 62 
 
g 4 EXERCISES FOR DEGREE. 
 
 ,807. the Arts School at I p.m., ascended the rostrum on the 
 Mt. 22. wes t side, and said : Ascendat Dominus respondent. Thus 
 summoned, the Respondent ascended the rostrum on the 
 opposite side of the school, and read a Latin dissertation, 
 which generally occupied from ten to fifteen minutes, on 
 any one of the three questions. As soon as he had finished, 
 the Moderator called upon the first Opponent to begin 
 (Ascendat opponentium primus]. He ascended a rostrum 
 beneath that of the Moderator, and propounded his argu- 
 ments in the form of syllogisms, which the Respondent 
 answered as best he could. When the first Opponent had 
 finished, his place was taken by the second Opponent, and 
 so on. The first Opponent was obliged to bring forward 
 eight arguments, the second five, and the last three. " When 
 the exercise has for some time been carried on according to 
 the strict rules of Logic " says the authority from whom we 
 have borrowed this account "the Disputation insensibly slides 
 into free and unconfined debate, the Moderator, in the mean 
 time, explaining the argument of the Opponent, when neces- 
 sary; restraining both parties from wandering from the subject ; 
 and frequently adding, at the close of each argument, his own 
 determination upon the point in dispute. The three Opponents, 
 having, in their turns, exhausted their whole stock of arguments, 
 are dismissed by the Moderator in their order, with such a 
 compliment, as, in his estimation, they deserve (Domine 
 opponent, bene dispntasti optime dispntasti optime quidem 
 disputasti) ; and the Exercise closes with the dismission of 
 the Respondent in a similar manner 1 ." 
 
 At the close of the Act, the Moderator assigned to the 
 Disputant a certain number of marks, which he set down 
 opposite to his name in his book ; and, when all the Acts had 
 been kept, the two Moderators conjointly formed the students 
 into classes according to the number of their marks. 
 
 1 Remarks upon the present Mode of Education in the University of Cambridge. 
 By the Rev. John Jebb, M.A., Ed. iii. 8vo. Camb. 1773, pp. 1820. Wordsworth, 
 Scholte Academiccc, pp. 32 43 : 368 376. 
 
HENRY B1CKERSTETH. 85 
 
 The disputations took place on five days in each week, 1807. 
 and each occupied about two hours. The language used was /Et - 2 
 Latin, which, by the beginning of the present century, had 
 degenerated into a strange jargon ; and the logic was little 
 better than the language. Still, as a man's place in the 
 classes depended upon the impression he made upon the 
 Moderator when he kept his Act, it was imperative (at least 
 in 1807) to take pains. Moreover, at that period, when the 
 distractions of University life were few, Acts still excited 
 considerable interest, and were well attended, both by 
 graduates and undergraduates. The disputant was there- 
 fore on his mettle, and anxious to distinguish himself at a 
 performance which he felt would have a great share in 
 determining his academical reputation 1 . The Acts were 
 often performed with great spirit, and tradition still preserves 
 the names of some of those who were specially successful for 
 their ingenuity of attack or defence. The system was also 
 useful in a social way, by making men of the same year, but 
 of different colleges, known to each other. By this means 
 Sedgwick " became well acquainted with " Henry Bickersteth 
 of Gonville and Caius College, who was Senior Wrangler 
 in his year. He mentions this fact in a letter which is 
 printed in Bickersteth's Life, and adds : " He did not quite 
 do himself justice in his first public Act, in the Lent 
 Term of 1807; but his Act in the October Term of the 
 same year was the most triumphant I ever witnessed. 
 He literally seemed to trample his opponents under foot 2 ." 
 Their acquaintance, thus begun, ripened into a friendship 
 which was maintained after the one had become Master of 
 the Rolls and Lord Langdale, and the other Woodwardian 
 Professor. 
 
 Sedgwick kept his first Act in February, 1807, and soon 
 
 1 Of a Liberal Education in General, Part I. By W. Whewell. Ed. ii. 
 1850, p. 183. 
 
 2 Memoirs of the Riglit Honourable Henry Lord Langdale. By T. D. Hardy. 
 8vo. Lond. 1852, i. 232. 
 
86 CAMBRIDGE NEWS. 
 
 1807. afterwards wrote to Ainger to record his success, with other 
 i. 22. fragments of University intelligence 1 : 
 
 " I came off better than I expected in the schools. I 
 
 perhaps might fairly say that I came off better than I could 
 have previously wished. The honour I received from Wood- 
 house' 2 was : " omui tuo officio multd cum laude perfunctus es" 
 
 " Since you left Cambridge we have had a most eloquent 
 sermon from Dr Milner ; it was delivered with that peculiar 
 emphasis which you might expect from a man of his powers, 
 conscious at the same time of the truth and importance of 
 what he was delivering 3 . We have had four sermons from 
 Lemma Vince 4 , the most strange things ever preached in 
 pulpit. The first Sunday he took us thro' the three laws of 
 motion and Wood's chapter on projectiles 5 . The 2nd Sunday 
 he got into his complete system of astronomy 6 . The 3rd he 
 took us through the nth section of Newton, and to conclude 
 gave us a dissertation on optical glasses. His pulpit lectures 
 have now ended " 
 
 The Act over, Sedgwick evidently thought of nothing 
 but preparation for the Senate House ; and is rallied by his 
 friend on his devotion to his studies : 
 
 " How possibly can you, deeply immersed as you are in all 
 
 the sublimities of Mathematical Science, take any interest in the 
 grovling concerns of one who, since he left you, has merely been 
 scampering about the Fens in order to get rid of time ? In truth, 
 
 1 To William Ainger, 23 February, 1807. 
 
 2 Robert Woodhouse, M.A., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College ; Lucasian 
 Professor 1820 22; Plumian Professor 1822 28. 
 
 3 Isaac Milner, D.D., President of Queens' College, 1788 1820. In after-life 
 Sedgwick did not speak of Dr Milner in such complimentary language. The sermon 
 referred to must be the one preached at Great St Mary's Church, 30 January, 
 1807, against the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics, which produced a great 
 sensation in the University. Life of Milner, 8vo. 1842, p. 344. It is printed in 
 Milner's Sermons, 2 vols., 8vo. Lond. 1820, i. i. 
 
 4 Samuel Vince, M.A., Plumian Professor 1796 1822. He was Select 
 Preacher in February, 1807. Tne Sundays in February 1807 fell on the ist, 8th, 
 1 5th, 22nd. 
 
 An allusion to a then popular mathematical work : The Principles of Mechanics ; 
 designed for the use of Students in the University, by James Wood, B.D. 1796. 
 6 A Complete System of Astronomy, by Rev. Samuel Vince, 3 vols. 410. 1797. 
 

 CAMBRIDGE NEWS. 87 
 
 Sedgwick, had I anything more important to acquaint you with, I 
 would not presume to inform you that last Tuesday sen'night I was 
 capering at Wisbeach to the sound of a Fiddle, and that the deepest 
 speculation in which I have engaged, has been an attempt to learn 
 the character of an eccentric girl whom you may recollect I once 
 mentioned as the only female likely to make an impression on your 
 iron heart. Positively I think her as great an oddity as yourself; 
 and surely this is saying enough to excite any one's curiosity who is 
 not so much infected with the Mathematical Mania as to scorn 
 everything which is lower than the stars >M 
 
 We do not know what became of this damsel, or whether 
 she was ever aware of the honour destined for her ; but the 
 next letter shows that the self-denying student could at any 
 rate find time to take interest in University politics : 
 
 " Since you left us we have had a dead calm in Cambridge, 
 which in all probability would have been of long duration if 
 the King of his great goodness had not caused a dissolution 
 of parliament. We are now in confusion and uproar. The 
 Johnians are exerting themselves to the utmost in grunting 
 out the praises of their brother Palmerston. Lord H. Petty's 
 interest is considerably diminished in consequence of Mr 
 Jones' illness. We were under the greatest apprehension for 
 the life of our old Tutor, but the last reports from London 
 were more favourable. He is now there, under the care 
 of an eminent physician, attended by his friend Professor 
 Marsh 
 
 "As my sister has now left Cambridge, I can begin a 
 system of close reading to which I hope to adhere. I have 
 finished the first volume of Newton, and just begun to look at 
 the second. In making an attempt, last night, upon the 
 philosophy of sound, I got so completely fast, that after 
 retiring to rest I was disturbed with the most horrid dreams 
 you have the power of conceiving. I intend to rise at five all 
 this summer; if you will do the same I can promise you 
 great advantage from it.... 2 " 
 
 Sedgwick had been taught by his father to abhor the 
 
 1 From William Ainger, n April, 1807. 
 
 2 To William Ainger, 4 May, 1807. 
 
88 UNIVERSITY ELECTION. 
 
 1807. slave-trade, and he told Bishop Wilberforce in 1848 that he 
 t- > had signed a petition against it as soon as he " had learnt to 
 scrawl his name in childish characters". He had also imbibed, 
 probably from the same source, a wholesome horror of the 
 Church of Rome, and had not yet become a sufficiently 
 decided Liberal to see the justice of removing the civic 
 disabilities of Roman Catholics, as he did a few years later. 
 He would therefore take a peculiar interest in the University 
 elections of 1806 and 1807, of which the former turned on 
 Abolition, the latter, at least to some extent, on Catholic 
 Emancipation. After the death of Mr Pitt, Lord Henry 
 Petty of Trinity College, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the cabinet of Lord 
 Grenville, had come forward, as an abolitionist, at the sug- 
 gestion of Mr Wilberforce 1 , who had personally canvassed 
 on his behalf. He was elected by an enormous majority, 
 his competitors, Viscount Althorp and Viscount Palmerston, 
 polling together only 273 votes, while 331 were recorded for 
 him 2 . At the same time many of those who usually agreed 
 with Mr Wilberforce were not a little scandalised at his 
 support of one who had opposed Mr Pitt, and some, among 
 whom was Dr Milner, voted against his candidate 3 . At the 
 general election of 1807 the feelings of the constituency were 
 no longer the same. The Abolition Bill had received the 
 Royal Assent on the 25th March, and therefore the slavery 
 question had passed out of sight for the moment. Lord 
 Grenville and his colleagues better known as the ministry of 
 "All the Talents "had been dismissed by the King on a 
 point connected with the relief of the Roman Catholics ; and 
 their successors, the Duke of Portland and Mr Perceval, had 
 dissolved Parliament. The question placed before the consti- 
 tuencies was partly the relief of the Roman Catholics partly 
 the vindication of the King's conduct, who had demanded 
 
 1 Life of Wilberforce, ut supra, iii. 255, 256. 
 
 2 Cooper's Annals, iv. 484. 
 
 3 Life of Milner, lit supra, pp. 316 320. 
 
UNIVERSITY ELECTION. 89 
 
 a pledge from his ministers that they would never again, 1807. 
 under any circumstances, offer him advice on the Catholic *& 2 
 question. Protestantism and loyalty both equally unreason- 
 able were roused to passionate enthusiasm in the country 
 and in the University. There were four candidates for the 
 two seats : Lord Euston, who had been Mr Pitt's colleague 
 ever since his first election in 1784, and Lord Henry Petty 
 (whigs) ; Sir Vicary Gibbs, Attorney General, and Viscount 
 Palmerston (tories). " We are all in a flame for Church and 
 King " wrote Dr Milner. " Most seriously, I do think that 
 the greatest constitutional question, by far, that has happened 
 in my time is now at issue ; and if the ' outs ' were to get the 
 better, I think that the royal prerogative would be in im- 
 minent danger." He concludes by urging his correspondent 
 to support " Sir V. Gibbs and Lord Palmerston, who, at 
 present, represent the constitutional side, against Lord 
 Euston and Lord Henry Petty, the friends of the ex- 
 ministers 1 ." 
 
 The polling, then limited to one day, took place on May 
 the 8th. At the end of the morning's voting Gibbs and 
 Palmerston were considerably ahead, Lord Euston was third, 
 and Lord Henry Petty " hopelessly at the bottom ". There- 
 upon Mr Pryme and about forty of Lord Henry's supporters, 
 who had promised to vote for him only, called a meeting of 
 his committee, and with his consent divided their votes 
 between him and Lord Euston 2 . In consequence the latter 
 headed the poll with 324 votes, and Sir V. Gibbs was second 
 with 312, just beating Viscount Palmerston, who polled 310. 
 Lord Henry Petty polled only 265 3 a curious instance of the 
 fickleness of fortune, when compared with his great majority 
 only fourteen months previously. Sedgwick was probably 
 right in attributing his failure to the loss of the active 
 assistance of so influential a member of his own college as 
 
 1 Life of Milner, ut supra, p. 349. 
 
 ' 2 Pryme's Recollections, ut supra, p. 79. 
 
 :J Cooper's Annals, iv. 487. 
 
90 YORKSHIRE ELECTION. 
 
 1807. Mr Jones, who must have supported him on general grounds, 
 JEt. 22. for he was the pupil of another tutor, Mr Porter. 
 
 An interesting glimpse of an election contest of those 
 times is afforded by a letter written to Sedgwick by his 
 father from Dent, n June 1807. The candidates for the 
 county of York were Mr Wilberforce, who had been member 
 since the memorable contest of 1784, Mr Lascelles, and 
 Viscount Milton. The polling, held at York, lasted for fifteen 
 days, at the end of which Mr Wilberforce and Viscount 
 Milton were declared to have been elected 1 . 
 
 "You will naturally conjecture what a bustle and ferment this 
 County has been put into by the contested election. Wilberforce 
 had every freeholder's vote in this parish except Tattersell's, who 
 gave a plumper for Lord Milton.... Dr Dawson and I with 12 others 
 from Dent and Sedbergh set forward from Kirkby Lonsdale at the 
 same time, but were divided at Skipton for want of immediate 
 conveyances. From thence Mr John Fawcett and Hen. Hodgson 
 were my sharers in a chaise to York and home again. . . 
 
 " Mr Leigh Eland's friend was a warm advocate for Lascelles, but 
 very careful about spending money for liquor. Lord Milton's agents 
 were just the reverse, they spared no expence to get a single voter. 
 Most of his freeholders returned home with about five guineas clear 
 of all expences. The other candidates were before him in canvassing; 
 and Milton would have got few here had not a report prevailed that 
 his Committee allowed very liberally for expences. Indeed we were 
 all carried almost free from expence by stopping at houses that were 
 open for accommodation." 
 
 The same letter reports that Mr Dawson is anxious to 
 know " in what Book or Section of Newton your mathemati- 
 cal question was which you kept your Act upon in the 
 Schools : he also wishes to know upon what you mean to 
 keep your next Act' 2 , if you have already determined that 
 point." This inquiry shows that the old mathematician was 
 watching with interest the steps of his pupil's career at the 
 University. Mr Sedgwick, whose knowledge of the higher 
 mathematics had grown somewhat rusty, contented himself 
 with general advice: "You have been engaged in lectures 
 
 1 Life of Wilberforce^ ut supra, iii. pp. 315 337. 
 
 2 No reference to Sedgwick's second Act, or to either of his Opponencies, 
 occurs in his correspondence. 
 
TRINITY SCHOLARSHIP. 91 
 
 out of my sphere. I wish you to apply regularly to your 1807. 
 studies, but at the same time not so closely as to injure your ^- 2 
 health; take also regular exercise when you can 1 ." 
 
 In the Easter vacation Sedgwick was elected to a scholar- 
 ship in his college. As this was his only opportunity of 
 competing for a distinction without which, according to the 
 rules then in force, he would not have been allowed to sit 
 for a Fellowship, success was a matter of vital importance 
 to him, and his chances probably caused him the gravest 
 anxiety. The election over, he allowed himself a short pe- 
 destrian excursion by way of holiday, in which he had invited 
 one of his earliest Yorkshire friends and schoolfellows to join 
 him. The answer indicates how acutely he had suffered from 
 apprehension as to the result of the examination : 
 
 " It would have given me heartfelt pleasure to have been with 
 you in the delightful walk you mention, that I might have congratu- 
 lated you, while your mind was filled with the most agreeable ideas 
 from the honour which you had achieved. As your breast would be 
 entirely free from those anxieties which you could not but feel in 
 preparing for that day on which your reputation in a considerable 
 manner depended, you could not but be in a cheerful mood, and, be 
 assured, I should have enjoyed your cheerfulness 2 ." 
 
 The beginning of the Long Vacation of 1807, which 
 Sedgwick spent in College, preparing for his degree, was 
 saddened by the death of the respected and beloved tutor, 
 Mr Jones, which took place on the i8th July. His claims on 
 the affection of his pupils have been already recorded, and 
 therefore need not be repeated. That he had obtained it is 
 proved by a single extract from a letter of one of Sedgwick's 
 friends : " Poor Jones ! I am sure there is not a man one 
 could have less spared, or one who is more lamented by our 
 College or by the University in general." Sedgwick no doubt 
 shared this common sorrow ; but he had, in addition, a 
 private trouble of his own. His father was gradually becom- 
 ing blind, and a letter from his sister Margaret, after giving 
 the sad news in detail, had concluded with the ominous words, 
 
 1 From Mr Sedgwick, 18 November, 1806. 
 
 2 From John Brown, 10 April, 1807. 
 
9 2 FATHER'S BLINDNESS. 
 
 1807. " he fears he shall not be able to teach the school next winter. 
 
 Et. 22. My Mother says that if they can get over this winter, you and 
 Thomas may manage it next summer. How will you like to 
 be a Dent's schoolmaster?" Much as Sedgwick loved Dent 
 much as he might have liked such an offer had he never 
 left it he now contemplated the possibility of enforced 
 return with infinite bitterness of spirit. 
 
 " My Father's eyes," he wrote to Ainger, " have long failed 
 him, but he has lately perceived their imperfections so much 
 that he fears a total blindness ; in other respects he is as well 
 as at his time of life could possibly be expected. These 
 accounts for some time produced such a depression in my 
 spirits that I was prevented from reading ; my sorrow, 
 indeed, was in a good measure selfish (few of our sorrows 
 are otherwise), for, if my Father's sight should continue to 
 decline, a fixed residence in Dent must be my inevitable lot. 
 This situation of all others I should dislike. Little as I have 
 seen of the world, I have seen enough to find that to me no 
 pleasures are to be found in illiterate solitude. These thoughts 
 
 are to me too gloomy to dwell upon Pray has Henry 
 
 Smith escaped the fate which many of our brave countrymen 
 have met in Egypt ? I believe his regiment was in the expe- 
 dition 1 ." 
 
 His friend, with many apologies for being a bad cor- 
 respondent, for Sedgwick had begun the above letter with a 
 page of abuse on that subject, lost no time in replying : 
 
 WHITTLESEA, Aug. 3, 1807. 
 My dear Fellow, 
 
 ...Henry Smith, after whom you enquired, did not go 
 into Egypt, but to Buenos Ayres. His father had a letter from him 
 after the engagement. His captain was killed by his side in the 
 outset ; the command of the company then, of course, devolved to 
 Henry, who, I believe, acquitted himself very creditably, and did not, 
 to use his own expression, get a single scratch. Last week brought 
 his friends another letter from Monte Video, which acquainted them 
 that he was then (in April) just recovering from the attack of a fever 
 which appears, Sedgwick, not to have been less formidable than 
 
 1 To William Ainger, i August, 1807. 
 
LAST LONG VACATION. 93 
 
 yours was. He says he has lost all his flesh; but I find he retains all 1807. 
 his spirit. ^ t . 22 
 
 It is needless to say that I am truly sorry for the accounts which 
 you have received from Dent. However, you are certainly right in 
 endeavouring to banish gloomy thoughts. I do not indeed think it 
 is your character to indulge in them much, and in the present 
 instance I trust the occasion is not so serious as to justify them. In 
 the sincere hope, at least, that it may not be found so, 
 
 I remain, Dear Sedgwick, your friend, 
 
 W. AlNGER. 
 
 We can imagine that Sedgwick's natural elasticity of spirits 
 would enable him, before long, to chase away gloomy antici- 
 pations, and brace himself to his work and his amusements 
 as if his future were without a cloud. In 1807 a Long Vaca- 
 tion offered few distractions, with the exception of Sturbridge 
 Fair, with its varied diversions and excellent theatre, which 
 even older members of the University did not scruple to 
 frequent. To these Sedgwick was evidently looking forward, 
 for Ainger (probably in reply to an invitation to Cambridge) 
 wishes him " much fun at it ", and regrets his own inability to 
 be present. In the more important matter of work he had 
 made such good progress that a notion seems to have been 
 current that he had a chance of being Senior Wrangler. His 
 friend Carr, who had been Second Wrangler in 1807, an< ^ 
 therefore knew the Senate-House examination well, had 
 written to him soon after his own degree : " Mind you read 
 hard, and I have not the least doubt that we shall have the 
 Senior Wrangler next year. You have my best wishes ;" and 
 Ainger heard by accident at the very end of the year, that 
 the Fellows had formed a very high opinion of his powers. 
 
 ICKLEFORD, Jail. I, l8o8. 
 
 Dear Sedgwick, 
 
 ...One morning Mr Professor Lax 1 called here. He 
 enquired of me about the great men who were going out this year. 
 Your name, of course, was mentioned. He enquired whether you 
 were to be Senior Wrangler. This was a question which I could not 
 
 1 The Rev. William Lax, M.A., Fellow of Trin. Coll. and Lowndean Professor 
 of Astronomy and Geometry 17951836. It was probable that, in virtue of his 
 office, he might be appealed to to settle the position of the candidates in the brackets. 
 
94 DEGREE. 
 
 1808. positively answer ; but I took the liberty of saying that you, without 
 
 Mt. 23. doubt, would be among those whom he would have the pleasure of 
 
 examining. He said he had heard a splendid account of you from 
 
 some of the fellows of Trinity, among whom, I think, he specified 
 
 Hudson 1 . 
 
 From a man of your celebrity, Mr Sedgwick, I certainly cannot 
 expect the honour of a letter 'till your expectant brows are finally 
 crowned with the laurels which at present hang over them ; and, by 
 that time, I may, probably, be again at Cambridge. I shall assuredly 
 be most happy to make one in the train of your triumph. 
 
 I conclude, Dear Sedgwick, by repeating my wish of a happy new 
 year to you. If benedictions are of any service, may mine avail you 
 in the Senate House. Seriously, however, Sedgwick, may success 
 attend you ! but, whether successful or unsuccessful, rely equally on 
 the sincere esteem and unaffected friendship of yours truly, 
 
 W. AINGER. 
 
 The Senate-House examination began on Monday, 18 
 January. It was at that time conducted partly viva voce, 
 partly by printed papers, each class 2 being seated at a separate 
 table. At the conclusion of the first three days examination 
 a new classification was published of those who had passed 
 with the greatest credit This consisted of a series of brackets, 
 arranged in order of merit, the names in each being placed 
 alphabetically. These brackets (which were hung up on the 
 pillars of the Senate House at 8 a.m. on the Thursday morn- 
 ing) were regarded as a first approximation to the final list, 
 "and men who were joined together in the same bracket had 
 the opportunity of fighting the battle out under the direction 
 of some Master of Arts appointed for the purpose. Sedgwick 
 was in the first bracket, and the battle was fought out under 
 the direction of the Rev. George Barnes, then Tutor of 
 Queens' College, who said that he found no reason to 
 alter the order in which the names came to him; that 
 the men were so different in their reading that he could 
 have put them in almost any order by a special choice of 
 questions ; but that the man who impressed him most as 
 possessing inherent power was Sedgwick 3 ." The result of 
 
 1 The Rev. John Hudson, M. A. succeeded Mr Jones as senior tutor. 
 These classes were arranged by the Moderators. See above, p. 84. 
 3 Mac-mean's Magazine, ut supra, p. 477. 
 
DEGREE. 
 
 95 
 
 this last trial was published on the Friday morning, when 
 the successful candidates were admitted to the degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts. Sedgwick's name stood fifth in the first 
 class, or Wranglers. Those above him were : Bickersteth, of 
 Gonville and Caius College (Senior Wrangler) ; Bland, of 
 St John's College, his old friend and schoolfellow, who had 
 always, as we have seen, been considered certain to beat him ; 
 Blomfield, of Trinity College, who used to say that Sedgwick 
 was a much better mathematician than himself 1 ; and White, 
 of Gonville and Caius College. 
 
 The next two years were spent by Sedgwick in preparing 
 for the Fellowship examination at Trinity College. His own 
 wish was to read for the Bar, to which he was stimulated by 
 the example of his friend Bickersteth ; but he was deterred 
 by the consideration that his father's health was failing, that 
 
 1808. 
 
 The Vicarage of Dent, from a water-colour drawing by Mr William Westall. 
 1 Memoir of C. J. Blom field, Svo. 1863, i. p. 9. 
 
96 COUNTRY PLEASURES. 
 
 1808. his two younger brothers had to be educated, and that it 
 Et. 23. was therefore his duty to create an independence for himself 
 as soon as possible 1 . Some relaxation, after the strain of the 
 preparation for the degree, was. however, indispensable, and 
 in January, 1808, he went down for a few months to Dent, 
 which he had not visited since October, 1806. The change 
 proved the reverse of agreeable, and his letters betray a good 
 deal of disappointment, not to say ill-humour. 
 
 DENT, February 19, 1808. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I hope you have executed the commission which I 
 left with you, viz. 'to see my box well fortified with a wrapper, 
 cord &c., and set on the right road for finding its way into 
 the North.' The said box contains all the valuable property 
 of your humble servant. You need not doubt therefore that he 
 is extremely anxious for its arrival. I am anxious on another 
 account ; it contains some books of which I already begin to 
 feel the want. Indeed all the last week I have thought myself 
 a fish out of water. I rise about 9 in the morning ; come down 
 stairs in all due form, and commence breakfast, which consists 
 of a large mess of oat-meal porridge, to which I drink about a 
 quart of excellent milk. This is by far the greatest animal 
 comfort which I enjoy, for I no sooner have finished breakfast 
 than I become miserable for want of employment. The weather 
 is so bad that to walk is impossible. I have therefore nothing 
 to do all morning but amuse myself with my own pleasant re- 
 flections, surrounded and perplexed with all the clamour of 
 domestic music. I hope next week to find more rational plea- 
 sures, for I have procured an excellent grey-hound. You may 
 depend on it that dogs are the best company a man can have 
 with him in the country. Your pleasures, Ainger, I know are in 
 some measure different from mine ; marriage may be all well 
 enough when a man is on his last legs, but you may depend 
 on it that to be linked to a wife is to be linked to misery. 
 
 1 This statement is made on the authority of Miss Isabella Sedgwick. 
 
VACATION AT DENT. 
 
 97 
 
 From the horrid estate of matrimony I hope long to be de- 1808. 
 livered. I arrived at Dent without any incident during my ^ l - 2 3- 
 journey which is worth mentioning. I found my friends at 
 Dent better than I expected ; my father, though his eyes have 
 so far failed as to be of no use to him in doing the Church 
 service, still keeps up a good flow of spirits, and his general 
 health does not seem materially impaired 
 
 Believe me, dear Ainger, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 DENT, April 23, 1808. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I merely write this to be out of your debt, for there 
 is nothing here which I can tell you totidem litteris, but Bland 
 will be able to tell you much better totidem verbis. As soon 
 therefore as you may think convenient after the sight of this, 
 write to me, write to me about anything but love and friend- 
 ship. Indeed a plain matter-of-fact letter will be most agree- 
 able, inasmuch as you are the only person from whom I can 
 expect to hear what my old friends are doing in Cambridge.... 
 Bland tells me you have been lately on a visit, and that 
 Miss H s has been of your party. I think your plan of en- 
 joyment most rational. I wish some blooming damsel could 
 contrive to kindle a flame in my breast, for then I might 
 stand some chance of keeping up a proper degree of animal 
 heat ; without some artificial aid of this kind I am fully con- 
 fident that my lamp of life will be soon extinguished. Indeed, 
 Ainger, such is the inclemency of the season, that at the 
 moment I am writing, most of the farmers in the higher parts 
 of our valley are busily employed in digging out sheep which 
 have been covered up in the snow. An "over-drive" at this 
 time is most unfortunate as many of the sheep are on the 
 point of bringing forth lambs. So much for the pleasures of 
 a country life and a crook. I have now completely exhausted 
 S. I. 7 
 
98 READING PARTY AT DITTON. 
 
 1808. myself; love naturally led me to talk of sheep, and sheep lead 
 ,Et. 23. me to ta ik O f i k now not what. I shall therefore only add 
 that I am. dear Ainger, 
 
 Yours &c. A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick returned to Cambridge in May, 1808. The 
 summer was spent on a reading-party with seven pupils. 
 That ingenious device for combining instruction with exercise 
 and pleasure was then in its infancy, and Sedgwick went no 
 further afield than Ditton, a small village on the River Cam 
 about two miles below Cambridge, where he established the 
 head quarters of his colony, as he called it, at Mr Bond's farm- 
 house. One, at least, of his pupils lodged there with him ; 
 another established himself at Horningsea, a village about a 
 mile further down the river, but spent the day at Ditton ; the 
 others probably had lodgings in the village. Sedgwick appears 
 to have given himself up to his tutorial duties with unremitting 
 diligence. Vainly did Ainger try to tempt him away to 
 Whittlesea by the attractions of "a day's excursion on the 
 Mere " ; " my engagements preclude the possibility of my 
 leaving Ditton" was the stern reply ; and in fact the only 
 amusement which he allowed himself was an occasional visit to 
 the theatre at Sturbridge Fair. Still he and his pupils seem to 
 have enjoyed themselves, for more than one of those who read 
 with him refers in after years to his summer at Ditton as a 
 pleasant experience. Sedgwick was nicknamed "the Com- 
 missioner", and his authority as "head of the colony" was 
 successfully maintained. All went well, and the party did not 
 return to College until near the end of October. 
 
 The names of five out of his seven pupils can be recovered 
 with certainty from his correspondence, viz. : Robert Roberts, 
 and Arthur Savage Wade, of St John's College ; Henry 
 Rishton Buck, of Pembroke College ; Oliver Hargreave, and 
 John Bayley, of Trinity College. To these should probably 
 be added two other men of the same college, William Robin- 
 son Gilby, and Samuel Duckworth. None of these gentlemen 
 
POXSON'S FUNERAL. 99 
 
 were specially distinguished in after-life; unless indeed we 1808 to 
 except Gilby and Bayley, who became Fellows of Trinity and / 8 9 ' 
 Emmanuel respectively. Buck went into the army in 1809, \^~ 
 as soon as he had obtained his degree, and saw a good deal 
 of active service in Flanders and Holland. Ultimately his 
 regiment took part in the battle of Waterloo, where he was 
 killed, 1 8 June, 1815. A good many letters passed between 
 him and Sedgwick, who was evidently sincerely attached to 
 him. He carefully preserved all Buck's letters, and on a slip 
 of paper dated 22 September, 1815, he recorded the last 
 events of his friend's career, concluding his brief notice with 
 these words : " Peace to his soul. A man of more cool 
 undaunted courage never existed. If he had lived he would 
 have been an ornament of his profession." 
 
 One interesting reminiscence of the autumn of 1808 was 
 frequently recalled by Sedgwick in conversation. He hap- 
 pened to come over from Ditton to Cambridge on Tuesday, 
 4 October, and on reaching College found that Professor 
 Porson was to be buried on that very day in the chapel. As 
 may be easily imagined, his dress was suited to the country 
 rather than to such an occasion, but, being anxious to honour 
 the memory of so distinguished a scholar, he borrowed a black 
 coat from a friend, and took his place in the procession. 
 
 In October, 1809, Sedgwick sat for a Fellowship, but was 
 unsuccessful. There were but two vacancies, to which Charles 
 James Blomfield and William Clark 1 were elected. The 
 former, it will be remembered, was third Wrangler in the same 
 year as Sedgwick, and had also been senior Chancellor's 
 Medallist; but Clark was only seventh wrangler, and had 
 obtained no University distinction in classics. On the sup- 
 position therefore that there was no first-rate candidate of 
 the upper year, Sedgwick had a good prospect of success. In 
 the examination, however, which was partly classical, partly 
 mathematical, Clark did extremely well in classics, and gave 
 special satisfaction to the examiners by a translation of a 
 
 1 Professor of Anatomy from 1817 to 1866. 
 
 72 
 
ioo FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 1810. passage from Pindar into English verse. Sedgwick was 
 L 2 5 therefore compelled to wait for a year, which he spent in im- 
 proving his classical knowledge. "What are you about now?" 
 writes his friend Duckworth, 22 April 1810 : "How many 
 vacancies ? What number of books of Thucydides, and plays, 
 &c. perused ? " Others write in the same strain. On the next 
 occasion, in October, 1810, there were four vacancies, to fill 
 which the Master and Seniors selected Sedgwick ; George Edis 
 Webster (8th Wrangler), Edward Peacock (Qth Wrangler), and 
 Richard Ward (/th Senior Optime, and second Chancellor's 
 Medallist), all of the same year. 
 
 Sedgwick's friends hastened to express their joy at his 
 success. Letters of congratulation have a certain uniformity of 
 style, and those addressed to Sedgwick or " Sedge " as he was 
 called for brevity's sake form no exception to the rule. None 
 need be quoted at length but from that written by Samuel 
 Duckworth, more enthusiastic than the others, we will cite 
 a brief extract. " Escaped from the clutches of x and y ; 
 no longer bounded by right lines, superficies, or solids ; no 
 longer impelled to move in a diagonal by the joint action 
 of ambition and lucre on the one hand, and of indolence on 
 the other, you may commit yourself entirely to the influence 
 of the latter, enjoy otium cum dignitate, and listen to the con- 
 gratulations of your friends resounding from the banks of the 
 Mersey and Humber to those of the Cam. I for one sincerely 
 congratulate you, my dear Sedge," and so forth. But of all 
 those which he received probably none gave him so much 
 pleasure as that from his old school-master at Sedbergh, 
 who added in a postscript : " Mr Dawson begs to join in 
 congratulations." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (18101818.) 
 
 WORK WITH PUPILS. READING FOR ORDINATION (1810). VISIT 
 TO LONDON. SOCIETY AT CAMBRIDGE. CONTESTED ELECTION 
 FOR CHANCELLOR AND M.P. FOR UNIVERSITY. INSTALLATION 
 OF CHANCELLOR. READING PARTY AT BURY ST EDMUNDS. 
 CHRISTMAS AT DENT (1811). WINTER VISIT TO LAKES. 
 VISIT TO LONDON. PETITION AGAINST ROMAN CATHOLIC 
 CLAIMS. READING PARTY AT LOWESTOFT. APPOINTED SUB- 
 LECTURER AT TRINITY COLLEGE. SECOND PETITION AGAINST 
 ROMAN CATHOLICS (1812). SERIOUS ILLNESS. SUMMER AT 
 DENT (1813). SEVERE FROST. VISIT OF MARSHAL BLUCHER. 
 SUMMER AT DENT. EXCURSION IN YORKSHIRE (1814). 
 PROJECTED TOUR ON THE CONTINENT. PARISH'S LECTURES. 
 CAMBRIDGE FEVER. GOES HOME TO DENT. NEWS OF 
 WATERLOO. ASSISTANT TUTORSHIP AT TRINITY COLLEGE 
 (1815). TOUR ON CONTINENT (l8l6). ORDINATION. SUMMER 
 AT DENT. HARD WORK IN MICHAELMAS TERM (1817). 
 ELECTED WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY (1818). 
 
 THE long-coveted distinction of a Fellowship at Trinity 
 College did not bring to Sedgwick all the pleasure he had no 
 doubt anticipated from it. He had sacrificed his own inclina- 
 tions, as already mentioned, to his duty towards his father 
 and his brothers, and he never repented of that decision. 
 But the course which it compelled him to follow was not the 
 less distasteful because it was right. He had never taken 
 
 1810. 
 
I02 WORK WITH PUPILS. 
 
 1810. any deep interest in mathematics, or done any original work 
 2 5- in them ; and when it became necessary to teach them, 
 merely for the sake of money, to young men of whom some 
 probably approached their study with unwillingness as great 
 as his own, he regarded both the subject and the pupils with 
 feelings little short of detestation. He worked hard, and 
 evidently did his duty conscientiously and thoroughly 1 , but 
 he was at heart profoundly dissatisfied with himself and his 
 surroundings. " Six of these blessed youths I have to feed 
 each day," he exclaims in one of his letters ; in others he 
 deplores his wasted life, his inability to find leisure, even in 
 the summer vacation, for the private reading which he is 
 longing to begin ; and he looks forward, with eager anticipa- 
 tion, to a future in which he will be able " to have done with 
 the system altogether". Nor were other causes wanting to 
 make his life less pleasant than it had been. 
 
 In the first place, his health had become impaired. He 
 had been extremely anxious about the result of the Fellow- 
 ship examination, and had over-worked himself in pre- 
 paration for it. In fact, the chronic ill-health from which 
 he suffered during the rest of his life, and which occupied 
 so large a space in his letters and his conversation, may 
 be traced to the mental and physical strain of that period. 
 He broke down completely in 1813, as will be related below; 
 but even at the end of 1810, though he declined to allow that 
 he was ill, his appearance was such that his friends had 
 become solicitous on his behalf. As one of them wrote : " a 
 man who is reduced two or three stone below his standard 
 weight cannot be very well 2 ." The state of his purse, how- 
 ever, would not allow him to take the rest of which he stood 
 
 1 For instance, when Ainger was coming to Cambridge in the Easter Term, 
 1812, and had suggested that Sedgwick should meet him on the road from 
 Whittlesea, he received the following reply : " I would have met you with a gig 
 with my whole heart if I could have done it with a good conscience. But consider ; 
 I have six pupils, and it is now within three weeks of the examination. An 
 absence of two days would at this time of the year be a great trespass." 
 
 2 From Rev. John Mason, 3 October, 1810. 
 
WORK WITH PUPILS. ,03 
 
 so much in need, and he was "driving on just as usual 1 ". j8u. 
 Moreover, his determination to give up the Bar entailed a ' Kt - - ftm 
 further, and more important, step, namely, the adoption of 
 the clerical profession, for which he had no very decided 
 inclination. He came, however, to the wise conclusion that 
 it would be best to commence the study of such a subject 
 without delay, and before the end of 1810 he wrote : "I intend 
 to begin my theological labours in about a fortnight. I wish 
 I had a better motive than I have for beginning these labours. 
 I acknowledge the necessity and importance of them, but I 
 feel an indifference to serious subjects which I shall find it 
 difficult to conquer. We must hope for better times." We 
 shall see that the commencement here announced was again 
 and again deferred : but the feeling that he ought to be 
 studying theology was constantly present to his mind, and 
 added to his anxieties. Lastly, he felt acutely the loss of his 
 old set of friends all of whom, with the exception of Carr, 
 had left Cambridge. It was probably their absence, far more 
 than ill-health or uncongenial work, that made him feel so ill 
 at ease. As usual, he poured his troubles into the sym- 
 pathising ears of Ainger, now comfortably settled in a 
 curacy at Beccles in Suffolk, who had ended his last letter 
 with these words : " I conclude with earnestly advising you, 
 and the whole set of you, to follow my example, and get away 
 from College as fast as you can." 
 
 TRIN. COLL. February 11, 1811. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I feel much obliged to you for the circumstantial 
 account you have given me of your situation, your prospects, 
 and your society. You know little of my feelings if you are 
 not convinced that everything relating to yourself must always 
 excite in me the warmest interest. I am frequently gloomy 
 when I consider that in the common course of things I may 
 not hereafter have it in my power to spend many weeks in 
 that society which for the last six years has contributed so 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 7 December, 1810. 
 
104 HOLIDA Y IN LONDON. 
 
 i8n. much to my happiness, I might almost say to my existence. If 
 /Et. 26. arr was awav I should consider myself alone at Cambridge. 
 
 You will recollect that I made several resolutions to read 
 divinity this vacation. I did begin, but that was all, for 1 
 made no progress. Boswell's Life of Johnson is the only 
 book I have seen this Christmas. While the men were in the 
 Senate House, I did nothing. The result you will of course 
 have seen. I should otherwise have sent you a tripos in some 
 corner of this sheet. It has been a noble year for Trinity. 
 Armstrong says he fears the glory of St John's is gone for ever 1 . 
 
 Soon after the degrees were conferred I set off to Town, 
 where I spent a gay and agreeable week ; indeed I was 
 engaged out to dinner every day I remained there. Gilby 
 and I one evening left a party early and went to the Opera. 
 I was much more astonished than pleased with the per- 
 formance. Catalani's powers are certainly transcendent, yet I 
 felt more surprise than delight at her Italian warblings. The 
 music was much too refined for my taste; they sacrifice 
 everything to execution : however I have no right to censure 
 what I do not understand. After taking an early dinner 
 with Harrison 2 , I one evening went with Armstrong and 
 Duckworth to Covent Garden. Cato* and the new pantomime 
 of Asmodeus were performed. I am Goth enough to acknow- 
 ledge myself more pleased with Grimaldi's wry faces than 
 with Addison's declamation. 
 
 I returned to Cambridge last Tuesday, and am now lead- 
 ing a life of dull uniformity. I am at present almost prevented 
 from leaving my rooms by a violent cold which has already 
 taken away three of my senses ; I can neither hear, smell, 
 nor taste. But while I have one sense left I shall ever 
 remain 
 
 Yours sincerely and affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 There were 15 Wranglers, of whom Trinity had 7 ; the ist, 5th, 6th, ;th, 8th, 
 9th, i 4 th: St John's only 2 ; the loth and isth. 
 
 2 Charles Harrison, Trin. B.A. 1810. 
 
 J A revival of Cato with John Keroble as Cato and Charles Kemble as Juba. 
 
UNIVERSITY SOCIETY. 105 
 
 In April 181 1, after Sedgwick had proceeded to the degree i8 
 of Master of Arts, he had the right of dining at the High &* 
 Table in Hall; but these new surroundings gave him but 
 little pleasure, at any rate at first. For a time he enjoyed 
 Carr's society there ; but at the end of 1811 or the beginning 
 of 1812 he also left College, and Sedgwick remained alone, to 
 make new friends as best he could. His judgment on his 
 brother Fellows at least on those senior to himself was not 
 favourable : 
 
 " I find a great want of Carr ; for, though I am more at 
 home among our Fellows than I was formerly, I find none 
 amongst them to supply his place. On the whole I have 
 been rather disappointed in the society of Masters of Arts. 
 Many are gloomy and discontented, many impertinent and 
 pedantic ; and a still greater number are so eaten up with 
 vanity that they are continually attempting some part which 
 they cannot support 1 ." 
 
 The University has changed so completely since Sedgwick 
 wrote these words, that a few remarks on University life at 
 the beginning of the present century will be not out of place. 
 In attempting to picture to ourselves what it was, it must be 
 remembered in the first place that foreign travel was impos- 
 sible, that communication with other parts of England was 
 slow and costly, and that therefore journeys were seldom 
 undertaken. Many Fellows made Cambridge their home, 
 which they rarely left, and died, as they had lived, in their 
 college rooms. Newspapers such as they were travelled 
 as slowly as individuals, and the arrival of a letter was a rare 
 event. We have often wondered what the Fellows conversed 
 about at dinner or supper, or at the symposia in the Combina- 
 tion Room which in winter filled up the long interval between 
 the two meals. And yet those gatherings were described as 
 cheerful ; and Sedgwick himself has been heard to expatiate 
 with delight on the recollection of a certain Christmas, when 
 they had been so fortunate as to secure the company of an 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, without date. 
 
io6 UNIVERSITY SOCIETY. 
 
 i8n. Irish Captain, specially famous for his comic songs. Christ- 
 
 Mt. 26. maS) however, comes but once a year, and the joviality of the 
 
 twelve days over which its festivities then extended was no 
 
 doubt enhanced by the dullness of the remaining three 
 
 hundred and fifty-three. 
 
 Again, the refining influence of ladies' society was almost 
 wholly absent. With the exception of the Heads of Colleges, 
 there were very few married men in the University, and the 
 Heads were averse to general society. Dr Mansel, who had 
 daughters to establish, gave a few evening parties ; the other 
 members of the oligarchy thought themselves too important 
 to associate with anybody whose degree was below that of a 
 Doctor, or who had not achieved the dignified position of a 
 Professor. Nor was it the custom for Fellows of Colleges to 
 see anything of the undergraduates. It was rather the fashion 
 to ignore their existence. The old custom of a Fellow sharing 
 his room with one or more undergraduates had died out a 
 century before, and had not been replaced by the frank inter- 
 course which has now become usual, to the common benefit of 
 both. It is evident, from what Sedgwick says of the Fellows, 
 that he knew nothing about them until he was enrolled among 
 their number. There were Fellow-Commoners it is true, who 
 were sometimes numerous ; but the Fellows saw very little 
 of them. From the way in which Professor Pryme speaks of 
 the pleasure which he and some of his friends derived from 
 intercourse with "the most cultivated of the Fellow-Com- 
 moners 1 ", it is evident that such intercourse was as rare as 
 they found it agreeable. 
 
 Few Fellows of Trinity College, except the officials, had 
 any definite occupation. With two exceptions, they were 
 bound to take Holy Orders. Some held small livings in 
 Cambridgeshire, tenable with their fellowships ; others, who 
 had been appointed to the office of College Preacher, held 
 more lucrative pieces of preferment. But in neither case was 
 residence compulsory ; parishes were held to be sufficiently 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 89. 
 
UNIVERSITY SOCIETY. 107 
 
 provided for by the appointment of a curate, and the per- igu. 
 formance of an occasional Sunday service. With the large & *<> 
 majority of the residents, the fact that they were clergymen 
 imposed upon them no duties, and effected no difference in 
 their manners, habits, or language. Men of ambition went 
 out into the world and boldly courted fortune, as soon as 
 they had obtained their fellowships some without even 
 waiting for that assistance. Those who despaired of success, 
 or had no energy to strive after it, remained behind. One 
 resource, and one only, remained to them, the chance of 
 obtaining a College living ; and for this, and for the marriage 
 which in many cases depended on it, a man would wait, year 
 after year, 
 
 " Sickening in tedious indolence, 
 Hope long deferr'd, and slow suspense 1 ;" 
 
 till not only had he become unfit for active work in a parish, 
 but his hopes of domestic happiness had too often ended, 
 sometimes by mutual consent, sometimes in a sadder way, 
 by the death of the intended wife. 
 
 No wonder that discontent and ill-humour became chronic, 
 except with those happy dispositions whose natural gaiety 
 can never be checked ; no wonder that those who had to 
 endure a life which had all the dullness of a monastery 
 without its austerity or its religious enthusiasm, should 
 become soured, eccentric, selfish, if not intemperate and 
 immoral. 
 
 We have drawn a gloomy picture, but one which repre- 
 sents, we fear, a painful reality. Before long, however, a 
 great change took place. The restoration of peace put an 
 end to the isolation of England, and the Universities, in 
 common with the rest of the kingdom, shook off their torpor, 
 and became imbued with new ideas. The Fellows of Trinity 
 College only a few years junior to Sedgwick were men of 
 powerful intellect and wide interests ; with whom, as it will 
 be our pleasing task to point out, he made common cause 
 
 1 Ode to Trinity College, Cambridge. Hy G. Pryme, 8vo. Lond. 1812, p. 21. 
 
io8 UNIVERSITY ELECTIONS. 
 
 i8n. against the dullness of a previous age, and inaugurated the 
 Mt. 26. mo dern development of the University. 
 
 At all times, even the most stagnant, politics can rouse 
 the soundest sleeper; and in March, 1811, the University was 
 thrown into an unusual state of excitement by two elections, 
 both of which were contested. The Duke of Grafton, who 
 had been Chancellor for forty-three years, died on the I4th ; 
 and the elevation of his son, Lord Euston, to the peerage, 
 vacated one of the seats in Parliament. For the Chancellor- 
 ship the candidates were Prince William Frederick, Duke of 
 Gloucester, and the Duke of Rutland. The latter had ac- 
 quired an almost paramount influence in the Town of Cam- 
 bridge, of which he was High Steward, and on this account 
 was opposed by several prominent tories, and notably by 
 Professor Marsh, who considered that his duties to the 
 Borough would clash with his duties to the University. The 
 Duke of Gloucester, as a staunch Abolitionist, had the support 
 of Mr Wilberforce, and Dean Milner was specially active on 
 his behalf. The Duke of Rutland's supporters, on the other 
 hand, hinted not obscurely that His Royal Highness was in 
 favour of Catholic Emancipation, and called his friends 
 "enemies of the Church". This clever electioneering move 
 was, however, unsuccessful, and the Duke of Gloucester was 
 elected by a majority of 117, 26 March, iSu 1 . 
 
 For the seat in Parliament the candidates were Viscount 
 Palmerston, who had been Under-Secretary for War since 
 October 1809, and John Henry Smyth, M.A. of Trinity 
 College. The tories made the most of " the ability displayed 
 by Lord Palmerston in the administration of the country," and 
 he obtained a majority of 106 over his opponent, a whig, who 
 had taken no part in public life, and was known only as a 
 good classical scholar 2 . The election which took place on 
 
 1 The Question Examined, whether the Friends of the Duke of Gloucester in the 
 present contest are Enemies of the Church. By Herbert Marsh, D.D., 8vo. Camb. 
 181 1. Milner's Life, p. 450. Cooper's Annals, iv. 495. Wilberforce's Life, iii. 502. 
 
 2 Mr Smyth had taken an ordinary degree in 1801, but had obtained Browne's 
 medal for a Greek and Latin Ode in 1799, and for a Greek Ode in 1800. 
 
UNIVERSITY ELECTIONS. 
 
 109 
 
 the day following that of the Chancellor excited compara- 1811. 
 tively little interest beyond the walls of Palmerston's own /Et - 2 
 College. Sedgwick, as the next letter shows, was beginning 
 to take a keen interest in politics and he puts the objections 
 to the Duke of Rutland even more forcibly than Professor 
 Marsh had done. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. Tuesday morning. 
 
 [March, 1811.] 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 ...The University is already in a ferment; I shall 
 rejoice to see you whenever you may come, tho' I fear many 
 of my political lectures have been lost on you. It would 
 be absurd in any one to wish you to vote against Lord 
 Palmerston ; he is no doubt a highly respectable candidate, 
 and deserves the support of his college. 
 
 The candidates for the Chancellorship are both of our 
 college. The Johnians in general support the Duke of 
 Rutland. I am astonished at his impudence in offering him- 
 self. If we look to his intellectual attainments we shall find 
 them beneath contempt. He borrows his influence from that 
 source which ought to render him infamous. He is one of 
 the greatest borough-mongers in the kingdom. It is con- 
 foundedly provoking to the men of our year to be without a 
 vote. The undergraduates of St John's are all about to be 
 sent out of College to make room for the Masters of Arts. 
 As you will be here before next Tuesday, I shall trouble you 
 no further, 
 
 I am Yours most affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 You must not tell your friends what I have written. I 
 shall be prosecuted for a libel if you do. 
 
 Notwithstanding Sedgwick's good resolutions, his theo- 
 logical studies made little or no progress. During the Easter 
 Term he was occupied as usual with pupils, and with prepara- 
 tions for his summer excursion to Bury St Edmunds. When 
 
1IO INSTALLATION. 
 
 .1811. term was over, he stayed in Cambridge in order to participate 
 /Et. 26. j n the gaieties of the Chancellor's Installation, and evidently 
 forgot all his cares in the bustle and excitement. "Well 
 do I remember," he wrote in 1864, "the tumult of joy with 
 which I plunged into the festivities of 1811, when the Duke 
 of Gloucester was installed our Chancellor. In those days 
 I was a dancing man, and found it a most happy method 
 of discharging my redundant spirits 1 ." 
 
 The following letter to Ainger, written at the end of term, 
 opens with such an amusing burst of well-feigned indignation, 
 that we are tempted to regret the loss of the remonstrances 
 against unpunctuality in answering letters which provoked it. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. June 10, 1811. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 Your letter was left in my rooms this morning. 
 When I had read it over, and found your name affixed to it, I 
 could with difficulty persuade myself that I was not deceived 
 by my senses. I am at present a solitary, matter of fact 
 man, little accustomed either to give, or receive, the language 
 of abuse. Your letter is indeed couched in terms of right 
 orthodox scurrility. You have been reading books of reli- 
 gious controversy, I presume. Authors of the description you 
 are now studying I am little acquainted with, and I therefore 
 cannot be expected to express the worst passions of human 
 nature with the same strength and propriety that you do. A 
 momentary irritation was the only effect your impudent scrawl 
 produced ; I resolved to throw it aside and think no more of 
 it. I have, however, allowed my judgment to master my 
 feelings, and resolved to give you an opportunity of explain- 
 ing away this farrago of false accusations. I have been since 
 endeavouring to account on rational principles for this change 
 in your tone of thinking and of writing. Have you become 
 so far intoxicated by the applause of the gaping crowds at 
 Beccles that you expected to overwhelm me with a torrent of 
 
 1 To Mrs Hotson, 5 June, 1864. 
 
CAMBRIDGE GOSSIP. m 
 
 eloquent abuse, unaccompanied by reason or truth? You i8n. 
 have indeed got some egregious Gospel Trumpeters in your ^ 2(5 - 
 parish. Your sermons make as much noise in the papers 
 as Daffy's Elixir, or Bish's Lottery tickets. I hate such 
 Pharisaical blasts; I wonder you have not found means to 
 stop them. 
 
 You begin by asserting that I am a sad careless fellow, 
 and that you fear I shall never mend. This from you is too 
 much. On turning over your letters I find that, almost with- 
 out exception, they begin with apologies for neglect. In one 
 you acknowledge " that the happiness you derive from present 
 objects had filled up every moment of your attention ; that 
 you had never found time even to think of those who were 
 absent " (dated Hertfordshire) ; in another you with all due 
 contrition bewail your offences, calling yourself " a wretched 
 caitiff and a miserable sinner " ; in a third you say " that the 
 fulminations in my last letter had roused you as it were from a 
 dream, and at length brought you to your senses ". In truth, 
 Ainger, out of the six letters of yours which I have before me 
 I could find more expressions of bitter remorse than you 
 could pick out of all the volumes of the Newgate Calendar. 
 
 I should not have brought your own words in judgment 
 against you if you had not set me the example. I still pro- 
 fess myself desirous of continuing a regular correspondence. 
 If you had been guilty of no dereliction of duty, you would 
 have experienced none from me. You say it was my turn to 
 write because you had paid me a visit. I recollect no such 
 visit. You did indeed just show your face in Cambridge " to 
 do the devil's dirty work for nothing". But let me assure you 
 that if the taking a coach, and driving across the country to 
 vote for a foolish fox-hunting Duke is hereafter to be con- 
 sidered as an answer to my letters, I shall feel no desire of 
 continuing our correspondence. 
 
 I cannot yet propound to you any difficult questions in 
 divinity, because I have not taken the trouble to look for 
 them. I have had five pupils during the whole of last term ; 
 
H2 CAMBRIDGE GOSSIP. 
 
 1811. when I was not engaged with them I employed myself 
 X. 26. principally in reading voyages and travels. I managed to get 
 through ten or twelve quarto volumes. Besides these I have 
 read Malthus on Population twice through ; he is a delightful 
 author, and has made me a convert to most of his opinions. 
 His maxims are too cold-blooded for a man of your tempera- 
 ment. My more serious moments have been devoted to 
 Xenophon, Tacitus, Virgil, Berkeley's Metaphysical Works, 
 and Paley's Sermons. I am at present engaged exclusively 
 in reading Mathematics by way of preparation for our 
 summer's labours. We shall not remove to Bury till after 
 the Commencement. I have of course regularly seen the 
 morning and evening papers. Such a tide of success has 
 been flowing in upon us, as Perceval says, that even you, 
 dead as you are to all political feeling, must have joined in 
 the general exultation. The reappointment of the Duke of 
 York is a cursed drawback. " The Talents " have behaved 
 infamously ; they are nothing better than the vile refuse of a 
 party. 
 
 Carr has left Cambridge and all its festivities behind him ; 
 he is now in the North, and will continue there during the 
 summer. I almost envy him. At one time I intended to 
 have seen Dent before July, but I could not raise the wind. 
 In truth, Ainger, I scarcely dare appear in the streets ; some 
 terrific gaping dun stares me in the face at every corner. 
 Bland is now at Sedbergh. I had some conversation with 
 him before he left us. When speaking of you he seemed 
 quite in a pet, and muttered something between his teeth 
 very much like an oath; he seems resolved never more to 
 think of you, or to write to you, because you never give your- 
 self the trouble of answering his letters. Armstrong has sent 
 me a very long and amusing letter. He was one of the 
 Stewards at the John Port Latin dinner. On returning to 
 Gray's Inn he was obliged to leave a reverend friend of his in 
 the watch-house. Armstrong seems to have made a long 
 speech in defence of this hopeful divine, but his eloquence 
 

 READING-PARTY AT BURY ST EDMUNDS. 113 
 
 produced no effect on the constable of the night. He men- ,8n. 
 tions no names. " The Parson " (he says in one part of his ^t. 26. 
 letter) "has never written to me since he left town." He 
 complains of you for your indolence. Your friends, you find, 
 are abusing you with one consent. Don't be so self-com- 
 placent as to imagine that you are right and they wrong. If 
 after this prompt and vigorous exertion on my part you 
 make no suitable return, I shall for the future consider you a 
 monster of ingratitude. 
 
 I am, dear Ainger, 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The reading party assembled at Bury St Edmunds in 
 July 1 , and, let us hope, passed the summer both profitably 
 and agreeably, but we know neither the names of the pupils, 
 nor any particulars of their doings, with this exception, that 
 Sedgwick, as might be expected, made friends there, whom 
 he visited on subsequent occasions. 
 
 Between October 1811 and April 1812 Sedgwick's life 
 offers no variety. He worked on as usual ; denied himself a 
 holiday in London towards the end of the year " Five pupils 
 and an empty purse interpose difficulties not easily got over 2 ;" 
 passed the Christmas vacation at Dent ; and finally, after a 
 Lent term devoted to pupils, and preparation for a summer at 
 Lowestoft, allowed himself a hasty glimpse of his old set in 
 London. It is painful to notice that the tone of his letters is 
 still depressed. The elasticity of youth had passed away, and 
 had not yet been replaced by the cheerfulness of a man who 
 is doing work which he enjoys contentedly and resolutely. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. February 14, 1812. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 I informed you in my last that I should visit Dent 
 during the Christmas vacation. My anxiety to be off was 
 
 1 Miss Margaret Sedgwick directed a letter (31 July) to "Mr Sedgwick, at 
 Mr Crisp's, Druggist, Bury St Edmunds." 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Ainger, Beccles, Suffolk, 4 December, 181 r. 
 
 S. i. 8 
 
ii 4 VACATION AT DENT. 
 
 1812. such that I left Cambridge two days before the end of the 
 *- 7 7- October term. You will perhaps be surprised when I say 
 that I travelled outside all the way from Alconbury Hill to 
 Ingleton. I had fortified myself with a box-coat of huge 
 dimensions and impenetrable thickness, so that, notwithstand- 
 ing a keen north wind and hard frost, I found little incon- 
 venience from the weather. 
 
 My Father still retains that freshness of complexion, and 
 activity of limb, for which he was remarkable, and, though 
 deprived of his sight, he is not cut off from all communication 
 with books, for my sisters read to him by turns the greater 
 part of every evening. On the whole there are perhaps few 
 men who enjoy a more rational, or a more happy, existence. 
 My mother looks old, though she does not complain of ill 
 health. 
 
 At Sedbergh the empire of dulness is firmly fixed. With 
 Stevens I spent some pleasant days; his hospitality, and, 
 above all, his zeal for the interest of his pupils, cannot be 
 too much admired ; but yet there is something about 
 him which I neither like nor understand. He has seven 
 daughters and a son, and there is another on the stocks, 
 but of its sex one cannot speak with certainty. Mrs 
 Dawson died about ten days before I left the north. Her 
 dissolution had long been expected. Mr D., if one may 
 judge from his appearance, will not be long in following 
 her. He looks quite cadaverous, and is shrunk into a 
 mere skeleton. 
 
 I spent about a week with a man of our college who lives 
 on the borders of Windermere. We took many excursions 
 during my visit to the different Lakes in the neighbourhood. 
 The face of nature is certainly seen to a great disadvantage 
 during this part of the year, yet the excursion 
 
 I was interrupted about 10 this morning by the entrance 
 of a pupil. It is now late, the fumes of wine are in my head, 
 and I am drowsy. It had been my intention to give you a 
 bombastic description of the rugged scenery in the neighbour- 
 
VACATION AT DENT. 115 
 
 hood of Coniston, but I am now quite disabled. I returned 1812. 
 to Cambridge by Manchester and Leicester. The road is ^t. 27. 
 intolerably bad, and the distance about fifty miles greater 
 than by Leeds. I was induced to return by this route that I 
 might call on a clergyman near Macclesfield 1 who formerly 
 had the delectable office of teaching me A, B, C, and with 
 whom I spent a month in Cumberland about twenty years 
 ago. I have only seen him twice since that time and after 
 long intervals. We soon became as intimate as if our ac- 
 quaintance had been uninterrupted ; and as he is not tor- 
 mented by that bane of domestic happiness a wife, we 
 contrived, during each of the few nights I was with him, 
 to keep up the conversation till two or three o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 I forgot to tell you that I went out with a gun several 
 times during the Christmas vacation. I have quite lost the 
 art of shooting. I had many good shots, and literally killed 
 nothing. Here I am grinding away with six pupils. Under 
 such circumstances it is impossible to advance one step. But 
 I am compelled by circumstances to undergo this drudgery. 
 When I look back on what I have done since I was elected 
 Fellow I cannot discover that I have made any proficiency 
 whatever, or gained one new idea. This is miserable stagna- 
 tion, but I thank God that I am not yet in the " slough of 
 despond ". I hope for better things. You will undoubtedly 
 have heard of Carr's appointment to Durham School. I find 
 a great want of him. He was too valuable a man to be 
 easily replaced. I think he was in the right to accept 
 the situation, though at present the emoluments are but 
 small. 
 
 I am, dear Ainger, 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 Sedgwick's godfather, Mr Parker. See above, p. 47. 
 
 82 
 
u6 VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 1812. TRIN. COLL. Sunday Evening, 
 
 Mt - 2 7- April 19, 1812. 
 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 I left Cambridge on Monday week, and arrived here 
 last Thursday, having exhausted my stock of cash and curi- 
 osity. I had no time to yawn or flag during the visit, as a suc- 
 cession of delightful engagements presented themselves. Our 
 friends Armstrong, Hargreave, Harrison, Duckworth, Gilby, 
 &c. are all well ; with some of these I contrived to breakfast 
 almost every morning during my stay, spent the remainder of 
 the morning in spying farlies 1 , and ended at one of the 
 Theatres, the Opera, or the House of Commons, seldom 
 finding my way to bed before two in the morning. 
 
 My resolution of spending the summer at LowestofT 2 is 
 still fixed. We shall probably remain there about sixteen or 
 seventeen weeks; as this is a good long time, perhaps I might 
 engage lodgings cheaper on that account. If a comfortable 
 sitting-room and a bed-room could be procured for a guinea 
 per week I should feel quite happy ; if for less so much the 
 better ; if for four or five shillings a week more, I should not 
 quarrel with them. Some of the men may perhaps take a 
 house, as you recommend. I should prefer being on my old 
 footing. As you have proposed to look out for me, I feel 
 disposed to accept your offer; but should wish to put you to 
 no inconvenience, especially as more than two months must 
 elapse before I shall think of leaving Cambridge. In regard 
 to the formation of a mess, that will be best done after we 
 arrive at the spot, as two or three of us shall probably leave 
 Cambridge together. At the same time a hint from you may 
 be of good service. 
 
 Believe me yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick's interest in the contested election of 1811, and 
 
 1 In North Country dialect, ufarley means a wonder, a strange thing. 
 
 2 Sedgwick always writes Lowestoff, not Lowestoft. 
 
PETITION AGAINST CATHOLIC CLAIMS. 117 
 
 his regret that he had no vote wherewith to oppose the tories, 1812. 
 as represented by His Grace of Rutland, have been already & 2 7- 
 mentioned. In the Easter term of 1812 he found an oppor- 
 tunity of exercising his newly obtained rights as a member of 
 the Senate, under political circumstances of more than ordinary 
 interest. Early in the year the propriety of making some 
 concession to the Roman Catholics, in connection with the 
 peace and good government of Ireland, had engaged the 
 attention of both Houses of Parliament The motions, each 
 of which took the form of a petition for a committee on the 
 state of Ireland, were lost ; but it was evident that much of 
 the opposition was directed against the form of the proposal 
 rather than against the matter, and that the question would 
 be brought forward again at no distant date. Under these 
 circumstances the Protestantism of both Universities took 
 fright, and it was resolved to send petitions to Parliament. 
 But it is evident that, at least at Cambridge, those who 
 suggested such a course knew that they were not standing on 
 sure ground. The petition was certain to be opposed, and in 
 fact, as the result proved, ran considerable risk of being 
 rejected altogether. Even the all-powerful Heads of Colleges 
 were not unanimous in its favour. The promoters of it there- 
 fore determined to bring it forward as secretly as possible. 
 It was presented to the Senate on Monday, 20 April; but, "it 
 was not till Saturday (18 April) that it was surmised in the 
 University that such a Petition was in contemplation, and it 
 was not till Sunday, a day usually devoted to other concerns, 
 that the promoters of the Petition formally promulgated their 
 purposes." Incredible as this statement sounds, it was made 
 in the House of Lords by the Marquis of Lansdowne, in the 
 terms quoted above, and no one ventured publicly to contra- 
 dict it. The Earl of Hardwicke (Lord High Steward of the 
 University) had already spoken in the same sense, adding 
 that even the Master of Trinity College had not been trusted 
 with the secret ; perhaps because, as Lord Lansdowne " had 
 authority to state", he would have opposed the petition had 
 
ii8 PETITION AGAINST CATHOLIC CLAIMS. 
 
 1812. he not been accidentally absent. The document was drawn 
 /Et. 27. U p by Dean Milner 1 , and, from what we know of his character, 
 it may be safely assumed that the measures for presenting it 
 to the Senate were devised by the same person. The petition 
 is not in his happiest manner, and the main argument is 
 curiously fallacious. It stated, with a specious affectation of 
 liberality intended of course to disarm opposition, that the 
 petitioners " have never been adverse to liberty of conscience 
 in Religious or Ecclesiastical Matters ; that they feel no 
 uneasiness at the Concession of any comforts or advantages 
 to their Roman Catholic Brethren"; but that "the controul 
 of any foreign Power over the Government of this country 
 either in Church or State is inconsistent with the first princi- 
 ples of all Civil Government...; that the power of the Pope, 
 though for various reasons lessened in the public opinion, is 
 notwithstanding more dangerous to us now than ever, being 
 itself brought under the control of a foreign and most in- 
 veterate Enemy." As Sedgwick's friend Armstrong observed: 
 "According to the wiseacres who framed that petition, the 
 Pope's influence increases as all external means of doing 
 mischief are taken away from him ; if he were only shut up 
 in a dungeon it follows he would be irresistible." Notwith- 
 standing the precautions that had been taken, the opponents 
 mustered in considerable force in both the Houses into which 
 the Senate was then divided ; and the Grace to affix the 
 University Seal to the document obtained a majority in the 
 Regent House of only fourteen, and in the non-Regent House 
 of only five 2 . That Sedgwick voted in the minority is evident 
 from the following extract from a letter to Ainger (3 May) : 
 
 " I had a long letter from Armstrong yesterday in reply to 
 a much longer of mine. In truth I had filled to the brim a 
 large sheet of scribbling paper with abuse of those men who 
 were instrumental in sending that absurd petition to the two 
 
 1 Life of Milner, ut supra, p. 500. 
 
 2 The numbers were: Regents; Placet 34, Non-Placet, 20; Non-Regents; 
 Placet 24. Non-Placet 19. 
 
READING-PARTY At LOWESTOFT. 119 
 
 Houses. Armstrong felt exactly as I did, but, in my opinion, 1812. 
 acted very absurdly, for he not only shewed my farrago of ^- 2 7- 
 invectives to our common friends, but, by some means or 
 other got it conveyed to Mr Whitbread, who in consequence 
 fired off some bitter invectives in the House against the 
 patchers of the petition. Fortunately the speech was not 
 reported ; I say fortunately, because if any circumstances had 
 transpired by which my letter had been made public in 
 Cambridge I should have found myself in hot water. After 
 having committed my assertions to paper, the onus probandi 
 would have rested on me ; and I might have found it devilish 
 difficult to prove every thing I had asserted. But of all this 
 mum, mum 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick's summer residence at Lowestoft was in every 
 way successful. He frequently spoke and wrote of it in after- 
 years, with all the pleasure afforded by a thoroughly agree- 
 able retrospect, and, on several occasions, when prebendary 
 of Norwich, he spent a few days there in revisiting his old 
 haunts. Of his nine pupils four at least became his intimate 
 friends ; and some of the resident families, delighted to 
 welcome a set of cultivated young men to their society, 
 showed him civilities which he never forgot. Among these 
 were Dr Smith, afterwards Sir James Edward Smith the 
 celebrated botanist, founder of the Linnean Society and his 
 accomplished wife. In April, 1865, when all but fifty-three 
 years had elapsed since his first visit, Sedgwick was at 
 Lowestoft Saddened by a drive to several country churches, 
 where he saw " the monuments of friends of bygone years ", 
 he called on Lady Smith, " the most wonderful woman of her 
 years that I ever beheld. She is now ninety -two ; yet her 
 eyes are bright as diamonds ; her face is smooth ; there is 
 
 1 Armstrong's letter (from which a quotation has been already made) is dated 
 May, r8i2. Sedgwick's letter to him has not been preserved. The petition was 
 presented to the House of Commons (22 April) by Sir Vicary Gibbs, M.P. : but 
 no debate is reported. The history of the petition, as stated above, will be found 
 in Hansard, Vol. xxii., pp. 506, 507, 722. It was presented to the House of 
 Lords (21 April) by the Duke of Gloucester, Chancellor. 
 
120 LADY SMITH. 
 
 ,812. a natural colour on her cheek ; her voice is full ; her gestures 
 * 2 7- active and firm ; her posture as upright as that of a young 
 woman ; her manner of address happy, kind, and cheerful. 
 She is still very good-looking. When young she was very 
 beautiful, and it was a kind of beauty to last well somewhat 
 of oriental about it, for when she was a girl she sat to Opie 
 as a gipsy, and it was one of the cleverest pictures he ever 
 painted 1 ." The conversation naturally turned on their first 
 acquaintance in 1812, and a few days afterwards she sent 
 him a copy of verses written on the departure of the party 
 by one of her young friends, Miss Ritson. This jeu d* esprit 
 which indicates by the way that their time was not wholly 
 absorbed by the study of mathematics fortunately records 
 the names of all Sedgwick's pupils. 
 
 Whence comes the deep sigh, whence springs the fond tear? 
 
 Why seems my sad heart now so lonely and drear? 
 
 Why beats it so heavy that once was so gay? 
 
 'Tis because pleasure flies me. The moralists say 
 
 Did you think it would last? and I answer them Nay. 
 
 Yet a sigh of regret will arise in my heart 
 
 When I see that my friends with my pleasures depart. 
 
 At the play, at the ball, in the dance, with the song, 
 
 Our hours have sped gaily and swiftly along. 
 
 ********* 
 
 Farewell then to Belgrave*, good wishes attend, 
 Good sport in the field, and at home a true friend. 
 And farewell to Sedgwick, the Mentor who join'd 
 With the grave mathematics, the life of the mind, 
 Who foremost in whate'er was gay or could please, 
 With knowledge join'd 'mirth, and with study mix'd ease, 
 Who so justly the dulce and utile mingled 
 That the harp still was soft and the chords never jingled. 
 
 1 To Mrs Atkinson, 18 April, 1865. Pleasance, Lady Smith, daughter of 
 Robert and Pleasance Reeve, was born 1773, and died l8 77> a g ed IO 3- Her 
 husband died 1828. The picture was painted 1797, soon after her marriage. It 
 is thus described in Opie and his Works, by J. J. Rogers, 8vo. Lond. 1878, p. 161. 
 " Canvas, 29^ in. x 24^ in. Seen to waist, three quarters face to right, dressed as 
 a gipsy, her hat thrown back on her neck, and hanging by a muslin scarf tied in 
 front under her chin ; dishevelled hair about her brow, both hands shown, her 
 right fore-finger resting in the left palm ; an arch smile and pretty face." 
 
 - William Belgrave, St John's, B.A., 1813. 
 
LOWESTOFT PUPILS. 121 
 
 Farewell too, to Musgrave 1 , polite and refined, 
 
 Like a well-tuned piano the chords of his mind. t 
 
 Tho' grave never stately, tho' wise n'er pedantic 
 
 Tho' devoted to music, yet never romantic. 
 
 And farewell to Peacock", to Lodge*, and to Case 4 , 
 
 Who alike pleased us all, by each good-humoured grace; 
 
 And though Adams 5 at dancing and Ladies may sneer 
 
 Still we'll wish him success in his learned career. 
 
 And to Cook* who to study and books ever true; 
 
 To the well-bred, polite, lively Holder 7 adieu. 
 
 And farewell to Ingle* of marvellous fame, 
 
 By mighty comparisons marking his name, 
 
 Who, fond of discussion, would oft raise the smile 
 
 And join in the laugh the long hours to beguile. 
 
 His mind I for once will attempt to compare 
 
 To the great bird of Jove, to the prince of the air, 
 
 For ever in alto his thoughts will arise 
 
 And you must take care, they're not lost in the skies. 
 
 Keep his wits 'neath the clouds, for they're monstrously clever, 
 
 If they once soar above you, you've lost them for ever. 
 
 His mind never free from a thousand vagaries, 
 
 You would think he had lived in the age of the Fairies. 
 
 But the gay tribes are flying and flitting away 
 
 And the brown tints of Autumn no longer may stay. 
 
 Stern Winter will come, bid his tempests to roar, 
 
 So I'll give a fond tear to the Summer that's o'er, 
 
 And sweet retrospection of scenes long gone by 
 
 Shall paint, and will raise, or the smile or the sigh, 
 
 While poor Lowestoft deserted no gaiety knows 
 
 And hears nothing more than the keen blast that blows. 
 
 But hope may to future sweet scenes look along 
 
 Through the gloom of the winter, whose terrors among 
 
 May arrest the sad sigh, make my bosom to swell 
 
 And wipe off the tear that accords with FAREWELL. 
 
 LOWESTOFT, i October, 1812. 
 
 Of the nine gentlemen here celebrated, Case, Belgrave, 
 Holder, and Adams are unknown to fame; nor do their 
 names occur in after-years in connection with Sedgwick's 
 history. With Cook who became a Fellow of Christ's 
 
 1 Charles Musgrave, Trinity, B.A. 1814. 
 
 2 George Peacock, Trinity, B.A. 1813. 
 
 3 John Lodge, Trinity, B.A. 1814. 
 
 4 Isham Case, St John's, B.A. 1814. 
 
 5 Richard Newton Adams, Sidney Sussex, B.A. 1814. 
 " Joseph Cook, Christ's, B.A. 1813. 
 
 7 Robert Keyse Holder, St John's, B.A. 1813. 
 
 8 Charles Ingle, Trinity, B.A. 1814. 
 
122 LOWESTOFT PUPILS. 
 
 1812. College he maintained a correspondence until his death, 
 & 2 7- in 1825, while travelling in the Sinaitic Peninsula. Musgrave 
 (the future Archdeacon), Peacock, Lodge, and Ingle, were 
 all numbered among his most intimate friends. The two 
 former became Fellows of Trinity ; and though Musgrave 
 left College in 1821 to become Vicar of Whitkirk, in York- 
 shire, they still contrived to meet frequently. Peacock resided 
 in College until he was made Dean of Ely in 1839. Lodge 
 obtained a Fellowship at Magdalene College in 1818, and was 
 University Librarian from 1822 to 1845. Ingle obtained no 
 University distinction, and left Cambridge as soon as he had 
 taken his degree. But a very warm affection had grown up 
 between him and Sedgwick, and they continued to write 
 letters, and to pay frequent visits, to each other. Ingle was a 
 brilliant, impulsive creature with a warm heart and a weak 
 head who clung to Sedgwick's stronger character like ivy to 
 an oak. The friendship, however, was far from being all on 
 one side. Sedgwick had a high opinion of his talents, de- 
 lighted in his society, and selected him as the confidant of his 
 most private thoughts and feelings. Few lives have opened 
 with brighter promise ; none as it will be our painful task 
 to tell have had a more miserable close. 
 
 Sedgwick paid another visit to Lowestoft in 1869, and 
 sent a charming description of it to his two American cousins, 
 Mrs Norton and Miss Sedgwick. The letter, dated 8 July, 
 1869, contains so many references to 1812, that it will be best 
 to quote a considerable portion of it here : 
 
 " I have no news to communicate except what relates to 
 myself. I am looking over the broad sea. The sands below 
 my windows are covered by groups of merry children, digging 
 away with their little spades, as lustily as if they thought the 
 fate of England was in their hands. The waves are sparkling 
 in the bright sun, and a great number of vessels are running 
 before a side-wind both north and south, and close in shore, 
 for this is the most eastern point of our Island. I ought to have 
 returned to Cambridge to-day to superintend some important 
 
LOWESTOFT REVISITED. 123 
 
 works going on in my Museum; but I could not resist the 
 temptation of a run for a few hours to the seaside, that I 
 might breathe the free air of heaven, and visit some old 
 friends. 
 
 "And I have visited two or three to my joy. Among them 
 was my dear old friend Lady Smith. She has bright manners, 
 bright eyes, and clear sight ; a face still handsome, and with 
 healthy colour on her smooth, well-rounded, cheeks. She 
 hears well, and her voice has a cheerful ring with it. All this 
 may be said of many English women. But Lady Smith is 
 one of a million the wonder of the county, and the charm of 
 her old friends, for she is now happily wearing her way 
 through her 9/th year ! I am old and suffering from the in- 
 firmities of old-age ; but my friend Lady Smith, to whom I 
 gave a true-love kiss, is twelve years older than myself Let 
 not my two saucy American cousins laugh at the thought of 
 a love-kiss given between two such aged remnants of old 
 Time's gleanings. Love is the dearest attribute of God. 
 Like Himself it will last for ever. He may plant it here ; 
 and, if we do our part well, it will have its consummation and 
 perfection after the wreck of all visible worlds. 
 
 " Well ! to come back. I am going to have a drive, that 
 I may revisit the pretty rural spots in this neighbourhood, 
 where I spent many happy days in my youthful life ; and to 
 which I have often brought my young relations during the 
 periods of their visits to me at Norwich. I spent 1812 at 
 this bright little seaport on the Suffolk coast. It was the 
 last time I ever went out with pupils. The whole summer 
 and autumn were seasons of intense excitement. No rail- 
 roads, and no telegrams then. So day by day we went out 
 to meet the mail-coach, on its first entrance, to catch the 
 first whispers of news from Spain and Russia. It was you 
 know the year of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, at the head 
 of the grandest army that ever mustered within the limits of 
 Europe. The issue of the contest seemed to involve the very 
 life and death of old England. And in fits of gloom I some- 
 
I2 4 VICTORY OF SALAMANCA. 
 
 1812. times fancied that she must fall before the fortune of the 
 Mi. 27. great conqueror, as so many other powers of Europe had 
 done before her. But such gloomy visions had one bright 
 side. I said to myself, if England lose her freedom I will 
 pack up all I have, and go to settle along with my relations 
 among the free-men of the United States. We had heard 
 reports of good news, and I took my stand on a little hill 
 that overlooks the London road along with my party. Several 
 hundred of the inhabitants joined us. At length the mail- 
 coach came in sight, rapidly nearing us. On its top was a 
 sailor, waving the Union Jack over his head, and gaudy 
 ribbons were streaming on all sides, the sure signs of victory. 
 The guard threw down a paper to me, and with it I ran to 
 the Public Room. There, mounting upon a table, I read to 
 the assembled crowd the Gazette Extraordinary of the Battle 
 of Salamanca 1 . The cheers were long and loud, but there 
 were sobs of sorrow too, for some of us had lost those who 
 were dear to us. Remembrances of this kind gave a quiet 
 charm to my sweet drive." 
 
 When the party had separated Sedgwick took a short 
 excursion with his friend Mr Daniel Pettiward 2 to Ipswich 
 and Bury St Edmunds, and then returned to Cambridge. It 
 is sad to learn that he still found the place distasteful. At 
 the beginning of the term, however, he was appointed a sub- 
 lecturer an office which, by requiring him to take part in the 
 College examinations, brought him into closer contact with 
 the undergraduates, and also with the tutors. From this 
 period may be dated the commencement of the excellent 
 understanding which ever after subsisted between him and 
 the rest of the society. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. Oct. 17 th, 1812. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 I met Mr Pettiward at Ipswich as I expected. The 
 day following we commenced our excursion. We had not 
 
 1 Wellington defeated the French at Salamanca, 22 July, 1812. 
 
 2 A member of Trinity College : B.A. 1789, M.A. 1792. 
 
SUFFOLK REVISITED. 125 
 
 descended more than three or four miles when our vessel 
 stuck fast in the mud. This accident I had from the first 
 expected, as the navigation is very intricate, and the whole 
 crew of the wherry was intoxicated before we started ; one of 
 the many blessed effects of a general election. We must 
 have remained in the mud till next high-water, if a very 
 beautiful yacht had not most opportunely made its appear- 
 ance. One of the gentlemen hailed Mr Pettiward, and, on 
 being informed of our situation, offered to take us on board ; 
 we wished good night to our brethren in jeopardy, and most 
 gladly accepted the proposal. Our voyage was delightful in 
 every respect ; indeed the accident we had met with gave us 
 a greater zest for enjoyment. If you should ever have an 
 opportunity of making the same excursion you will find 
 yourself amply rewarded for sacrificing some time to it. 
 After taking dinner on board the yacht, and drinking nearly 
 a bottle of Madeira each, we landed at Harwich. Every 
 thing there was in a state of uproar, as the election had 
 taken place in the morning. As we approached the inn we 
 heard sounds of boisterous conviviality. All the gentlemen 
 of the town and neighbourhood were assembled in the 
 upper rooms to celebrate a dinner on the event of the 
 election. Mr Pettiward knew many of the party so well 
 that he did not scruple to introduce me. I flatter myself 
 I chimed in with considerable effect. I never was in better 
 mouth. 
 
 The next day was well employed in examining Landguard 
 fort, and many other fortifications in the neighbourhood. 
 The day following we went a short excursion up the Manning- 
 tree river, landed at the other side, and walked to Ipswich, 
 where we arrived late in the evening. I spent a day with 
 Mr P. near Stowmarket, and three at Bury St Edmunds 
 most delightfully, among the friends I acquired there last 
 summer. "Past and to come seem best." This I find 
 confirmed by my own feelings. I am already beginning to 
 complain of Cambridge. This may perhaps be accounted 
 
126 PETITION AGAINST CATHOLIC CLAIMS. 
 
 1812. for; few of my friends are arrived, and I am indisposed in 
 /Et. 27. consequence of the effects of a severe cold. 
 
 Your most affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The term was not many weeks old before the Catholic 
 Question became again prominent. Early in November the 
 ruling party in the University determined to send a second 
 petition to Parliament. The document used in the previous 
 April was slightly altered and enlarged, but the arguments 
 were the same as on the former occasion. It was not, how- 
 ever, proposed to the Senate with the same precautions 
 against discovery ; though, when presented to the House of 
 Lords ( i December) Lord Hardwicke complained that "due 
 notice had not been given to the non-resident members of the 
 University of the intention to set on foot such a petition." It 
 appears, however, that a notice of six days, instead of the usual 
 notice of three days, had on this occasion unquestionably been 
 given. The excitement among non-residents, especially among 
 junior Masters of Arts in London, was prodigious ; and Sedg- 
 wick became the corresponding member of "a confederacy/' as 
 one of them called it, established among members of Gray's Inn 
 and the Temple, prominent among whom were Gilby and 
 Armstrong, for the purpose of opposing the petition. He 
 was to send information to four specified persons, who were to 
 inform the rest. By this means, no matter how late the 
 notice of congregation might be issued, it was expected 
 that twenty voters would reach Cambridge in time. These 
 elaborate precautions were rendered unnecessary by the 
 length of notice ultimately given, but a number of non- 
 residents did eventually come up. The voting took place on 
 Wednesday, 18 November, when the Grace to seal the petition 
 was passed in the Regent House by eighteen votes, and in 
 the Non-Regent House by eleven a result which must have 
 
BREAKS A BLOOD-VESSEL. 127 
 
 been singularly mortifying to the enthusiastic partisans of 1813. 
 toleration 1 . <#)t. 28. 
 
 At the beginning of May, 1813, Sedgwick broke a blood- 
 vessel in the course of an excursion on the river. One of his 
 usual colds as usual neglected had ended in a violent 
 cough ; and finally inflammation of the lungs, or something 
 very like it, had supervened. The attack must have been 
 serious, from the way in which his father wrote on receiving 
 the news : 
 
 "Notwithstanding your caution to the contrary we were all a 
 good deal alarmed by your first letter. However your last letter, in 
 which you seem so much recovered, has made us in better spirits. I 
 hope by this time you are nearly well, and beg that you will take the 
 earliest opportunity after you receive this of letting us know how 
 you go on, if you have not, before it arrives, sent a letter off. 
 
 Your mother joins me in requesting that you will set off for the 
 North as soon as you think you are able, and it is safe for you to 
 undertake the journey. Perhaps the journey and change of air may 
 be of service to you." 
 
 That the health of one apparently so strong should break 
 down so completely was a subject of great surprise, and 
 sincere regret, to all his friends ; and Ainger with his usual 
 solicitude hastened to him. His place as examiner in the 
 next College Examination was taken by Mr Pryme 2 , and 
 towards the end of May he was well enough to leave Cam- 
 bridge. Indeed he felt so strong that before going away he 
 accepted the laborious office of Moderator for the ensuing 
 year. On his way to Dent, however, while staying at the 
 house of his cousin Mr Mason, in Nottinghamshire, he had a 
 relapse which compelled him to give up all thoughts of the 
 Moderatorship. When he got home his friends were greatly 
 shocked at his appearance, and despaired of his recovery. It 
 was thought that he would become consumptive. Complete 
 idleness, however, did wonders. He provided himself with a 
 
 1 The numbers were: Regents; Placet 52, Non-Placet 34; Non- Regents; 
 Placet 53, Non Placet 42. The above account is derived from the letters addressed 
 to Sedgwick by Gilby and Armstrong; from Hansard, Vol. xxiv., pp. nr, 134, 
 218 ; and from the Cambridge Chronicle, 20 November 1812. 
 
 2 Recollections, ut supra, p. 91. 
 
128 RECRUITS AT DENT AND THE LAKES. 
 
 1813. horse (which he named Caliban from his ugliness) warranted 
 x. 28. to wa ik on the edge of a precipice or descend a mountain 
 with any horse in Christendom", a gun, and fishing-tackle, 
 and lived in the open air. Still he was subject to relapses, 
 and it was not till near the middle of July that he was well 
 enough to take an excursion to the Lakes, As he frequently 
 visited that district in after years as a geologist, it is interest- 
 ing to note his remarks upon it when he was simply in search 
 of the picturesque and wonderful. 
 
 "About five weeks since, I left Dent on an excursion 
 which afforded me the most unmixed delight. My head- 
 quarters were at Hawkshead, in the centre of the Lakes. 
 The lady whom I visited allowed me to pursue every scheme 
 of pleasure my fancy could suggest, so that during the first 
 fortnight not a single day elapsed without my going out on 
 some expedition from which I generally returned in the 
 evening fatigued without being exhausted. My appetite, 
 strength, and spirits, every moment improved ; my mind 
 therefore was in a state above all others suited for receiving 
 pleasing impressions. Objects combining everything to 
 delight and astonish were each day presented to my view. 
 I always left them with reluctance, and started the day 
 following with increased avidity. 
 
 During the first fortnight I not only visited all the principal 
 Lakes in the neighbourhood, but I also spent an afternoon 
 among the ruins of Furness Abbey, descended into the iron 
 mines in that neighbourhood, and explored, I think, more 
 than a quarter of a mile under ground, the copper-mines near 
 Coniston. After the celebration of the regatta at Winder- 
 mere I left Hawkshead, and commenced my last and longest 
 journey. After passing for twenty-five miles through a most 
 rugged and desolate country I arrived at the foot of Wastdale. 
 The day following I ascended about three miles by the side 
 of a noble expanse of water. On the opposite side a mountain 
 entirely covered with rock rose abruptly, to the height of 
 2000 feet, from the margin of the lake ; when I arrived at the 
 

 VISIT TO THE LAKES. I2 g 
 
 top I found myself in an amphitheatre of pyramidal mountains, 1813. 
 all of which terminated in sharp rocks. Rudge makes the <**. * 
 perpendicular height of the ridge considerably more than 
 3000 feet. I was this day quite alone, and felt an elevation 
 of spirits infinitely greater than when I was surveying the 
 sweet country on the shores of Windermere. I sometimes 
 thought that the lovely scenery in that neighbourhood made 
 me melancholy. In Wastdale everything was rugged and 
 sublime ; about a dozen farm-houses seemed to make the 
 desolation more visible. From this place I pursued my way 
 through a pass in the mountains by a most frightful road, 
 which literally winds among masses of rock which have fallen 
 from the precipice above. I remained on horseback till I 
 became quite giddy ; then I dismounted, and led the way to 
 the top along a road in many places not more than a foot 
 and a half wide. A false step would have been destruction 
 to my beast. 
 
 August 19. I was prevented from coming to a conclusion 
 on Tuesday, and am now so busy that I shall be compelled to 
 take the remaining part of my tour for granted. Suffice it to 
 say that I arrived from Wastdale-head to Borrowdale without 
 breaking my neck. I proceeded through the most romantic 
 vale in England to Keswick, where I met with a Cambridge 
 man with whom I prosecuted my journey for the next four 
 days. We walked round Bassenthwaite, ascended Borrow- 
 dale, explored the lead-mines, perhaps a quarter of a mile 
 from the surface of the earth : and descended to Buttermere 
 through a fine pass in the mountains. The celebrated Mary 
 has now no personal charms to recommend her, but I must 
 recollect her with gratitude, for I was wet to the skin, and she 
 spliced me with a dry shirt, and her husband's breeches. 
 We scraped an acquaintance with the parson, who introduced 
 us to a party of ladies who were going on Crummock Lake 
 on a fishing excursion. We caught few fish, but had lots of 
 conversation. We returned to Keswick, and went together to 
 Ambleside, where we parted, and where I considered my tour 
 
 S. I. 9 
 
, 30 EFFECTS OF ILLNESS. 
 
 1813. as terminating. I remained one day near Windermere, which 
 
 JEt. 28. i spent i n sailing, and had I imagine very nearly been upset, 
 
 and in the evening I dined with Wilson, the author of The 
 
 Isle of 'Palms 1 . He is a clever convivial man, much superior 
 
 to what I should have expected from his poetry 2 ". 
 
 After this he accompanied his sisters to Gordale, near 
 Settle, and ended the vacation with a visit to his friend Carr, 
 whose appointment to the headmastership of Durham School 
 has been already mentioned 3 . In October he was well enough 
 to return to Cambridge 4 , whither he was accompanied by 
 his brother James, who was entered as a sizar at St John's 
 College. 
 
 For the moment Sedgwick had recovered, but he felt the 
 effects of this illness throughout his life. " I have been liable 
 to attacks of congestion ever since 1813," he wrote in 1864; 
 and he told Dr Hooker that he had become "unfit for 
 sedentary labour after 1813." Fresh air and regular exercise 
 became indispensable to him; and frequent attacks of ill- 
 health warned him that he must seek for a profession which 
 would keep him out of doors for several months in each year. 
 
 1 John Wilson, better known as Christopher North, published The Isle of 
 Palms, and other Poems, in 1812. 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Ainger, 17 August, 1813. 
 
 3 The Rev. John Carr died in November, 1833. Mr Robert Surtees, in a 
 letter dated 15 November of that year, thus sums up his character: "He was 
 eminently distinguished as a mathematician, and was, perhaps, not less dis- 
 tinguished as a classical scholar. He peculiarly excelled in pure Latin com- 
 position, but his private character was to me his chief recommendation. Kind, 
 unobtrusive, gentle ; most pure, most blameless, wrapped up in domestic feeling, 
 and neither meddling with nor caring for the world, I firmly believe he had not an 
 enemy. ...There was a quiet, unobtrusive independence about him, which I never, 
 perhaps, saw equalled ; a purity and delicacy of mind and manners arising from 
 the union of a complete education and the most perfect sense of honour, united to 
 the most unaffected simplicity of manner. As a schoolmaster, he never looked 
 like one, but he sent good scholars to Cambridge. No boy ever left Durham 
 without loving him." A short time before his death Carr had been made 
 Professor of Mathematics in the newly founded University of Durham. A 
 monument, by Rickman, was erected to him in Durham Cathedral. Taylor's 
 Memoir of Robert Stirtees, ed. Raine, p. 439. 
 
 4 Many of the details respecting this illness have been supplied by Miss 
 Sedgwick. 
 
EFFECTS OF ILLNESS. , 3I 
 
 This conviction, more than any other consideration, deter- 1814. 
 mined him to become a candidate for the Professorship of & 2 
 Geology in 1818 ; and, after forty-nine years devoted to that 
 science, he could say with thankfulness : " Geology has been 
 a hard task-mistress, but she has paid me nobly in giving me 
 health, which I had utterly lost before I put myself under her 
 robust training 1 ." 
 
 The immediate effects of Sedgwick's illness are painfully 
 apparent in the listlessness and want of energy from which he 
 suffered during the next two years. He was evidently obliged 
 to take constant care of himself, and felt indisposed for 
 any intellectual exertion that was not absolutely indispens- 
 able. He performed his duties as College examiner ; tried to 
 make his brother James work ; and did some desultory read- 
 ing, partly theological, on his own account. But the old 
 animation was gone, and the letters which formerly he wrote 
 so frequently, ceased altogether. And yet events took place 
 which under more favourable circumstances would have 
 furnished him with subjects for long and entertaining narra- 
 tives. There was the great frost of January, 1814, when no 
 coal-barges could get up the river, and he was obliged, as he 
 has been often heard to say, to burn his gun-case and some of 
 his chairs 2 ; and in July the dinner in Hall to the Chancellor 
 and Marshal Blucher, on leaving which he saw the old soldier 
 snatch up an attractive damsel who was pressing forward to 
 get a good look at him, and give her a kiss. But on these 
 trifles, and on graver matters, he is equally silent. In the 
 summer months a curacy was suggested to him, at a small 
 place in Northamptonshire, where the church, he was assured, 
 would not be too much for his lungs 3 ; but he had not energy 
 enough to submit to even the small amount of work then 
 
 1 To Mrs Norton, 27 August, 1867. 
 
 2 Professor Pryme records (Recollections, p. 113), that the scarcity of coal 
 was so great and the cold so severe, that some of the trees in the grounds of 
 St John's College were cut down for fuel, and at all the colleges men sat two or 
 three together in one room. 
 
 3 From Rev. W. Ainger, i May, 1814. 
 
 92 
 
I 5 2 VISITS YORKSHIRE AND WESTMORELAND. 
 
 1814. required of candidates for ordination, and so the proposal was 
 Et. 29. declined. In the spring of 1815 he attended the lectures of 
 William Parish, Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experi- 
 mental Philosophy, probably more for the sake of obtaining 
 intellectual gratification without thought or trouble, than for 
 any more serious reason. But, listless as he was at Cambridge, 
 the moment he got to Dent he became a different man. In 
 September 1814 Ainger and his brother James paid him a 
 visit there, and they took a pedestrian excursion together. 
 The letter in which he directs James Ainger how to get to 
 Dent shows how difficult it was in those days to reach remote 
 parts of England. 
 
 "The distance of our village from Ingleton is not more 
 than eight miles. If the weather should be very favourable, I 
 should be happy to meet you there, and walk home with you 
 over the mountains. On horseback we perhaps might break 
 our necks. If the weather should be bad it will be better to 
 go on to Kirkby Lonsdale, which is about eleven miles from 
 Dent. The road from thence is passable by a carriage, though 
 some parts of it are as steep as any house-roof in Whittlesea. 
 We could easily contrive to meet you there with a horse. At 
 all events it will be necessary that your portmanteau should be 
 conveyed to Kirkby Lonsdale or Kendal, and from one of 
 those places to Dent by a carriage. If your Reverend brother 
 come along with you it will be best to post it from Kirkby 
 Lonsdale, and then you will both arrive bag and baggage." 
 
 During the expedition Sedgwick was evidently better able 
 to bear fatigue than either of his friends. Their melancholy 
 experiences evidently made a deep impression on him ; for, 
 writing to one of them thirty-seven years afterwards, he 
 laments that he had then become " a poor walker compared 
 with what I was when I took you (I think in 1814) to the 
 Ulverston slate-quarries, and witnessed on your face an 
 expression of anything but comfort 1 ." 
 
 When his friends had left him, Sedgwick made a short 
 1 To James Ainger, Esq., 29 December, 1851. 
 
YORKSHIRE CATHEDRALS. 133 
 
 tour in Yorkshire. He went by way of Leeds to York, which 1814. 
 he had evidently never visited before, and was profoundly & L 2C > 
 impressed by the "vastness, harmony of proportion, and rich- 
 ness of execution of the cathedral," though the exterior was 
 " miserably spoiled by a set of dirty houses which press so 
 close upon it that no situation can be found from which the 
 whole pile can be seen at once." Next morning he went on 
 to Hull, taking Beverley by the way. "The minster is a 
 beautiful specimen of the lighter gothic, though in some 
 places much injured by certain modern improvers. The west 
 front is exquisite, infinitely superior to that of Westminster 
 Abbey, which was intended to be an imitation of it. Hull 
 is a fine town of the kind, though, I should think, not a 
 very comfortable residence. The docks are beautiful, and 
 the Humber is superb. As we were crossing it the merchant 
 vessels seemed almost to cover its surface. In our passage 
 we met a steamboat, working its way at a prodigious rate 
 against wind and tide." From Hull he travelled to Cambridge 
 by Peterborough, where he thought the cathedral " very fine ; 
 but whoever compares it with that at York should be stoned 
 for blasphemy 1 ." 
 
 As soon as the Peace of 1814 had been concluded, English- 
 men, who had been shut up within the narrow limits of their 
 own island for more than a quarter of a century, felt a natural 
 anxiety to explore the Continent, and above all France, with 
 whose Government we had been so long at war. Several of 
 Sedgwick's intimate friends had taken the first opportunity to 
 go abroad Bland to Switzerland, Charles Musgrave to 
 France, whence he wrote exceedingly interesting letters. 
 He notes the richness and the beauty of the country, the 
 cheapness of living, even to a foreigner, and the efforts that 
 were being made, at the sea-ports and elsewhere, to recover 
 from the disastrous isolation to which France, like England, 
 had been so long subjected. The effects of the war were still 
 painfully apparent: "In passing through the country I have 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 31 October, 1814. 
 
I 3 4 INTENDED VISIT TO FRANCE. 
 
 1815. seen few men in the fields compared to the number of women. 
 
 Et - 30- The effective male population of France seems to have been 
 completely drained by the war." English troops were still 
 marching through France on their way home from Spain, and 
 the sight of them did not increase the respect for the restored 
 Government, which was on all grounds unpopular, especially 
 with the army : "No one endeavours to conceal that the 
 military are highly disaffected to the King, and are panting 
 for a change." Nor were traces of the Revolution wanting : 
 " Every town on the Loire presents a monastery in ruins, and 
 the chapels of the convents have been principally converted 
 into Diligence-offices and stables. The men who have con- 
 ducted us down the Loire from Nantes remember to have 
 seen boats crowded with Royalists sent to the bottom, while 
 the Revolutionists fired at them from the shore if they raised 
 their heads above the surface of the water 1 ." These and 
 other letters, similar in tone, though less graphically written, 
 were not without their effect on Sedgwick, and in the early 
 spring of 1815 he was planning not only a tour in France, but 
 a first essay in authorship. By way of preparation he spent 
 part of the Lent Term in learning the French language, and in 
 reading French books. His projects, however, were overset by 
 Napoleon's escape from Elba ; and he was obliged to exchange 
 Paris for Bury St Edmunds, and French literature for divinity. 
 "My French journey is quite hopeless. If that were the 
 only ill effect to be expected from Bonaparte's visit it would 
 not, perhaps, be much lamented. So many books of travels 
 have been written that my little volume could not have con- 
 tributed much to the general stock of information. 
 
 "On Monday I shall begin to read divinity. I have got 
 about twenty folios out of our library. By the way, if I 
 should go to Bury I cannot take them with me. I must 
 therefore begin the Monday following. No matter 2 ." 
 
 1 From Charles Musgrave, dated " Paimboeuf, 1 8 July, 1814." 
 a To Rev. W. Ainger, 30 March, 1815. Mr Ainger was now curate of 
 Hackney, London. 
 
FEVER AT CAMBRIDGE. 135 
 
 In the course of the Lent Term Cambridge was visited by 1815. 
 an unusually severe epidemic of typhoid fever. At first little ^t. 30. 
 or no attention was paid to it, but the deaths of several 
 members of the University, and the serious illness of others, 
 created so great a panic, that on the 3rd May in deference to 
 public opinion rather than from any conviction of the necessity 
 of such a measure the Senate agreed to allow the term then 
 commencing to all undergraduates, who, having kept the 
 previous term, chose to absent themselves. Such a permission 
 was of course largely taken advantage of, and the public life 
 of the University practically ended on the day the above 
 Grace passed 1 . Even the Commencement was celebrated with 
 maimed rites ; " not a single fiddle 2 " was heard, and the non- 
 resident Masters of Arts who had journeyed to Cambridge in 
 search of pleasure went back to their chambers and their 
 parishes sorely disappointed. Sedgwick, warned by his own 
 experience of "the Cambridge fever" in 1804, had beaten a 
 hasty retreat at a somewhat earlier period, and gone down 
 to Dent with his brother James, and his friends Lodge 3 and 
 Sheepshanks 4 . 
 
 DENT, May 22, 1815. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 The escape of Bonaparte from Elba was not more 
 sudden and unexpected than my flight from Cambridge. I 
 had resolved to remain at all events ; and as I knew that my 
 brother James was not likely to read much at home (for God 
 
 1 The exact words of the Grace are worth quotation : " Cum opinio, quamvis 
 vana forsan sit, late pervagata est, et multorum animis insedit, earn esse hoc 
 tempore loci hujusce gravitatem, ut Juvenes Academici non sine vitse periculo in 
 eo commorari valeant ; Placeat vobis, quo Parentum potius medeamur anxietati, 
 quam quod rei necessitas ita postulate videatur, ut scholares in quacunque facultate, 
 vel absentes, hunc terminum complevisse censeantur, ea tamen lege ut nemini qui 
 superiore termino abfuerit, haec Gratia sit profutura." 
 
 2 From Rev. W. Ainger, 29 July, 1815. 
 
 3 John Lodge, Trin. Coll. B.A. 1814; afterwards Fellow of Magdalene Coll. 
 and University Librarian 1822 1845. 
 
 4 Richard Sheepshanks, Trin. Coll. B.A. 1816, a distinguished mathematician, 
 afterwards Fellow, Secretary to the Astronomical Society, and Founder of the 
 Sheepshanks' Fund and Exhibition. 
 
136 FEVER AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 [815. knows his literary zeal is not very great in any place), I was 
 * 30- resolved still more on his account to remain in College. The 
 death of six or seven members of the University during the 
 latter part of the Lent term excited so much apprehension, 
 that the walls of many colleges were quite deserted in the 
 vacation. About the beginning of this term two men, one of 
 Christ's and the other of Emmanuel, died the same morning. 
 The fever also began to make its appearance in our College, 
 which till then had escaped all contagion. These melancholy 
 appearances excited so much alarm that many members of 
 our College, and among the rest your present correspondent, 
 were persuaded to scamper off, without having time to give 
 notice of their departure. At the time of our departure we 
 expected to be called back to the University to keep the latter 
 part of the term. The death, however, of another member of 
 Emmanuel College, and one or two new cases of fever, induced 
 the Senate about the beginning of this month to give the term 
 altogether. 
 
 Since my arrival I have as usual been engaged in a variety 
 of employments. I have now read the whole of Gil Bias 
 twice over, and am reading for the second time certain parts 
 of Telemaque. A short analysis of certain chapters in 
 Beausobre's Introduction has employed part of my time, 
 but the task is a confounded dry one. Old Carr had the 
 kindness to lend me a very elaborate commentary on St Luke, 
 of which I purpose to make myself master. I hope also to 
 read the Bishop of Lincoln and Burnet on the Articles in 
 course of the summer. 
 
 My sisters received five or six weeks since a second package 
 of books for the use of their Sunday Schools 1 . Upwards of 40 
 children attend, and many of them have made a highly satis- 
 factory progress ; but more of this in my next. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 The school had been established in, or about, 1813. Memorial, p. xi. 
 
NEWS OF WATERLOO. 137 
 
 This quiet life was interrupted by one great excitement 181$. 
 the news of the victory of Waterloo which Sedgwick had the <** 30- 
 pleasure of bringing himself to Dent. How this came to pass 
 can fortunately be told in his own words. 
 
 "At that time we had a post three days a week, and each of 
 those days, to the great comfort of the aged postman, I rode 
 over to Sedbergh to bring back the newspapers and the letters 
 to my countrymen. Gloomy reports had reached us of a 
 battle and a retreat; but another and greater battle was at 
 hand ; and on one of my anxious journeys, just as I passed 
 over the Riggs, I heard the sound of the Sedbergh bells. 
 Could it be, I said, the news of a victory ? No ! it was a full 
 hour before the time of the postman's arrival. A minute 
 afterwards I saw a countryman returning hastily from 
 Sedbergh. " Pray what means that ringing ?" I said. "News, 
 Sir, sich as niver was heard before : I kna lile about it ; but 
 the Kendal postman has just come an hour before his time. 
 He was all covered with ribbons, and his horse was all covered 
 with froth." Hearing this, I spurred my horse to the Kendal 
 postman's speed ; and it was my joyful fortune to reach 
 Sedbergh not many minutes after the arrival of the Gazette 
 Extraordinary which told us of the great victory of Waterloo. 
 
 "After joining in the cheers and congratulations of my 
 friends at Sedbergh, I returned to Dent with what speed I 
 could ; and such was the anxiety of the day that many scores 
 of my brother Dalesmen met me on the way, and no time was 
 lost in our return to the market-place of Dent. They ran by 
 my side as I urged on my horse ; and then, mounting on the 
 great blocks of black marble, from the top of which my 
 countrymen have so often heard the voice of the auctioneer 
 and the town-crier, I read, at the highest pitch of my voice, 
 the news from the Gazette Extraordinary to the anxious crowd 
 which pressed round me. After the tumultuous cheers had 
 somewhat subsided, I said : ' Let us thank God for this great 
 victory, and let the six bells give us a merry peal.' As I 
 spoke these words an old weather-beaten soldier who stood 
 
i 3 8 ASSISTANT TUTORSHIP AT TRINITY. 
 
 ,815. under me said : ' It is great news, and it is good news, if it 
 t. 30. bring us peace. Yes, let the six bells ring merrily ; but it has 
 been a fearful struggle, and how many aching hearts will 
 there be when the list of killed and wounded becomes known 
 to the mothers, wives, and daughters of those who fought and 
 bled for us ! But the news is good, and let the six bells ring 
 merrily! 1 "' 
 
 Just a month after this stirring scene had been enacted 
 before the public of Dent, private news came to Sedgwick 
 which must have caused a nearly equal excitement in the 
 home-circle at the vicarage. Hudson, who had succeeded 
 Jones as Senior Tutor of Trinity College, had accepted the 
 vicarage of Kendal, and the approaching vacancy of the tutor- 
 ship which could not be delayed, at the farthest, beyond the 
 expiration of the year of grace had been taken advantage of 
 by the Master and Seniors to extend the number of tutors to 
 three a step rendered necessary by the increase in the number 
 of students. Two of the assistant-tutors, John Brown, and 
 James Henry Monk 2 , were promoted, as was usual, to be tutors, 
 and the offices thus vacated had to be filled up. The selection 
 of assistant-tutors was at that time left to the tutors under 
 whom they had to work, and Monk, with the consent of his 
 colleague, invited Sedgwick to accept one of the vacant posts. 
 
 From Rev. y. H. Monk. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, July 15, 1815. 
 Dear Sedgwick, 
 
 You are probably aware that J. Brown and myself have 
 been appointed to succeed Mr Hudson as joint Tutors. I now 
 write to solicit your aid as mathematical assistant tutor, and to 
 express the earnest hope of my colleague and myself that you may 
 find it consistent with your views and your feelings to accept that 
 office. We are well aware of the great advantage which would 
 accrue to the College from your assistance in the tuition, and are 
 persuaded that the appointment would be in the highest degree 
 gratifying to every person who is interested for the prosperity of our 
 society. 
 
 It is, I believe, Brown's intention to take the higher mathematical 
 departments himself, though not exactly in the same arrangement as 
 
 1 Supplement, p. 38. a Professor of Greek 18081823. 
 
ASSISTANT TUTORSHIP AT TRINITY. 139 
 
 Hudson has done. But I am certain that in this, as well as in every 1815. 
 other respect, your wishes will be consulted as far as possible, and ^Et. 30. 
 nothing will be omitted, to make the situation as agreeable and as 
 beneficial to you as circumstances can allow. 
 
 It is necessary to mention that the original arrangement made by 
 Mr H. for giving up the tuition has been altered. He had agreed to 
 resign it to us at Michaelmas. This agreement he has broken, and 
 has induced the Master to suffer him to retain the pupils till 
 Christmas, except the freshmen, whom he will give up to Brown 
 and myself at Michaelmas. Though this alteration is naturally a 
 subject of displeasure to us, on many accounts, yet it will make no 
 difference in the department of which you are invited to accept : 
 since Brown is decidedly of opinion that it is desirable for the person 
 who gives the mathematical lectures to the freshmen, to begin with 
 them in October. 
 
 I am aware that your health has not been strong, but I trust that 
 it is now better, and at all events that there is no fatigue in the office 
 alluded to which you need apprehend. 
 
 I shall leave College next P'riday morning but a letter directed 
 to me here will follow me so do not hurry in deciding, should you 
 hesitate. But I am sanguine in hoping that we may have the 
 benefit of your valuable assistance. 
 
 I am, dear Sedgwick, with great regard, 
 
 Ever your most faithful Servant, 
 
 J. H. MONK. 
 
 This letter must have been in every way gratifying to 
 Sedgwick. The proposed office offered him a congenial 
 occupation with less wear and tear than private tuition, and 
 besides might lead eventually to a Tutorship. He did not, 
 however, accept it without due consideration. The answer 
 which he finally wrote so modest, dictated by so nice a sense 
 of honour, and so perfectly straightforward must have con- 
 firmed Monk in the belief that he had made choice of a 
 colleague who would do him credit. 
 
 DENT, July 28, 1815. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Our communication with the post town is so irregular 
 that I have only had your letter a day or two, but should 
 think myself unpardonable, if I any longer postponed my 
 reply. I should indeed have written sooner if I had not been 
 desirous of first speaking to some of my friends in this neigh- 
 bourhood. They have all earnestly wished me to accept the 
 
140 ASSISTANT TUTORSHIP AT TRINITY. 
 
 1815. mathematical lectureship. The reluctance which I at first 
 Et- 30- expressed to them did not arise, let me assure you, from any 
 dislike to the appointment, more especially when the offer of 
 it was made in terms so very flattering to my feelings ; but 
 from an indescribable fear of not being able to discharge the 
 duties of it properly. You are aware that for the last three 
 years my health has not allowed me to attend seriously to any 
 mathematical subjects. I am, however, now much better, and 
 have besides most solemnly resolved within myself not to 
 retain the office of lecturer unless I feel myself on trial quite 
 equal to the duties of it. If I acted otherwise I should show 
 myself very little deserving the good opinion you have so 
 handsomely expressed, and of which you and your colleague 
 have given me so substantial a proof. I hope you will both 
 accept my thanks, and at the same time my congratulations 
 on your appointment to the Tutorship. 
 
 It will of course be necessary for the Bishop 1 to confirm my 
 appointment ; but you or Mr Brown will know how to speak 
 to him on the subject. I hope you will have the kindness to 
 write again when all is finally settled. 
 
 Since I left Cambridge I have been leading the most retired 
 life possible. But even in this corner of the world we are all 
 overjoyed at the great events which have been passing on the 
 Continent. Every individual in the Island must have exulted 
 at the exploits of our brave fellows. By the way I had forgot 
 that there may perhaps be one or two exceptions in the Com- 
 bination Room of Trin. Coll. I expect some friends when 
 the moorgame season commences, in whose company I shall 
 probably not spend a very sedentary life. Early in September 
 I propose to return to College. In a few weeks after that 
 time I shall hope to have the pleasure of meeting you. 
 Believe me, Dear Professor, 
 
 Your most faithful servant, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 William Lort Mansel, D.D. Master of Trinity College, was Bishop of Bristol 
 from 1808 to his death in 1820. 
 
OCCUPATIONS AT DENT. 141 
 
 TRIN. COLL. September 23, 1815. !8i 5 . 
 
 Dear Ainger, ^ 3 
 
 I have been leading a very active, though perhaps 
 not a very profitable, life since I received your last letter. 
 Two friends from Nottinghamshire spent the latter half of 
 August with me in Dent. We were constantly out on the 
 moors, and killed a good many birds. About a fortnight 
 after their departure I turned my face towards the South. 
 I had several reasons for leaving Dent so soon. In the first 
 place I have accepted the office of mathematical lecturer 
 under our new Tutors, and I was desirous of having some 
 time to prepare for my new duties. In the next place I 
 was desirous of getting James up to College, where he will, I 
 hope, adopt new habits. He has been doing nothing in the 
 country this summer. Besides, I hoped to have some sport 
 in this neighbourhood before the confinement of lectures. 
 
 I left our friends well, and as for myself I am in better 
 health than I have enjoyed for three years before. Bland is 
 returned from France. He does not open out freely, but he 
 looks well. My sisters' school flourishes as well as they can 
 expect. I attended almost every Sunday during the summer, 
 and heard one of the classes. They are desirous of instituting 
 some little rewards occasionally among the children, and have 
 petitioned the assistance of some of the good folks in the 
 parish. I have promised a guinea, which I mean to spend in 
 books. Can you recommend me to any cheap shop ? Does 
 the National Society print any books which would answer the 
 purpose ? I intend, if they will admit such a heretic, to be a 
 subscriber to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 
 
 Could you propose me ? 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. November 29, 1815. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I fear you will complain of me for not having written 
 sooner. Indeed I have no excuse to offer. As Hudson still 
 
I42 CONTINENTAL TOUR. 
 
 1816. continues in College, and the labours of the mathematical 
 t. 31. lecturer are consequently divided between Brown and myself, 
 Euclid and the first part of Algebra have fallen to my share. 
 If you inquire what I have been doing, I can hardly tell you. 
 My health has, however, been much better than it was last 
 year. The run in the country last summer has quite set me 
 up. Father Bland and your other college friends are I believe 
 well ; though I am sorry to say that one or two cases of fever 
 have made their appearance in the University during this term. 
 It is now near 12 o'clock, and my fire is almost out. You 
 must therefore allow me to finish by assuring you that I 
 remain yours truly and affectionately 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 In the summer of the following year (1816) Sedgwick 
 spent four months in France, Switzerland, part of Germany, 
 and Holland. Travelling was slow in those days, and, 
 though he was so long abroad, he did not see more than 
 would now be accomplished in less than half the time. Nor 
 has he left any detailed account of what he did see. This is 
 the more provoking, as he was a keen and accurate observer, 
 and was travelling at a time of special interest. He kept a 
 journal, it is true, but unfortunately it was only written up at 
 intervals occasionally very long ones and therefore is little 
 better than a record of places visited, people met, and dis- 
 comforts endured in the inns and on the road. Page after 
 page, especially at the commencement, is filled with dis- 
 jointed notes, which make us suspect that, when he started, 
 he had still some idea of writing a book, and was jotting down 
 heads of paragraphs, and fragmentary details, to assist his 
 memory on a future occasion. 
 
 He embarked at Brighton on June 22nd, and reached 
 Dieppe on the following evening at 9 o'clock. There he 
 joined his friend Edward Valentine Blomfield, Fellow of 
 Emmanuel College 1 , his pupil Lord Charles Murray, and 
 
 1 A distinguished classical scholar (B.A. 1811), younger brother of C. J- 
 Blomfield. He died, of a fever caught abroad, 3 October, 1816, a few days after 
 
DISLIKE OF THE FRENCH. 143 
 
 another Englishman, and in their company journeyed by way 1816. 
 of Rouen to Paris, which was reached on the afternoon of Mi - 3i 
 June 2/th. Here we will give a specimen of the diary : 
 
 " 27. Early walk in Mantes. Church injured by the Revolution. 
 Churches in Normandy very beautiful. Down the valley of the 
 Seine to Meulan. Mons. Wastel the priest. Destruction of his 
 church and his sufferings. Dialect of the Normans. St Germain. 
 Royal Palace. Panorama from the top. Immense work on the 
 Seine at Marly. Enter Paris. Palais Royal. Dinner surrounded 
 by [disreputable characters]. A general description of the valley of 
 the Seine. Riches of the country no appearance of depopulation 
 or misery." 
 
 A fortnight was spent in Paris ; but bad weather, a 
 rooted prejudice against the Roman Catholic religion, and a 
 cordial hatred of all the ways and works of the French, 
 prevented him from enjoying it as much as he did a few years 
 afterwards. Entries of this sort frequently occur: "A French- 
 man will never pretend to be ignorant ; but he will rather lie 
 than make that confession. Insolence of the soldiers;" "Con- 
 temptible character of the French. No display of loyalty on 
 this occasion (a review of the National Guard by the King)"; 
 and in one of his letters, though he admits that "the beautiful, 
 gay, and profligate city of Paris is a noble capital," he adds, 
 " but the people are so abominable and detestable that there 
 can be no peace for Europe if they are not chained down as 
 slaves, or exterminated as wild beasts." He took a master 
 in the French language, and worked hard at the usual sights, 
 among which the method of instructing the deaf and dumb 
 pursued by the Abbe Sicard successor to the famous Abbe* 
 de 1'Epee seems to have interested him more than Notre 
 Dame or the Louvre. He also visited the gaming-houses, then 
 so numerous, the cafes, and the principal theatres ; saw Talma 
 twice in Manlius Capitolinus 1 and Mile. Mars as Elmire in 
 
 his return to Cambridge. An interesting memoir of him, by J. H. Monk, is in the 
 Museum Criticum, of which he had been one of the founders, i. 520. 
 
 1 A tragedy in verse by Antoine de la Fosse, sieur d'Aubigny (born 1653, 
 died 1708) a contemporary and imitator of Racine. The play is poor, with a 
 single fine scene, in which Manlius by means of an intercepted letter discovers a 
 
I 44 FIRST SIGHT OF THE ALPS. 
 
 1816. Tarttiffe. This latter occasion was of unusual interest. The 
 * 31- performance had been commanded by the Due de Berri, on 
 whose entrance, accompanied by his wife, there was a good 
 deal of enthusiasm, repeated when the famous lines were 
 spoken, which have been applied to so many different persons, 
 and have glorified such opposite principles : 
 
 Remettez vous, monsieur, d'une alarme si chaude, 
 Nous vivons sous un prince ennemi de la fraude, etc. 
 
 About the middle of July, accompanied by William Hodge 
 Mill 1 , then a Junior Fellow of Trinity College, Sedgwick 
 started for Switzerland. A weary journey of six days brought 
 them to Lyons ; whence, after a brief rest, they proceeded to 
 Geneva. The bad weather followed them, and, besides this 
 drawback to their enjoyment, the place was "filled with a set 
 of lounging impertinent English coxcombs, who appear to go 
 abroad for no other purpose than to disgrace their country." 
 There he met by appointment, John Haviland 2 , Fellow of 
 St John's College, with whom he made a tour through 
 Switzerland, for the most part on foot. 
 
 "We started from Lausanne on the second of August, and 
 walked to Vevay, a beautiful small town near the head of the 
 lake. Next day we proceeded in a voiture to Martigny, 
 through a valley infinitely more beautiful than anything my 
 imagination had ever formed. Of the Alps I had formed 
 a good general notion. One can conceive an outline varied 
 in every possible form ; a man can imagine a mountain four 
 times as high as any he has seen ; but of that exquisite 
 perfection of scenery which arises from contrast and com- 
 bination, no one can have any perfect notion who has not 
 been in Switzerland. If I attempt to describe these delicious 
 
 conspiracy against his life, organised by his friend Servilius. He hands the 
 letter to Servilius and bids him read it aloud. When he has finished Manlius 
 exclaims "Qu'en dis-tu?" The great success of the revival is said to have been 
 entirely due to the expression of Talma's face while Servilius was reading, and to 
 the tone in which he uttered the above words. 
 
 1 Regius Professor of Hebrew 1848 1854. 
 
 2 Professor of Anatomy 18141817; Regius Professor of Medicine 18171851. 
 
CH 'A MO UNI. 145 
 
 scenes, I should only use certain general terms which would 1816. 
 convey no distinct meaning. ^t. 31. 
 
 "Next morning we started for Chamouni, with a guide and 
 three mules. After having ascended for some time we entered 
 the pine forests. These forests are constantly broken in upon 
 by small patches of cultivated ground. If the soil is capable 
 of producing anything, the Swiss are sure to find it out You 
 observe on the very confines of perpetual snow small wooden 
 cottages, many of which are only inhabited during the summer. 
 They drive up a certain number of goats or cows sufficient to 
 consume the vegetation ; and when that is finished descend 
 again into the valleys. I was also much pleased with observing 
 the mode in which the Swiss have cultivated some mountains 
 which in any other country would have been quite unproduc- 
 tive. They have erected a number of strong walls parallel to 
 the horizon on the sides of their most rugged hills, which by 
 those means become divided almost from top to bottom into 
 a series of steps or platforms, the top of each wall being on 
 a level with the field immediately above it. Each of these 
 small slips of ground is cultivated with the utmost care ; and 
 the whole mountain-side presents the appearance of an im- 
 mense sloping garden. With such habits of industry, and 
 such a country, the people can never be uninteresting. We 
 were much pleased with the honest simplicity and kindness of 
 this people, which was rendered still more agreeable by being 
 contrasted with the unmanly insolence of the French. I find 
 I am forgetting myself and running out into general observa- 
 tions. I must pull up, and proceed with my journey. After 
 having traversed the pines we reached the forests of larch 
 trees which in this country are always found near the extreme 
 limits of vegetation. Some of them were of an enormous size. 
 We could not help observing the effects of the winter storms 
 in these wild regions. Sometimes several acres of trees are 
 cleared away in one night. We remarked also a passage 
 formed through the forest by an avalanche of the preceding 
 winter, which had literally forced its way to the bottom of the 
 S. I. I0 
 
I4 6 MER DE GLACE. 
 
 1816. valley. After having traversed this second valley we as- 
 Et. 31. cended a second and higher ridge, and at length emerged 
 from the forest, and found ourselves in the regions of per- 
 petual snow. We soon gained the top of the Col de Balme, 
 and had before us perhaps the most glorious mountain 
 scenery in the world. On the right were a ridge of lofty 
 mountains, whose pointed summits rose far above the limit 
 of perpetual snow, before us were the beautiful villages and 
 fields of Chamouni, and on the left were the pinnacles of 
 Mont Blanc, rising to a height of more than twelve thousand 
 feet above the level of the valley. In our descent to the 
 village we passed three glaciers. There is a very fine one 
 below the village, which we visited that day. 
 
 " Early next day we started for the sea of ice. It takes 
 about two hours' good work to climb up to it. You are, 
 however, well rewarded for your labour. A few stunted 
 larches mark the limit of vegetation. After you enter the 
 valley, everything is rude, barren, and desolate. We de- 
 scended on the ice, and were amusing ourselves with throwing 
 lumps of ice down the deepest crevices we could discover, 
 when the rain began to fall in torrents, and soon drove us 
 among the larches. We afterwards descended by a steep 
 path along the side of the ice to the bottom of the valley. 
 The lowest parts of these enormous glaciers appear to me by 
 much the most interesting. One cannot form any perfect 
 notion of the depth of the sea of ice, or of its general magni- 
 tude, but no one can see without astonishment huge blocks of 
 ice, some of them coming down into the even fields, piled 
 one upon another to the thickness of some hundred feet, and 
 extending for many leagues in the channeled sides of the 
 mountain. In the lower part of the glaciers large masses are 
 continually rolling down the hill with a loud rumbling noise, 
 which adds much to the effect produced by such savage 
 scenery. We returned next day, though not by the same 
 route, to Martigny. 
 
 " On the /th, by the help of our mules, we ascended in 
 
MONT ST BERNARD. 147 
 
 eleven weary hours to the Mont St Bernard. We were well 1816. 
 rewarded for our exertions. About half way up we met two &* 3' 
 monks, one bearing a banner with a picture of the Virgin, 
 and another with a crucifix, heading about two hundred 
 people dressed in white. They consisted of a set of country 
 people who had gone up to the convent to kiss the image of 
 St Bernard, and to beg for his interest to get them some fine 
 weather. We travelled over snow for about three miles 
 before we reached the convent. The monks received us with 
 hospitality, and even with politeness. One of the monks 
 walked with us over a lake, at that time frozen four feet 
 thick, to the ruins of an ancient temple. We took a peep 
 into the north of Italy, returned, and dined, or rather supped, 
 in hall with our new friends. The Prior was fortunately 
 there he does not commonly reside a pleasant, well- 
 informed man as I should wish to meet. We retired early- 
 rose next morning at four, and were much astonished and not 
 a little pleased to find two honest monks up, with some warm 
 coffee and toast, to see us well off. 
 
 " I have a great deal more to say, but my paper is nearly 
 over, and I have already stolen an hour from my sleep. I 
 must therefore content myself with saying that we got safe 
 down ; that we went up the Valais ; crossed the Gemmi, and 
 were nearly frozen among the sleet and snow ; that I had 
 nearly broken my neck, and that I did break my crupper in 
 endeavouring to follow a mad English sailor across a preci- 
 pice ; that we have seen the lakes of Thun and Brientz, the 
 glaciers of Grindelwald, and the town of Berne ; that we 
 marched across the country from Berne to Lucerne by the 
 help of the sun and stars, inasmuch as we neither knew the 
 language of the people, nor the names of the towns we were 
 to pass through; that we reached Lucerne this morning 1 ; 
 that we are off for the Devil's Bridge tomorrow ; and lastly 
 
 that I am 
 
 Yours ever, A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 This letter, to the Rev. W. Ainger, is dated Lucerne, 17 August, 1816. 
 
 10 2 
 
148 
 
 HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. 
 
 !8i6. It is worthy of remark that the future geologist, though 
 
 t> 31. filled with enthusiasm at the first sight of the Alps, says not a 
 word about their physical structure, nor does he appear to 
 have been more surprised than any ordinary tourist by the 
 novel spectacle of a glacier. After some further adventures 
 in Switzerland the travellers proceeded down the Rhine to 
 Cologne, whence Haviland returned to England (10 Septem- 
 ber) and Sedgwick went on alone to see something of Hol- 
 land. Writing from Leyden (19 September), he says: 
 
 " The Dutch I have found a mighty comfortable, sober- 
 mannered, old-fashioned, people. In the towns you see great 
 signs of active industry, though there everything goes on in a 
 quiet orderly manner. It is however in his country-house 
 that you see the animal in all his glory. By the side of his 
 canals you see him enthroned amidst clipped hedges, sedge, 
 and duckweed ; he is so grave and immoveable that at 
 first you might easily mistake him for a smoking automaton. 
 When you approach him you find his face the very picture of 
 internal comfort. I had a deal of conversation with one of 
 these comfortable-looking gentlemen in my way down the 
 canal to Amsterdam. From his appearance I should conjec- 
 ture that he was first cousin to a burgomaster. He asked me 
 if I thought the Swiss villages as beautiful as the Dutch. I 
 answered that I thought the Swiss villages much more beau- 
 tiful ; and then proceeded to describe some of them. The 
 Dutchman puffed the tobacco once or twice with somewhat 
 more violence than before, and then observed that these things 
 were well enough to look at, but after all Holland was the 
 country to live in. The English are in great favour in this 
 country. I have met with the greatest civility in all the parts 
 of it I have seen. The inns are so excellent that I am more 
 than half a convert to the old citizen's opinion." 
 
 Sedgwick was always fond of art, and his diary shows that 
 he took considerable interest in the Dutch School, which 
 would of course be quite new to him. When he got to 
 Antwerp, he criticises Rubens and Vandyke with an acuteness 
 
FEVER AT BRUSSELS. 149 
 
 which shows a remarkable natural aptitude for grasping a 1816. 
 painter's characteristics : &* 3 1 
 
 " One striking character of Rubens' pictures, is animation. 
 He always chooses a moment when some great event is taking place, 
 and represents it with vigour and truth. He groups well but 
 there is almost always a want of delicacy and variety in his 
 female figures. He is a great master of colour, but often seems 
 only to have painted for distant effect. I have, however, seen some 
 pictures of his finished to the last degree, and which appear to me 
 to equal anything I have ever seen in the richness, the disposition, 
 and the harmony of the colours." 
 
 From Antwerp, though he had been unwell for some days, 
 Sedgwick persisted in going to Brussels, to have a look at the 
 field of Waterloo. A sharp attack of fever due to a neglected 
 cold, incessant exposure, and hard travelling was coming on, 
 and by the time he reached La Belle Alliance he was so ill 
 that he could with difficulty hold up his head. Next day a 
 Belgian physician prescribed herb-tea, which did more harm 
 than good ; and the result might have been serious had not 
 an English physician been discovered, whose remedies, though 
 severe, were efficacious. After nearly a week's confinement, 
 the patient, sorely enfeebled, was allowed to travel, and pro- 
 ceeded by way of Calais to Dover, where he landed in safety, 
 after a passage of only five hours and a half, on the i^th 
 
 October. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. March 16, [1817]. 
 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 Some months have elapsed since we last parted, and 
 I have still to reproach you for not having written to me. 
 Pray what have you been doing ? How do you get on with 
 your new college 1 ? How do you like your curacy, your 
 living, &c. &c. ? 
 
 My own history may be written in a very few words. 
 Since we parted I have not been a single day out of College. 
 During the Christmas vacation I was present at divers parties 
 of whist, in which I did not join ; I witnessed the scaling of 
 
 1 The new Theological College of St Bees in Cumberland, of which Mr 
 Ainger had just been made Principal. 
 
I5 o CAMBRIDGE GOSSIP. 
 
 1817. many pies, of which I did not taste; and I saw huge bowls 
 *- 32- of punch emptied without venturing even to sip of them. 
 Notwithstanding this system of mortification, I spent my 
 time pleasantly enough, for my health was better than it has 
 been for the four preceding years. During the greater part 
 of this term I have been slightly indisposed, principally I 
 believe from the fatigue of lecturing ; I am beginning now to 
 see land, for the Easter vacation commences before the ex- 
 piration of next week. James will this week be very busy 
 with the Fellowship examination. I am of course most 
 anxious about his success. John is now here, but is not able 
 to sit, as he was unfortunately elected to a Heblethwaite 
 scholarship, which prevents his being a candidate for either of 
 the Lupton Fellowships which are now vacant. Bland looks 
 dismally; he has for some time been tormented with a 
 jaundice ; he is now, I hope, convalescent. Carr was up last 
 vacation ; he had only been married about a fortnight, and 
 was apparently quite happy, and most anxious to be back to 
 his wife. He came to take possession of a small College 
 living 1 to which he had been presented a few weeks before. 
 The old Knight 2 , I think, died after you left us ; Haviland 
 has got the Regius Professorship. The Anatomical Pro- 
 fessorship will be vacant next term. Clark and Woodhouse 
 are again candidates. There is, I believe, no doubt whatever 
 of Clark's success 3 . If you should be anywhere in this neigh- 
 bourhood about the time of the election I hope you will come 
 up and give him your vote. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 Hatfield Broad Oak in Hertfordshire. 
 
 2 Sir Isaac Pennington, M.D., Fellow of St John's College. He was Professor 
 of Chemistry 177393, and Regius Professor of Physic 1793 to his death, 
 3 February, 1817. 
 
 3 William Clark, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, and John Thomas 
 Woodhouse, M.D., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, had been candidates for 
 the Professorship of Anatomy in 1814, when Haviland was elected. On this 
 occasion Woodhouse retired, and Clark was elected without opposition. 
 
ORDINATION. 151 
 
 Since Seclgwick obtained his Fellowship in 1810 the study 1817. 
 of Divinity had formed part of his programme of work, as ^ l * 3 2 - 
 often as he drew up that record of good deeds to come. He 
 was always going to begin ; he intended to be ordained before 
 the summer was out ; and the like. Now, however, it had 
 become impossible for that procrastinating spirit of his, which 
 furnished him with so many jokes at his own expense, to 
 frame any excuse for further delay. The stern voice of the 
 statutes under which Trinity College was then governed pro- 
 claimed that all the Fellows save two should be in Priest's 
 Orders within seven years from the full completion of the 
 degree of Master of Arts, under pain of forfeiting their 
 Fellowship. No time was therefore to be lost ; and on July 
 2Oth, 1817, having obtained letters dimissory from the Lord 
 Bishop of Bristol, Master of Trinity College, he was ordained 
 deacon by Bishop Bathurst of Norwich. His companions in 
 a postchaise thither, were Charles Musgrave, and Mill, his 
 fellow-traveller for a portion of the previous summer. Mill, 
 who had already begun the oriental studies in which he after- 
 wards obtained such distinction, beguiled the tedium of the 
 journey by translating, for the amusement of his companions, 
 a tale from an Arabic manuscript 1 . 
 
 The greater part of the Long Vacation was spent in the 
 North, which he had not visited since 1815. There he began 
 to perform the duties of a clergyman, in the shape of writing 
 and preaching sermons at Dent. In the course of the summer 
 he found time for an excursion to the Lakes with Charles 
 Musgrave ; paid a visit to Ainger at St Bees ; and later in the 
 year visited Ambleside, where he provokingly just missed the 
 pleasure of being introduced to Wordsworth, with whom he 
 afterwards became so intimate'. Besides these occupations, 
 he got his usual shooting at Dent, for the last time, as events 
 
 1 To Miss F. Hicks, 27 December, 1853. Sedgwick was admitted to Priest's 
 Orders on Sunday 15 February, 1818, at Quebec Chapel, London, by the Lord 
 Bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Ainger, 6 November, 1817. 
 
1 52 WORK AS A COLLEGE LECTURER. 
 
 1818. proved but he never forgot the pleasure he had derived from 
 St. 33- that sport In 1866 forty-nine years afterwards happening 
 to write to a friend on the first day of September he said : 
 " In early life I used to count much upon this day, for I was 
 a keen sportsman till I became a professed Geologist. So 
 soon as I was seated in the Woodwardian Chair I gave away 
 my dogs and gun, and my hammer broke my trigger. My 
 sporting days ended with the autumnal season of iSi/V So 
 long as he was employed in this way we hear nothing about 
 his health ; but as soon as he got back to Cambridge he 
 began as usual to feel ill again. The work was no doubt 
 severe. " I am as usual employed two hours every morning 
 in lecturing to the men of the first and second year, and every 
 other day we are engaged about two hours and a half more in 
 examining the men of the third year. We are besides em- 
 ployed at least three hours in the evening in looking over 
 their papers 2 ." His relations had already urged him to 
 resign his lectureship, and rusticate for the rest of his days. 
 To those who knew him, idleness and Sedgwick is such a 
 strange conjunction, that it sounds wonderful that even 
 paternal solicitude should have suggested it. It is fortunate 
 that he turned a deaf ear to these admonitions ; had he not 
 done so he might have missed the golden opportunity which 
 shortly presented itself. 
 
 Early in the Lent Term of 1818 it was whispered in 
 Cambridge that the Rev. John Hailstone, one of the Senior 
 Fellows of Trinity College, who had been Woodwardian 
 Professor of Geology since 1788, and must therefore have 
 reached the ripe age of fifty-eight, was proposing to take to 
 himself a wife a step which would ipso facto render the 
 Professorship vacant by the provisions of the Founder's Will. 
 Sedgwick at once made up his mind to be a candidate, for 
 reasons which are best stated by himself in the following 
 
 letter : 
 
 1 To Rev. J. Edleston, i September, 1866. 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Ainger, 6 November, 1817. 
 
WOODWARDIAN PROFESSORSHIP. 153 
 
 TRIN. COLL., March 19, 1818. 
 Dear Ainger, ^ t 33 
 
 I sent a letter to St Bees about five months since 
 which most probably never reached its address ; I should other- 
 wise most assuredly have had an answer from one of my most 
 punctual correspondents. But change of place, and change of 
 time, and change of circumstances, are enough to work stranger 
 changes than even this, and may, after all, have broken in upon 
 those punctual business-like talents for which my old friend was 
 most deservedly in good repute. But enough of other people, 
 let us talk about ourselves. If thou art a priest, so am I, and, 
 if thou art a Professor, so I fain would be. I don't suppose 
 you have so entirely forgot Cambridge as not to feel some 
 interest in our proceedings. 
 
 We were very busy in the October term with the subjects 
 of lectures : for, besides the ordinary course, we established 
 additional examinations for the men who were going out. 
 We have certainly reaped the fruits of our labours, for we 
 turned out the Captain of the Tripos with eight other 
 wranglers at his heels. Since that time we have got both the 
 medals, the Pitt Scholarship, and the first on Bell's foundation. 
 Notwithstanding this blaze of honours I am most heartily 
 sick of my connexion with the Tuition, and only wish for an 
 adequate motive for resigning all hopes in that quarter. Now 
 such a motive will probably present itself; for it is generally 
 expected in Cambridge that the Woodwardian Professorship 
 will be vacant by the marriage of Hailstone. In case that 
 event should take place I mean to offer myself as a candidate 
 for the vacant appointment. It would be quite premature to 
 commence a general canvass ; I have therefore only written to 
 my personal friends, requesting them to give publicity to my 
 intentions, in a way too most likely to promote my interests. 
 What do you think of the business ? If I succeed I shall 
 have a motive for active exertion in a way which will promote 
 my intellectual improvement, and I hope make me a happy 
 and useful member of society. I am not such a fool as to 
 
I 5 4 WOODWARDIAN PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 1818. suppose that my present employment is useless; and my 
 ,Et. 33. pecuniary prospects are certainly better than they would be if 
 I were Woodwardian Professor. Still, as far as the improve- 
 ment of the mind is considered, I am at this moment doing 
 nothing. Nay I often very seriously think that I am doing 
 worse than nothing ; that I am gradually losing that little 
 information I once had, and very sensibly approximating to 
 that state of fatuity to which we must all come if we remain 
 here long enough. If you were two hundred miles nearer 
 you might perhaps serve me with a vote. As it is let me 
 have your opinion of the matter in the first place, and your 
 good wishes in the second. There will probably be several 
 candidates. Evans of our college means to offer himself. 
 Carrighan of St John's 1 has been written to. He is now at 
 Rome ; and is expected back in a month or two. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 His friend's answer was rather lukewarm. Ainger approved 
 his purpose, but added : " I should be quite delighted with it 
 if I did not find, on consulting the Cambridge Calendar, that 
 the salary is only 100 a year: yea, indulge me, as a Benedict, 
 in saying further, that I am sorry to find you must, if suc- 
 cessful, resign your honours whenever you follow your pre- 
 decessor's example ! But, notwithstanding these drawbacks, 
 you have my most hearty wishes for your success." The 
 conclusion of the letter is significant, as showing the view 
 then taken of Geology : " I really think the pursuit of miner- 
 alogy will suit you to a hair, as I take it for granted that it 
 will sometimes lead you to pick up stones, as well as to range 
 them in your lecture-room." Other intimate friends to whom 
 he wrote at this early date were more enthusiastic. Armstrong 
 and Duckworth began to canvass Members of the Senate in 
 London, and were successful in obtaining numerous promises 
 of support against all comers. Bickersteth for instance pledged 
 
 1 Arthur Judd Carrighan, Fellow of St John's College, B.A. 1803. 
 
BECOMES A CANDIDATE. 155 
 
 himself at once : " I am quite sure," he said, " that Sedgwick 1818. 
 would not propose himself if he did not judge himself to be ^- 33- 
 the proper person ; and, if that is his opinion, I have no doubt 
 of the fact." 
 
 In the first instance the only candidate who appeared to 
 have any serious intention of going to the poll was Robert 
 Wilson Evans, Fellow and assistant-tutor of Trinity College. 
 One of the two Musgraves had been thought probable ; but 
 there is no evidence that he had any such intention himself, 
 and the same may be said of Carrighan of St John's College. 
 Evans was a dangerous opponent. He was a man of high 
 character, deservedly popular both in his own college and in the 
 University. Before long a third candidate appeared, George 
 Cornelius Gorham, Fellow of Queens' College, who afterwards 
 became celebrated for his long doctrinal controversy with 
 Bishop Philpotts of Exeter. He had been third wrangler in 
 1809, and could therefore show a better place in the Tripos 
 than Sedgwick. Moreover he was reported to have " been 
 studying Geology for a long time 1 " an important point 
 of which his friends did not fail to take full advantage. 
 Sedgwick could make no such pretensions nor indeed could 
 Evans but it was specially unfortunate that one of Sedgwick's 
 two opponents belonged to his own college; for, as one of 
 his most active supporters observed, it " destroyed that cor- 
 porate spirit which induces men to inconvenience themselves 
 to attain an object about which individually they care 
 nothing 2 ." 
 
 Professor Hailstone having sent in his resignation (i May), 
 Sedgwick issued a short circular, dated on the same day, 
 addressed to those whom he thought likely to support him. 
 After announcing the vacancy, he said : 
 
 "The kind assurances of support which I have received from 
 many Members of the Senate, have induced me to declare myself a 
 Candidate for the appointment. I am at the same time aware, that 
 I have no right to found my expectations of success on support 
 
 1 Pryme's Recollections, p. 135. 2 From R. B. Armstrong, 8 May, 1818. 
 
i 5 6 RIVAL CANDIDATES. 
 
 1818. derived from the partiality of personal friends. Let me then assure 
 i a y u tnat no one can appreciate more highly than myself, the great 
 responsibility attached to the office for which I am now soliciting. I 
 venture, therefore, to ask for the honour of your Vote and Interest 
 at the ensuing Election; pledging myself, in the event of my 
 success, to use my best endeavours to discharge the important duties 
 of the Professorship, and to carry into full effect the intentions of its 
 Founder." 
 
 We have not seen the circular issued by either of Sedg- 
 wick's opponents, but both of them evidently took advantage 
 of the vagueness of his pledges to state explicitly that they 
 intended to deliver lectures a move which created a diversion 
 to their side for Armstrong warns Sedgwick (9 May) that : 
 " the promise to lecture given by your opponents is con- 
 sidered by their supporters as greatly in their favour ; and 
 perhaps with those that do not know you the maxim dolus in 
 generalibus may do you some disservice." It therefore became 
 necessary to correct the erroneous impression which had got 
 abroad; and, the 2ist day of May having been fixed by the 
 Vice-Chancellor for the election, Sedgwick issued a second 
 circular (14 May) in which he informed his supporters of this 
 fact, and added : 
 
 "I have pledged myself, in the event of my success, to use 
 my best endeavours to carry into full effect the intentions of the 
 Founder of the Professorship. In making that pledge, I more 
 especially wished to refer to a clause in the Will of Dr Woodward, 
 by which it is provided that a Course of Lectures be annually read 
 on some subjects connected with the Theory of the Earth. I am 
 happy in having an opportunity of giving this additional explanation 
 of my views respecting the important duties attached to the office for 
 which I am now soliciting." 
 
 A postscript to this circular announces " that Mr Evans 
 of Trinity College is no longer a candidate." He had retired 
 from the contest after a comparison of votes, which Sedg- 
 wick, or some of his friends, had induced him to agree to. 
 Similar proposals were made to Mr Gorham, but in vain. 
 Sedgwick's friends therefore, though they felt that after 
 Evans' resignation he was " out of all hazard ", being com- 
 pelled to continue the contest, determined to make his 
 
MR GORHAM. 157 
 
 majority as large as possible ; and, in addition to his resident 1818. 
 supporters, arrangements were made for twenty London Mi - 33- 
 voters, most of whom were barristers, and could ill afford to 
 lose even a single day, to travel to Cambridge in post-chaises 
 or on horseback, record their votes, and return at night. The 
 position of affairs, on the eve of the election, is graphically 
 described by Gorham to his father : 
 
 QUEEN'S 1 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 17 May, 1818. 
 My dear Father, 
 
 Evans gave in on Thursday. I instantly got the Clare 
 and Bene't resident Voters, but no others. St John's is against me. 
 In fact, except a few stragglers, I have only Queen's, Catharine, 
 Peterhouse, Clare, and Bene't. You shall have a note on Thursday 
 night, though the event is not doubtful. I can only reckon on 
 50 votes, and Sedgwick has promises of 190. Nevertheless I will, 
 on principle, carry on the contest, and go through the disagreeable 
 business of the poll. Sedgwick is put up by a large College, merely 
 as a man of talent, who can soon fit himself for his office. For 
 myself, I feel a conviction that few persons in the University have 
 followed up the Science more sedulously than I have. If, therefore, 
 the Electors choose to dispose of Woodward's funds upon the shame- 
 ful principle of influence against qualification, I will drive them to the 
 necessity (which I know they wish to avoid) of recording their votes 
 at a poll, which may be published if I like it not that I intend to 
 take that step. Some few (like our dear friend Parish 2 ) were taken in 
 by anticipation : but the greater number avow the precedent of Bishop 
 Watson. 
 
 It has been clearly expected that I should give in; to obviate 
 any such rumour my notice in the Cambridge paper was worded in 
 the form in which you see it 3 . Clarke 4 , I suspect, has given me his 
 name, but not his interest. The Trinity men employed him on Friday to 
 persuade me to agree not to call in out-voters. I rejected any such 
 arrangement. 
 
 You may rely on the number of votes, 60 to 200, being nearly 
 correct, even if I push my minority to the utmost. To say nothing 
 of the prejudices against a small College, and a methodistical one 
 and my having little acquaintance in the University I feel that I 
 have been left to myself. While Sedgwick's printed letters were 
 
 1 Mr Gorham always, on principle, wrote Queen's, not Queens', College. 
 
 2 William Farish, Fellow of Magdalene College, then Jacksonian Professor. 
 Charles Farish, Fellow of Queens' College, voted for Gorham. 
 
 3 Cambridge Chronicle, 15 May, 1818. "We are authorised to state that the 
 Rev. G. C. Gorham, Fellow of Queens' College, decidedly intends to continue the 
 contest for the Woodwardian Professorship." 
 
 4 Edward Daniel Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy 18081822. 
 
i 5 8 
 
 RESULT OF THE POLL. 
 
 33 . 
 
 1818. underwritten by friends, only one of mine had that advantage and, 
 excepting Mr Holmes and Dr Ingle, I do not believe that one 
 member of the Senate has canvassed for me. 
 
 Your affectionate Son, 
 
 G. C. GORHAM. 
 
 The result showed the correctness of these anticipations. 
 Sedgwick polled 186 votes to his opponent's 59, a conclusion 
 on which Gorham made the following comment in the 
 promised note to his Father : " In the result I feel perfect 
 satisfaction, though certainly not in the circumstances con- 
 nected with it. The plain fact is that Sedgwick had all the 
 influence of his College, and that of St John's exercised their 
 influence against me as being a Methodist. Disagreeable as 
 the day has been, I am glad I drove the matter to a Poll 1 ." 
 
 A summary of the votes taken gives the following 
 results : 
 
 Proxies . 
 Peterhouse . 
 Clare Hall . 
 Pembroke Hall . 
 Caius College 
 Trinity Hall . 
 Bene't College 
 King's College 
 Queens' College . 
 Catharine Hall 
 Jesus College 
 Christ's College . 
 St John's College . 
 Magdalene College 
 Trinity College 
 Emmanuel College 
 Sidney College 
 Downing College . 
 Commorantes in villa 
 
 Total 
 
 s 
 
 G 
 
 Votes 
 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 1 1 
 
 i 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 5 
 
 o 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 T 9 
 
 T 9 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 i 
 
 8 
 
 ii 
 
 
 
 ii 
 
 32 
 
 4 
 
 36 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 67 
 
 3 
 
 70 
 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 186 
 
 59 
 
 245 
 
 It was natural that a disappointed candidate, smarting 
 under a sense of undeserved wrong, should call Sedgwick's 
 
 1 These letters extracts from which are printed above have been most 
 kindly lent by the Rev. G. M. Gorham, Vicar of Masham, Yorks. 
 
RESULT OF THE POLL. 
 
 '59 
 
 success "an instance of favouritism 1 ." An examination of the 1818. 
 above summary, however, shows that he not only polled more ^ l - 33- 
 votes in his college than his opponent did in the whole 
 academic body, but that there was a general feeling through- 
 out the University in his favour. The colleges of Pembroke, 
 Trinity Hall, King's, Christ's, and Downing voted "solid" for 
 him ; he had a majority in those of Caius, Jesus, St John's, 
 Magdalene, Emmanuel, Sidney ; those of Corpus Christi and 
 St Catharine were equally divided, contributing respectively 
 two and four to each side ; while Gorham had a majority 
 only in his own college, in Peterhouse, and in Clare Hall. 
 Further, those who care to go through the names recorded in 
 the poll-book will find that Sedgwick's majority was not 
 merely strong in numbers ; he had on his side most of those 
 who were distinguished in the University by their position or 
 their attainments. 
 
 Gorham is probably right in saying that his own claims 
 were never fairly considered. Nor is it unlikely that the 
 strong evangelical tone of Queens' College at that time, 
 taken in conjunction with Dr Milner's personal unpopularity 
 with Liberals, and with most of the Fellows of Trinity 
 College, the Mastership of which he had twice tried to obtain, 
 may have done him some disservice. But we may safely assert 
 that the election was virtually decided by Sedgwick's personal 
 character. In the next chapter it will be shown that the 
 successive Woodwardian Professors had done little or nothing 
 to justify their appointment. To this discreditable state of 
 things the University not unnaturally wished to put an end ; 
 and Sedgwick, with his fiery energy, and reputation for 
 thoroughness in whatever he did, seemed to be the man most 
 likely to do this necessary work in a completely efficient 
 manner. 
 
 In attempting to form a just estimate of the qualifications 
 
 1 These words occur in Gorham's note to his father, dated 21 May, 1818, from 
 which an extract has been already quoted. 
 
160 SEDGWICK^S QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 1818. of the two candidates, we must discard the ideas which we 
 - 33- now attach to the term geology, and recollect that at the 
 beginning of the present century it was regarded as little 
 better than a subordinate department of mineralogy, which, 
 from its practical usefulness, and the beauty of the substances 
 with which it dealt, had become popular at an early period. 
 It was considered to be the business of a geologist to investi- 
 gate the mode in which the earth had originated, and the results 
 of these speculations may be seen recorded in various essays 
 called Theories of the Earth. When, therefore, we find Gorham 
 credited with "a long study of geology", and are told that 
 some of Sedgwick's personal friends, among whom was Mr 
 Pryme, thought his claims so strong that " it was only just to 
 vote for him", we are led to suspect that an acquaintance with 
 mineralogy must have caused this favourable opinion. This 
 theory is supported by the fact that Dr Edward Daniel 
 Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy, voted for Gorham though 
 in the above-quoted letter he makes light of his support 
 and that the same person was also proxy for Sir Joseph 
 Banks, President of the Royal Society, whose action would 
 naturally be governed by the opinion of the official repre- 
 sentative of mineralogy at Cambridge. This, however, is mere 
 speculation, and may be erroneous. On the other hand, we 
 have Gorham's own deliberate statement, in the letter quoted 
 above, that he had "sedulously" studied geology; and we 
 have been informed that he had worked at the physical 
 structure of Scotland, and of parts of Yorkshire. But, un- 
 fortunately for his own reputation, he had never published 
 any geological papers ; and, in the absence of the direct proof 
 of his acquirements which these would have given, the 
 worthlessness of his geological knowledge has been too 
 hastily assumed from Sedgwick's celebrated account of him- 
 self and his opponent, which is still remembered in the 
 University : " I had but one rival, Gorham of Queens', and he 
 had not the slightest chance against me, for I knew absolutely 
 nothing of geology, whereas he knew a good deal but it was 
 
SEDGWICK'S QUALIFICATIONS. 161 
 
 all wrong 1 !" This remark, however, was not made seriously, 1818. 
 and it would be unjust to Gorham's memory to quote it as a ^ 33- 
 deliberate judgment, without making a large allowance for 
 that departure from literal truth which is permitted to a 
 brilliant antithesis. That he had a genuine love for natural 
 science may be taken for granted, for he was a good practical 
 botanist, and had formed a valuable collection of plants in the 
 course of an extended tour in Switzerland in 1810 and 1811. 
 
 While the contest was proceeding Sedgwick is reported to 
 have said: "Hitherto I have never turned a stone; hence- 
 forth I will leave no stone unturned," and his contemporary 
 Mr Pryme amplifies the idea of thoroughness conveyed by 
 this sentence into the following statement : 
 
 " The latter [Sedgwick] professed to know nothing of the sub- 
 ject, but pledged himself, if elected, to master it, and to resign 
 the assistant tutorship in order that he might give the more complete 
 attention to it 2 ." 
 
 This passage contains several inaccuracies. If Sedgwick 
 professed ignorance, he had the good sense to reserve such 
 professions for private conversation with his intimate friends ; 
 his public utterances contain no reference to it. Nor did he 
 state, as we have seen, that he meant to master the science of 
 geology. All he said v/as that he would deliver public 
 lectures "on some subjects connected with the Theory of the 
 Earth." Neither did he announce his intention of resigning 
 the assistant tutorship if elected : we know that he had long 
 been anxious to do so ; and, as a matter of fact, he did resign 
 in the course of the following Long Vacation, and Mr 
 Whewell was elected in his room. But he never pledged 
 himself to such a course. 
 
 At the same time there is no evidence that he had ever 
 troubled his head with any cosmical speculations. The word 
 
 1 To this story Mr G. M. Gorham adds the following delightful anecdote: 
 " Did not such logic warrant an ancient inhabitant of Dent, himself a stone-breaker, 
 in his reply to my pilgrim-inquiry in 1874, 'Have you ever heard of a native here 
 called Adam Sedgwick?'" "What ! d'ye mean the Perverser?" 
 
 2 Recollections, p. 135. 
 
 S.I. II 
 
1 62 SEDGWICP?S QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 1818. "strata" occurs in one of his letters from Switzerland, but, 
 t* 33- with that exception, there is no evidence that he had given 
 things of the earth a moment's consideration. It has been 
 recorded, on his own authority, that he collected fossils at 
 Dent when he was a child ; but, had he lived on the sea-coast, 
 he would probably have picked up recent shells ; and the 
 former habit no more indicates a future geologist than the 
 latter a future conchologist. The time that he could spare 
 from mathematics he devoted to general literature. He had 
 indeed, as we have seen, attended the lectures of William 
 Parish, Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental 
 Philosophy, in 1815. But the object of those lectures was to 
 exhibit " the application of Chemistry to the Arts and Manu- 
 factures of Britain," by means of a series of models of the 
 machinery employed. The method was novel, and we have 
 the authority of Professor Willis for stating that the illustra- 
 tions were ingeniously contrived, and the lectures generally 
 instructive ; but, beyond the fact that Part I. of the Syllabus 
 is headed Metals and Minerals, and that such subjects as The 
 structure of the Earth, Strata, Dislocation of the Strata, appear 
 as sub-headings, there is nothing in the whole course to 
 suggest geology 1 . Professor Hailstone, Sedgwick's predecessor, 
 did not lecture. An interleaved syllabus of Dr E. D. Clarke's 
 lectures on mineralogy, enriched with copious notes, shews 
 that he attended him for at least one course; but Professor 
 Clarke was no geologist. Nor do any of his friends, when 
 writing to him about his chances of success, refer to his 
 special knowledge of the subject as a reason for supporting 
 him. Mr Daniel Pettiward, for instance, says (May, 1818) : 
 
 1 A general view of the course is given in the Camb. Univ. Calendar, 1815, 
 p. 38. Farish had been Professor of Chemistry, 17941813, and, on rinding "the 
 province of reading lectures on the principles of Chemistry already ably occupied 
 by the Jacksonian Professor [F. J. H. Wollaston, Trin. Hall, 17921813] was 
 therefore obliged to strike out a new line." When elected to the Jacksonian 
 Chair he continued his former course, as may be seen by comparing the Calendar 
 for 1815 with that for 1802, p. 24. See also : A Plan of a Course of Lectures on 
 Arts and Manufactures, more particularly such as relate to Chemistry. By 
 W. Farish, 8vo., 1821. 
 
BISHOP WATSON, DR CLARKE. 163 
 
 "It is my Intention to Enlist myself under your Banners, in great 1818. 
 hopes that one of my Favourite pursuits, from your Activity of mind ^Et. 33. 
 and the Genius you possess for General knowledge, may not be hid 
 in a Napkin, but that the world may be better for the fruit of your 
 Labours." 
 
 This is very different language from what he would have 
 used had his correspondent been thoroughly conversant with 
 even the little geological knowledge of those days. Sedg- 
 wick's intimate friend Carr too, writing a letter of congratula- 
 tion (26 May), says : 
 
 "I suppose you will be busily employed this summer in the pursuit 
 of your new studies ; for this purpose I venture to recommend the 
 North as the most proper place, both as it abounds in those 
 productions of nature which will now more particularly engage your 
 attention, and as it will at the same time afford me the opportunity 
 of seeing you." 
 
 Moreover Sedgwick himself, in his first letter to Ainger 
 on the approaching vacancy, dwells on the " motive for active 
 exertion," and the intellectual stimulus, which the Professor- 
 ship would give him ; but says not a word about his wish to 
 cultivate a science which he had already begun. Nor should 
 his impaired health, and the fatigue which mathematical 
 teaching caused him, be left out of consideration. His eager- 
 ness to escape from an uncongenial occupation has been 
 already mentioned more than once. 
 
 Precedents were not wanting at Cambridge for the election 
 of a man of ability to a Professorship in a subject of which 
 he knew nothing. Bishop Watson, to whom Gorham refers, 
 was made Professor of Chemistry in 1764, and says of him- 
 self: 
 
 "At the time this honour was conferred upon me, I knew 
 nothing at all of Chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, 
 nor seen a single experiment in it ; but I was tired with mathematics 
 and natural philosophy, and the vehementissima glories cupido stimu- 
 lated me to try my strength in a new pursuit 1 ." 
 
 Dr E. D. Clarke's knowledge of mineralogy was thoroughly 
 unscientific, and in fact he was only saved from mistakes by 
 
 1 Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, ed. 1817, p. 28. 
 
 II 2 
 
1 64 TESTIMONY OF MR BLOMEFIELD. 
 
 1818. the interposition of a friend, the Rev. John Holme, Fellow of 
 Et. 33- Peterhouse, to whom he submitted his syllabus, and the 
 outline of his lectures 1 . Notwithstanding these drawbacks 
 both these gentlemen filled their lecture-rooms ; Watson 
 advanced his subject scientifically ; and Clarke was successful 
 in creating a general enthusiasm. 
 
 It is almost impossible, at a distance of just seventy years 
 from the period we are investigating, to obtain personal 
 recollections of Sedgwick at the time of his election. One 
 valuable testimony has, however, been placed in our hands by 
 the Rev. Leonard Blomefield, who, as the Rev. Leonard 
 Jenyns, established a high scientific reputation as a system- 
 atic naturalist. He attended Sedgwick's lectures " not more 
 than a year or two after his election to the Professorship," and 
 is under the impression " that he was not a mere learner 
 himself at the time ; he seemed a master of the subject, and 
 his lectures were earnestly listened to, as well as earnestly 
 delivered." Mr Blomefield is further of opinion " that though 
 Sedgwick had not made Geology much of a study, nor learnt 
 its details to any great extent practically in the fields, before 
 he was admitted to the Professorship he was fairly acquainted 
 with the subject in a general way, and took a great liking to 
 it, or he would not have offered himself for the chair V 
 
 Our own opinion is, on the whole, for the reasons men- 
 tioned above, opposed to that of Mr Blomefield, and in 
 favour of the notion commonly accepted in Cambridge, that 
 Sedgwick got up his subject after his election. It will 
 be our business to trace, in subsequent chapters, the 
 gradual development of his geological knowledge ; for the 
 present we will content ourselves with quoting a passage from 
 his latest work, dictated only a little more than three months 
 before his death, in which he sums up the purpose he set 
 before himself at the outset of his career, and which domi- 
 nated his long academic life : 
 
 1 Gunning's Reminiscences, ed. 1855, ii. 195. 
 
 2 From Rev. L. Blomefield, 20 August, 1887. 
 
SEDGWICK'S INTENTIONS. 165 
 
 " There were three prominent hopes which possessed my 1818. 
 heart in the earliest years of my Professorship. First, that I ^*- 33- 
 might be enabled to bring together a Collection worthy of 
 the University, and illustrative of all the departments of the 
 Science it was my duty to study and to teach. Secondly, 
 that a Geological Museum might be built by the University, 
 amply capable of containing its future Collections ; and 
 lastly, that I might bring together a Class of Students who 
 would listen to my teaching, support me by their sympathy, 
 and help me by the labour of their hands 1 ." 
 
 1 Preface to A Catalogue of the Collection of Cambrian and Silurian Fossils 
 contained in the Geological Museum of the University of Cambridge, by J. W. 
 Salter, 4to. Cambridge, 1873, p. xxxi. The preface, by Professor Sedgwick, is 
 dated 15 September, 187-2. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF DR JOHN WOODWARD. His 
 TESTAMENTARY PROVISIONS. ARRIVAL OF HIS CABINETS. A 
 ROOM CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR RECEPTION. SEDGWICK'S 
 PREDECESSORS : CONYERS MlDDLETON ; CHARLES MASON ; 
 JOHN MICHELL; SAMUEL OGDEN; THOMAS GREEN; JOHN 
 HAILSTONE. ORDERS AND REGULATIONS SANCTIONED IN 1818. 
 
 WE have now reached a point in our narrative at which it 
 is desirable to sketch Dr Woodward's life, together with his 
 intentions in founding a Professorship, or, as he would have 
 called it, a Lectureship, in the University of Cambridge. As 
 a supplement to this, we shall briefly record what Sedgwick's 
 predecessors did, or, we might almost say, did not do, to carry 
 out the founder's instructions. 
 
 John Woodward was born in Derbyshire, I May, 1665. 
 His father is said to have been "a gentleman of a good family 
 in the county of Gloucester" ; but, if such were the case, it is 
 strange that the son should have been apprenticed, on leaving 
 school at sixteen, to a linendraper in London. It is true that 
 the most original of Woodward's biographers, Dr Ward 1 , 
 guards himself with an "as is said," while making this state- 
 ment ; but, on the other hand, it was certainly believed during 
 
 1 The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, by John Ward, Professor of 
 Rhetoric in Gresham College, and F.R.S. Fol. Lond. 1740, pp. 283301. It 
 will be understood that the quotations in the following sketch are from this 
 work, unless other references are given. 
 
WOODWARD'S EARLY STUDIES. 167 
 
 Woodward's lifetime, and was used to his discredit by un- 
 scrupulous opponents 1 . That he did go to London, while a 
 mere boy, is certain ; and while there had the good fortune to 
 become acquainted with Dr Peter Barwick, physician to King 
 Charles the Second, who received him into his house, and 
 "took him under his tuition in his own family." 
 
 To this circumstance the general direction of Woodward's 
 studies is obviously due; and it may be further conjectured 
 that his interest in the University of Cambridge may have 
 been inspired by Barwick. Barwick had been educated at 
 St John's College, where his elder brother John, the sincere 
 and courageous royalist, afterwards successively Dean of 
 Durham and of St Paul's, was already Fellow. He proceeded 
 Bachelor of Arts in 1643, Master of Arts in 1647, an< ^ Doctor 
 of Medicine in 1655. As a London physician he had a large 
 practice and a well-deserved reputation ; while as a man of 
 science he is known as the defender of Harvey's theory of the 
 circulation of the blood. Barwick is also described as a man 
 of sincere religious convictions, a strong churchman, and a 
 daily attendant at service, either at St Paul's or at Westminster 
 Abbey. From him therefore Woodward probably derived that 
 religious tone of mind which led him to devote most of his 
 scientific writings to the support of the Mosaic history of the 
 Deluge. 
 
 Barwick has recorded in a testimonial dated 24 September, 
 1692, that he had then known Woodward u for above these 
 eight years"; that he "had made a very great progress in 
 learning" before he came to him ; that he studied physic with 
 him for nearly four years; and that subsequently he "prose- 
 cuted his studies with so much industry and success that he 
 hath made the greatest advance not only in physick/anatomy, 
 botany, and other parts of natural philosophy; but likewise 
 
 1 For instance, Dr Richard Mead, in his Discourse on the Smallpox and 
 Measles, calls Dr Woodward " a man equally ill-bred, vain, and ill-natured, who, 
 after being for some time apprentice to a linen-draper, took it into his head 
 to make a collection of shells and fossils," etc. Works, ed. 1763, ii. 100. 
 
i68 WOOD WARPS EARLY STUDIES. 
 
 in history, geography, mathematics, philology, and all other 
 useful learning of any man I ever knew of his age." It would 
 appear, therefore, that he became known to Barwick in 1684 ; 
 and, as he was born in 1665, and remained at school till 1681, 
 when he was sixteen, there remain only three years to be 
 accounted for, during part of which whatever may be the 
 truth of the apprentice story he is said to have pursued his 
 studies "with great diligence and application." We are not, 
 however, told what these studies were, nor is any hint given 
 that he went through the ordinary course prescribed for 
 candidates for a medical degree. By 1692, however, he had 
 become sufficiently well known to obtain the Professorship of 
 Physic in Gresham College, for which he was recommended not 
 merely by Dr Barwick, in the testimonial already mentioned, 
 but "by many gentlemen of figure in the learned faculties." 
 It is much to be regretted that Dr Ward, who had seen these 
 testimonials, should give no particulars of them, nor even 
 record the names of those who wrote them. Had he been 
 a little more explicit, we might have discovered the reasons 
 which induced the electors to choose a young man of twenty- 
 eight, who, so far as we know, had given no visible signs of 
 fitness for so distinguished a position; and we might thus have 
 learnt the nature and extent of Woodward's early studies. 
 
 In the following year (30 November, 1693) Woodward 
 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Two years later, 
 4 February, 1695, he was made a Doctor of Medicine by 
 Archbishop Tenison, and in the same year (28 June) the 
 same degree was granted to him by the University of Cam- 
 bridge ; on which occasion he was admitted a member of 
 Pembroke Hall as Pembroke College was then termed 1 . 
 Here again Barwick's influence may have disposed the 
 
 1 He is so recorded in Dr Richardson's List of Degrees preserved in the 
 Registry of the University. The Supplicat for his degree is : " Placeat vobis 
 ut Johannes Woodward sit eisdem Gradu Honore et Dignitate apud nos Canta- 
 brigienses quibus est per Literas Patentes Domini Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis " ; 
 endorsed, "Ad. Lect. et Cone. 28 Junii 1695. Non subscripsit." The records of 
 Pembroke College do not mention Woodward. 
 
WORK AS A PHYSICIAN. 169 
 
 University to admit his friend and pupil ; but on this point 
 we can only form a probable conjecture, and as to Woodward's 
 reasons for selecting Pembroke, we are completely in the 
 dark. He was admitted a candidate of the College of 
 Physicians 25 June, 1698; and Fellow 22 March, 1702 3. 
 He held the office of Censor there in 1703 and 1714; and 
 in January 1710 11 delivered the Gulstonian Lectures On 
 the Bile and its Uses 1 . 
 
 It would be beside our present purpose to investigate 
 Woodward's claims to distinction as a physician, or to do 
 more than allude to his quarrel with Dr, afterwards Sir Hans, 
 Sloane, in 1710, which led to his expulsion from the Council 
 of the Royal Society 2 ; or to his controversy with Dr Freind 
 and Dr Mead on the new treatment of the smallpox suggested 
 in his treatise, The State of Physick and of Diseases, published 
 in 17 1 S 3 . For the same reason we will be silent about his 
 antiquarian pursuits, and "poor Dr Woodward's shield 4 ," by 
 which "he ingaged the attention of the learned for a consider- 
 able time." Those who wish to enjoy a hearty laugh at his 
 expense should turn to the third chapter of the Memoirs of 
 Martinus Scriblerus, where, under the transparent disguise of 
 Dr Cornelius Scriblerus, the misfortunes of the learned owner 
 
 1 Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London ; by William Munk, M.D. 
 8vo. Lond. 1861, ii. 3. 
 
 2 Weld's History of the Royal Society, 8vo. Lond. 1848, i. 337 ; Brewster's 
 Life of Sir Isaac Newton, Chapter xxi. 
 
 3 This was the occasion of the attack made on Woodward by Mead. 
 According to the account which Woodward sent to The Weekly Journal for 
 20 June, 1719 (printed by Nichols, Lit. Anecd. vi. 641), Mead followed him to 
 the gate of Gresham College, and there made a pass at him with his sword from 
 behind. Woodward drew, and was defending himself, when his foot slipped, and 
 he lay at the mercy of his adversary, who bade him ask his life. The encounter 
 was presently terminated by the interference of other persons. " Had he been to 
 have given me any of his physic," said Woodward, " I would, rather than take it, 
 have asked my life of him ; but for his sword it was very harmless." 
 
 4 Lord Castledurrow to Dean Swift, 4 December, 1736. The shield, of iron, 
 14 in. in diameter, is a cinquecento Italian work. It was bought, at the sale of 
 Woodward's Collections'(see below, p. 186, note], by Colonel King. After his death 
 in 1767, aged 84, it was sold for 40 (Nollekens and his Times, by J. T. Smith, 
 i. 39). It is now in the British Museum, Department of General Antiquities. 
 
I7 o GEOLOGICAL WORK. 
 
 of the shield, reputed to have once been wielded by Camillas, 
 are chronicled with infinite humour 1 . His geological specula- 
 tions, on the other hand, deserve careful examination, for, 
 though they are in many parts absurd, and warped throughout 
 by the necessity for making the observed facts fit a precon- 
 ceived theory of a universal deluge, "he appears to have had 
 some very correct notions as to the general structure of the 
 globe, and the proper method of pursuing the investigation 
 of it 2 ." 
 
 The circumstances which led him to these studies have 
 been recorded by himself in the Preface to the Catalogue 
 of the English Fossils in his own collection. 
 
 It may not be improper or unseasonable, before I proceed to the 
 brief Account I am going to give of the Bodies in the following 
 Catalogue, to take notice that I began my Observations and Collec- 
 tions in Gloucestershire ; whither I was invited by Sir Ralph Dutton, 
 along with his Lady's Father Dr Barwick, under whose tuition I then 
 was, very happily, he being a Man of great Sagacity, Learning, and 
 an Encourager of all ingenuous Studies. Here I had very generously 
 allow'd me all Conveniencies and Assistances for the furthering of 
 Comparative Anatomy, in which I took great pains ; and had all the 
 several sorts of Brutes, of Birds, of Fishes, that this noble and 
 plentiful Country afforded, readily brought to me for Dissection. I had 
 here likewise opportunity of carrying on my Botanic Studies, of which, 
 being then young, I was very fond. Not that I confin'd myself so 
 much to this part of Natural History as not to be ready, forward, and 
 desirous to look into any other ; and the Country about Sherborne, 
 where Sir Ralph Button's Seat was, and the neighbouring parts of 
 Gloucestershire, to which I made frequent Excursions, abounding 
 with Stone, and there being Quarries of this laid open almost 
 everywhere, I began to visit these, in order to inform myself of the 
 nature, the situation, and the condition of the Stone. In making 
 these Observations, I soon found there was incorporated with the 
 Sand of most of the Stone thereabouts, great plenty and variety of 
 Sea-shells, with other marine Productions. I took notice of the like, 
 lying loose in the Fields, on the plough'd Lands and on the Hills, 
 even to the very top of the highest thereabouts.... This was a 
 Speculation new to me; and what I judg'd of so great moment, that 
 [ resolv'd to pursue it through the other remoter parts of the 
 Kingdom ; which I afterwards did, made Observations upon all sorts 
 of Fossils, collected such as I thought remarkable, and sent them up 
 
 1 Pope's Works, ed. Roscoe, v. 160. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Keviwu, xxix. 316. The article is by Dr W. H. Fitton. 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE EARTH. 171 
 
 to London. Some others were afterwards given me by such curious 
 and intelligent Persons, as being appriz'd of the usefulness of these 
 Studies, turn'd their Thoughts to such Searches 1 . 
 
 The results of these observations are recorded in An Essay 
 toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies, 
 especially Minerals ; as also of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs, 
 with an Account of the Universal Deluge, and of the Effects 
 that it had upon the Earth, first published in 1695, as the 
 forerunner of a larger work, which, however, was never written. 
 The author tells us that in order to inform himself of the 
 present condition of the earth, he travelled through the 
 greatest part of England, enquiring "for intelligence of all 
 Places where the Entrails of the Earth were laid open, either 
 by Nature (if I may so say), or by Art, and humane Industry. 
 And wheresoever I had notice of any considerable natural 
 Spelunca or Grotto, any digging for Wells of Water, or for 
 Earths, Clays, Marie, Sand, Gravel, Chalk, Cole, Stone, Marble, 
 Ores of Metals, or the like, I forthwith had recourse thereunto; 
 and taking a just account of every observable Circumstance of 
 the Earth, Stone, Metal, or other Matter, from the Surface 
 quite down to the bottom of the Pit, I entered it carefully 
 into a Journal, which I carry'd along with me for that purpose." 
 The English tour being finished, Woodward wished to extend 
 his travels beyond sea; but was prevented by "the Com- 
 motions which had then so unhappily invaded Europe," and 
 had to content himself with the observations of others, for 
 whose use, he says, " I drew up a List of Quceries upon this 
 Subject, which I dispatch'd into all parts of the World, far and 
 near, wherever either I myself, or any of my Acquaintance, 
 had any Friend resident to transmit those Queries unto 2 ." 
 
 1 An Attempt Towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England ; in 
 a Catalogue of the English Fossils in the Collection of y. Woodward, M.D. 
 i vols. 8vo. Lond. 1729. Vol. I. Part n. p. r. 
 
 2 Brief instructions for making observations in all parts of the world; as also 
 for collecting, preserving, and sending over natural things : Being an attempt 
 
 to settle an universal correspondence for the advancement of knowledge, both natural 
 and civil: 4to. T,ond. 1696. An abridgement, called: Brief Directions for 
 making observations and collections, and for composing a travelling Register of all 
 
172 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE EARTH. 
 
 These observations led him to the following conclusions : 
 that in all parts of the world, " the stone and other terrestrial 
 Matter" was "distinguished into Strata, or Layers ; that those 
 Strata were divided by parallel Fissures ; that there were 
 enclosed in the Stone, and all the other denser kinds of terres- 
 trial Matter, great numbers of Shells, and other Productions 
 of the Sea;" that the "Shells, and other marine Bodies, found 
 at Land, were originally generated and formed at Sea;" and 
 " that they are the real spoils of once living Animals." The 
 arguments by which he establishes this truth in those days 
 a startling novelty show that he had carefully examined 
 both recent and fossil forms. 
 
 Unfortunately for Woodward's reputation, he felt obliged 
 to account for the presence of these bodies where he found 
 them, and therefore promulgated the geological romance with 
 which his name is associated. He imagined the centre of the 
 earth to be a spherical cavity the Great Deep of Genesis 
 filled with water; that when the Flood took place these 
 waters burst forth ; that by their agency " the whole Terrestrial 
 Globe was taken all to pieces and dissolved ; " that " Stone, 
 and all other solid Minerals, lost their solidity, and that the 
 sever'd Particles thereof, together with those of the Earth, 
 Chalk, and the rest, as also Shells, and all other Animal and 
 Vegetable Bodies, were taken up into, and sustained in, the 
 Water ; that at length all these subsided again promiscuously, 
 and without any other order than that of the different 
 specifick Gravity of the several Bodies in this confused Mass, 
 those which had the greatest degree of Gravity sinking down 
 first, and so settling lowest ; then those Bodies which had a 
 lesser degree of Gravity fell next, and settled so as to make a 
 Stratum upon the former ; and so on, in their several turns, to 
 the lightest of all, which subsiding last, settled at the Surface, 
 and covered all the rest ; that this very various Miscellany of 
 
 sorts of Fossils, was printed after Woodward's death in : Fossils of all kinds, 
 digested into a Method suitable to their mutual Relation and Affinity, 8vo. Lond. 
 1728. 
 
SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIONS. 173 
 
 Bodies being determined to subsidence in this Order meerly 
 by their different specifick Gravities, all those which had the 
 same degree of Gravity subsided at the same time, fell into, 
 and composed, the same Stratum; so that those Shells, and 
 other Bodies, that were of the same specifick Gravity with 
 Sand, sunk down together with it, and so became inclosed in 
 the Strata of Stone which that Sand formed or constituted : 
 those which were lighter, and of but the same specifick 
 Gravity with Chalk (in such places of the Mass where any 
 Chalk was), fell to the bottom at the same time that the 
 Chalky Particles did, and so were entombed in the Strata of 
 Chalk ; and in like manner all the rest 1 : " in proof of which 
 he maintains that the shells usually found in sandstone are 
 heavier than those found in chalk. Further, he scornfully 
 rejects the notion that there have been " Changes and Altera- 
 tions in the Terraqueous Globe " since the Deluge, except 
 such as are due to the agency of man. 
 
 While engaged in the researches which led to this theory, he 
 amassed a vast collection of specimens, all of which he terms 
 fossils though the collection is partly petrological, partly 
 zoological. It is accompanied by an elaborate catalogue, 
 in which the specimens are carefully described, and their 
 localities noted. Here again Woodward was far in advance 
 of his age ; and, had not his mind been predisposed to theory, 
 he might have anticipated, by a century, the discoveries of 
 William Smith. Instead of this, as Sedgwick pointed out, 
 " he formed a magnificent collection of organic remains, and 
 he separated from the rest a series of fossils of the Hampshire 
 coast, and was aware that many of the species were the same 
 as those of the London Clay ; but this fact, and many others 
 of like kind, were with him but sterile truths ; and, being led 
 astray by his theory, he knew nothing either of the real 
 structure of the earth, or of any law regulating the distribution 
 of organic forms 2 ." 
 
 1 An Essay, etc. p. 29. 
 
 2 Address to the Geological Society, 18 February, 1831, on announcing the first 
 award of the Wollaston prize. 
 
, 74 THE THEORY ATTACKED. 
 
 The Essay achieved great popularity, passing through at 
 least four editions in England during Woodward's life, besides 
 being translated into Latin at Zurich, by Dr J. J. Scheuchzer 1 . 
 After Woodward's death it was translated into French (1735) 
 and published simultaneously at Paris and Amsterdam ; and 
 subsequently into Italian (1739). 
 
 It was not to be expected that views so novel should 
 escape attack; and accordingly we find them controverted, 
 "partly by occasional remarks in other writings, partly by 
 pamphlets written directly against " the Essay. Among the 
 latter is a tract by Dr John Arbuthnot, published in 1697. 
 He fully admits "that though Dr Woodward's Hypothesis 
 seems to be liable to many just exceptions, the whole is not 
 to be exploded ; " but good-humouredly hits him in his 
 weakest point when he adds : " I cannot forbear to wish that 
 People were more diligent in observing, and more cautious in 
 System-making. First, the World is malicious, and when 
 they write for an Opinion it spoils the Credit of their Obser- 
 vations : They have then taken their Party, and may be 
 suspected for partial Witnesses. In the next Place, Mankind, 
 in these Matters, is naturally too rash, and apt to put more 
 in the Conclusion than there is in the Premises ; yea, some 
 there are so fond of an Opinion, that they will take Pleasure to 
 cheat themselves, and would bring every Thing to fit their 
 Hypothesis 2 ." The illustrious Ray, though he could not 
 make up his mind as to the real nature of the "formed 
 stones," as they were termed, rejected the notion that their 
 position had been regulated by their specific gravity, as " not 
 generally true," pointing out "that they are often mingled, 
 heavy with light, in the same Bed or Stratum? At the same 
 time he shows, with much acuteness of observation, that 
 
 1 His translation is called : Specimen Geographies Physicce Quo agitur de Terra 
 et Corporibus Terrestribus Speciatim Mineralibus [etc.]. 8vo. Tiguri, 1704. 
 
 2 An Examination of Dr Woodward's History of the Deluge, in Miscellaneous 
 Works of the late Dr Arbuthnot, Lond. 1770, ii. 230. The same collection 
 contains (i. 166), An Account of the Sickness and Death of Dr W-dw-rd, a 
 satire on the Doctor's medical theories. 
 
TA URONOMACHIA. 
 
 '75 
 
 many parts of the earth had been changed in comparatively 
 recent times, and that Woodward was by no means accurate 
 in maintaining that it was now in the state in which the 
 Deluge had left it 1 . 
 
 These authors, and others whom we need not enumerate, 
 treated Woodward seriously; but he met with not a little 
 ridicule. Gay presented him on the stage, in a farce called 
 Three Hours after Marriage, as Dr Fossile " the man who 
 has the Raree-show of Oyster-shells and Pebble-stones" ; 
 and the wrath of the doctors against his medical theories ma- 
 nifested itself in a plentiful crop of scurrilous pamphlets. We 
 have neither space nor inclination to recount the history of 
 " Don Bilioso de 1'EstomacV as Woodward is called in one 
 of these ; but in Tauronomachia : or a description of a Bloody 
 and Terrible Fight between two Champions, Taurus and Onos, 
 at Gresham College*, his theory of the earth is hit off so 
 happily that we cannot forbear transcribing a few lines. 
 After introducing us to Onos, "a fam'd Empirick of the 
 Town," who knew how everything was created, and who 
 
 "of Atoms what, can tell 
 Echinites made, and Cackle- Shell*" 
 
 the satire gives a humorous description of the Abyss, the 
 Deluge, and the struggle of the various substances to get 
 to their proper places as the waters subsided. 
 
 Each thought himself as good as other, 
 And with confounded Stir and Pother, 
 Strove to accelerate his Pace, 
 And shove some other out of 's Place. 
 But cross-grain'd Levity combin'd 
 With Fate to make some lag behind ; 
 
 1 Three Physico-Theological Discourses, by John Ray, ed. 1713, pp. 165-167, 
 206-295. 
 
 2 The Life and Adventures of Don Bilioso de F Estomac. Translated from the 
 Original Spanish into French; done from the French into English. With a 
 Letter to the College of Physicians, 8vo. Lond. 1719. 
 
 3 Tauronomachia etc. Lond. 1719. Small folio, pp. 6. 
 
 4 A note on this word in another line says, " By a figure of speech peculiar to 
 Onos" It was evidently intended to ridicule his affected pronunciation, which 
 other writers allude to. 
 
176 DR CAMERARIUS. 
 
 For some, tho' immensely large and huge, 
 Were Naturally Centrifuge; 
 Whilst others, Atoms, yet their Weight 
 Inclin'd them to be Centripete. 
 Oh ! had you heard what dreadful Moans 
 Were made by Marie, and Coals and Stones, 
 And Seeds of Trees ; that had not Power 
 To sink themselves two Inches lower; 
 How Chalk and Soil did curse and swear, 
 That they must lye in open Air; 
 You'd been amaz'd, to find this Worldly 
 Frame in so d d a Hurly-burly. 
 
 Thus I've observed, pro re nata, 
 A Kitchin-Wench of Bread lay Strata, 
 Eggs, Suet, and Plums in plenteous store ; 
 But, in a Moment of an Hour, 
 Milk in a Deluge vast comes flowing, 
 And dissipates all she'd been doing : 
 But, when the Streams began t' asswage, 
 And quiet grow, and free from Rage; 
 Then to my Sorrow have I spy'd 
 Whole Troops of Plums with speed subside. 
 
 Woodward took no notice of any adverse criticism until 
 1714. Two years before Dr Elias Camerarius, Doctor of 
 Medicine in the University of Tubingen, had published a 
 volume of essays on various points of physic and medicine 1 , 
 in some of which he had disparaged Woodward's theories, 
 but without acrimony or severity. There seems to be no 
 special reason why Woodward should have broken his silence 
 on this occasion in particular ; but perhaps he was glad of an 
 opportunity of addressing the learned world, and especially 
 the learned world of Germany, where his own works had 
 made many converts. Accordingly he published, with a 
 dedication to Thomas, Earl of Pembroke, a short Latin essay, 
 in which he examines the points challenged by Camerarius, 
 and defends his whole theory, but, it must be admitted, 
 without any great novelty of argument 2 . The essay concludes 
 
 1 Elise Camerarii Dissertationes Tattrinenses Epistolicce, Physico- Medico;. 8vo. 
 Tubingse, 1712. 
 
 2 Johannis Woodward! Naturalis Historia Telluris Illustrata et Aucta. Una 
 cum Ejusdem Defensione ; Prcesertim contra Nuperas Objeciiones D. EL Came- 
 rarii Med. Prof. Tubingensis. 8vo. Lond. 1714. 
 

 WOODWARD'S BOTANICAL EXPERIMENTS. 177 
 
 with a Classification of Fossils, prefaced by an epistle to Sir 
 Isaac Newton, at whose suggestion, says the writer, the work 
 had been undertaken. 
 
 One other scientific work of Woodward's must be briefly 
 noticed. In June, 1699, he laid before the Royal Society 
 Some Thoughts and Experiments concerning Vegetation* . This 
 remarkable paper shows that the author should be ranked as 
 a founder of experimental plant- physiology, for he was one of 
 the first to employ the method of water-culture, and to make 
 refined experiments for the investigation of plant-life. 
 
 Woodward's object was to controvert a theory then 
 prevalent, that water, and not mineral matter, was "the 
 only Principle or Ingredient of all natural things;" and 
 that there was " a direct transmutation of water into plants 
 and other bodies." The supporters of this view had in- 
 vestigated, experimentally, the growth of various selected 
 plants, and had shown in the first place that " mint and other 
 plants prosper and thrive greatly in water"; and secondly, 
 that, if a plant be placed in a given weight of earth and 
 allowed to grow for a considerable time, at the end of the 
 experiment the earth will be found to have experienced no 
 loss of weight, thus proving that all the nutriment must have 
 been obtained from the water. Woodward proceeded as 
 follows. A number of glass phials of fairly equal size were 
 filled with water, and weighed. Each was then covered with 
 a piece of parchment, pierced with a hole just large enough 
 to admit the stalk of a plant. Sprigs of spear-mint (MentJia 
 viridis) and other plants, having been carefully weighed, 
 were inserted through the holes in the parchment, and the 
 phials set in a window, under the same conditions of air, 
 light, and sun. As the water evaporated, the phials were 
 replenished, account being taken of the weight of the water 
 added. He placed in his phials: (i) pure water; (2) water 
 containing soluble matter in varying proportions ; (3) water 
 
 1 Philosophical Transactions, 1699, Vol. xxi. pp. 193 227. 
 S. I. 12 
 
178 WOODWARD'S BOTANICAL EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 artificially mixed with earth. At the conclusion of the 
 experiment the plants were weighed a second time, and 
 their growth calculated in proportion to the weight of the 
 water used. The most important results, as stated in Wood- 
 ward's own words, were the following : 
 
 1. "The Plant is more or less nourished and augmented in 
 proportion as the Water in which it stands contains a greater or 
 smaller quantity of proper terrestrial Matter in it." 
 
 2. "The much greatest part of the Fluid Mass that is drawn off 
 and conveyed into the Plants, does not settle or abide there : but 
 passes through the Pores of them, and exhales up into the Atmo- 
 sphere." 
 
 The first of the above conclusions was a sufficient answer 
 to those who supported a contrary theory ; the second shows 
 that Woodward had discovered what is now called Tran- 
 spiration, which has so important a bearing on plant-life. In 
 the light of this result he proceeds to discuss the effect of 
 vegetation on climate ; and concludes that " so continual 
 an emission and detachment of water in so great plenty from 
 the parts of plants affords us a manifest reason why countries 
 that abound with trees and the larger vegetables, are very 
 obnoxious to damps, great humidity of the air, and more 
 frequent rains than others that are open and free ; " and that 
 this evaporation is dependant on temperature, for " much 
 less quantity of water was exhaled in the colder months." 
 
 Woodward was not popular with his contemporaries. 
 Thoresby, the well-known antiquary of the last century, calls 
 him " very ingenious, yet not the best-tempered ; " and, in 
 another place, "that ill-natured piece of formality 1 ." Nor 
 did foreigners judge him more favourably than his own 
 countrymen. Dr Christian Heinrich Erndl, or Erndtel, who 
 visited England in 1706, says: 
 
 The said Doctor owns an inestimable treasure of minerals and 
 petrified shells, partly collected by himself in Britain, partly obtained 
 with much diligence from all corners of Europe, as specimens of the 
 rarer minerals and petrifactions. He has likewise a very choice 
 library of books on medicine and philosophy. It is to be regretted 
 
 1 Nichols, Illustrations, i. 800, 806. 
 
WOODWARD'S MANNERS. 179 
 
 that this celebrated man should be very ignorant of Latin, which he 
 speaks with difficulty ; and it is wonderful how chary and churlish 
 he is in showing his cabinet of curiosities. If you do get a peep at 
 it, mind you do not touch the smallest object with so much as the 
 tip of your finger. Nor may you look into a single volume, unless he 
 holds it in his own hands 1 . 
 
 His eccentricity and vanity are amusingly described in 
 Uffenbach's account of a visit paid to him in 1710; but 
 allowance must be made for the writer's evident vexation. 
 
 30 October. In the morning called on Dr Woodward for the fifth 
 time, and at last found him at home ; but were shown into an ante- 
 chamber. When we had stood there a good quarter of an hour, he 
 first sent his boy to ask our names : after another quarter of an hour 
 the boy came back, saying, ' His master was still in bed, as he had 
 sat up somewhat late the night before; it might be half-an-hour 
 before he got up, if we could wait so long.' We left our interpreter 
 and servant behind, with orders to summon us, when it was convenient 
 to the man, and meanwhile drank a cup of coffee in the next coffee- 
 house. When one of them came for us, we set off at once, but must 
 again wait some half-hour in the ante chamber. At last his boy 
 called us, and led us through two rooms to the precious Mr Doctor. 
 He stood stiffly up in his silk dressing-gown, and with an affected air 
 and screwed-up eyes, asked who we were, and where we came from. 
 But when we begged for a sight of his cabinet, he excused himself, 
 saying that in half-an-hour he had to attend a consultation, which he 
 could not possibly put off, and prayed us to come again the next 
 afternoon at three. 
 
 When we were about to take leave, he begged us to stay awhile, 
 and called to his lad, ' make haste,' intending, as we supposed, to 
 offer us chocolate, according to his custom. For, as we had been 
 assured, he presents it to all strangers, and that with such ridiculous 
 fuss and ceremony, that one can scarce refrain from laughing. For 
 till the chocolate comes he keeps urging the boy with every variety of 
 expression ; a shouting to which, much to our disgust, we were forced 
 to listen some half-hour. But this time we had not the honour to 
 drink a cup with him ; for though the boy brought a silver can and a 
 cloth, it was only for shaving ; and we were to be favoured with the 
 privilege of looking on. We had heard already of more than four 
 foreigners, who had received the same treatment. But we excused 
 
 1 C. H. E. D. De Itinere suo Anglicano et Batavo Annis MDCCV1 et 
 MDCCVII facto relatio ad amicum D. G. K. A. C. Amsterdam, 1710, p. 41. 
 A second edition, published 1711, omits the passage "It is to be regretted own 
 hands." An English translation of the first edition appeared in 1711, entitled : 
 The Relation of a Journey into England and Holland in the Years 1 706 and 
 1707. By a Saxon Physician. 8vo. Lond. 1711. This translation is badly done, 
 and has not been exactly followed in the above passage. 
 
 12 2 
 
i8o WOODWAR&S DEATH. 
 
 ourselves, and said we would not detain him, and got away, though 
 he several times begged us to stay. 
 
 3 1 October. In the afternoon we drove again to Dr Woodward, 
 and at last attained our end, to see his things. Yet he kept us 
 waiting, as his way is, again a good half-hour in his ante-chamber; 
 and then complained that we were not quite punctual, and had not 
 come half-an-hour before. This is said to be the uncivil compliment 
 which this affected, learned charlatan, pays to all strangers that 
 come to him. 
 
 He showed us first all kind of precious stones found here and 
 there in England; then some minerals, and then petrefactions, his 
 strong point. Not only was the quantity amazing, but the specimens 
 were select and fine. Amongst others he showed us shells filled and 
 partly overgrown with stone of all kinds, even the hardest flint. 
 Specially curious was the collection in which he showed us the whole 
 growth of the conchylia from first to last. He had also many stones 
 containing fossil plants of all kinds ; shells covered with metals and 
 ores, and partly also filled with them ; amongst the rest very many 
 fine ammonites. He had a cabinet filled with ancient urns and vases. 
 In another were great fossil snails and ammonites. In another he 
 had a good number of MSS., chiefly relating to the Natural History 
 of England, which, as he professed, were mostly of his own writing. 
 Among these books was a volume, in which he had had all his 
 conchylia tolerably well drawn. Again, a fine herbarium vivum 
 anglicanum of his collection, in which the plants were quite fresh and 
 well-preserved. Dr Woodward showed us all his things with such an 
 affected air, and such screwing-up of the eyes, that one cannot help 
 laughing; though he suffers you to laugh as little as to speak, 
 requiring every one to listen to him as an oracle, approve and extol 
 all. You must listen to his opinion de diluvio et generatione ante- 
 diluviana et lapidum postdiluviana, till you are sick of it. He 
 repeats whole pages of his works, accompanying them with running 
 panegyrics. The maddest thing of all is, that he has many mirrors 
 hanging in every room, in which he constantly contemplates him- 
 self. In all he does he behaves like a woman and a conceited 
 fool 1 . 
 
 Woodward died of a decline, in his apartments at Gresham 
 College, 25 April, 1728, in the sixty-third year of his age. 
 His Will records a wish that he may be buried "in the 
 Abbey Church of Westminster, with as little Pomp and 
 Expences as may well be." On May-day following this 
 wish was carried out. His grave is close to that of Newton, 
 
 1 Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Merkwiirdigc Reisen. Dritter Theil. 
 pp. 228, 235. The translation is by the Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, M.A. St 
 John's Coll. A few lines have been omitted in transcription. 
 
JOHN WOODWARD, M.D. F.R.S. 
 Born 1665; died 1728. 
 
 From a contemporary oil-painting in the Woodwardian Museum , Cambridge. 
 To face page 181, Vol. /. 
 
WOODWARD'S WILL. 181 
 
 on the north side of the entrance to the choir. No inscription 
 marks his resting-place, but near the west end of the nave, 
 on the same side of the church, an elaborate monument of 
 white marble, erected to his memory by the pious care of his 
 friend Colonel King, bears the following inscription : 
 
 M.S. 
 JOHANNIS WOODWARD, 
 
 Medici Celeb errimi, 
 Philosophi Nobilissimi, 
 
 Cujus 
 
 Ingenium et Doctrinam 
 Scripta per Terrarum fere orbem 
 
 Pervulgata ; 
 
 Liberalitatem verb et Patrice Caritatem 
 Academia Cantabrigiensis ; 
 Munificentia Ejus aucta, 
 
 Opibus ornata, 
 
 In Perpetuum declarabit. 
 
 Natus Kal. Maij A.D. MDCLXV. 
 
 Obiit vii. Kal. Maij MDCCXXVIII. 
 
 RICHARD US KING 
 
 Tribunus Militum, Fabriimque Prcefectns, 
 
 Amico optime de se merito 
 
 D. S. P. 
 
 Our portrait of Woodward is taken from an oil-painting in 
 the Woodwardian Museum. Its history is unknown, but, 
 from the style, it is evidently a contemporary picture, and is 
 believed to have been sent to Cambridge at the same time as 
 the collection, or shortly afterwards. 
 
 Woodward's will is dated I October, 1727. He names as 
 his executors the Honourable Dixie Windsor 1 ; Mr Hugh 
 Bethell, of Swinton in Yorkshire ; Mr Richard Graham ; and 
 
 1 Of Trinity College; B.A. 1694, M.A. 1698, and M.P. for the University, 
 17051727. 
 
1 82 WOODWARD'S FOUNDATION. 
 
 Colonel Richard King, of the Office of Ordnance in the Tower 
 of London. They are directed to convert into money his 
 personal estate and effects, including his library, and his 
 antiquarian collections ; to purchase land of the yearly value 
 of one hundred and fifty pounds, and to convey the same 
 to the University of Cambridge. Out of this yearly income 
 ;ioo is to be paid, in four quarterly instalments, to a 
 Lecturer, to be chosen in the first instance by the executors, 
 and after their decease by "the Lord Archbishop of the 
 Province in which the said University is, who, it is to be 
 presumed, besides his favouring of learning and all useful 
 knowledge, will think himself under obligation to have special 
 regard to this University"; the Lord Bishop of the Diocese 
 in which the said University is ; the President of the College 
 of Physicians ; the President of the Royal Society ; the 
 two Representatives of the University in Parliament ; and the 
 whole Senate. The six persons first-named, together with 
 the Chancellor of the University, are to have the privilege of 
 voting by proxy. 
 
 The Lecturer is to be a bachelor ; " and in case of the 
 marriage of any of the said Lecturers afterwards, his election 
 shall be thereby immediately made void, lest the care of a 
 wife and children should take the Lecturer too much from 
 study, and the care of the Lecture." This condition was 
 evidently borrowed by Woodward from the statutes of 
 Gresham College. In choosing the Lecturer, a layman is to 
 be preferred to a divine, "not out of any disrespect to the 
 clergy, for whom I have ever had a particular regard, but 
 because there is in this kingdom better provision, and a much 
 greater number of preferments, for the clergy than for men of 
 learning among the laity"; he is to be "further subject to 
 such rules, orders, and directions, not interfering with those 
 hereinafter particularly specified and set forth, as the electors, 
 or a majority of them, shall from time to time think fit to 
 make " ; he is not to hold " any preferment, office, or post, 
 whatever, that shall any ways so employ and take up his time 
 
WOODWARDS FOUNDATION. 183 
 
 as to interfere with his duty herein set forth, and in particular 
 that shall require his attendance out of the University"; if 
 he accept such, his post is to become vacant ; he is not to 
 be absent from Cambridge for more than " two months in the 
 year, and those to be in the long vacation in the summer"; he 
 is there to "read at least four Lectures every year, at such 
 times, and in such place of the said University, as the majority 
 of the said electors shall appoint, on some one or other of the 
 subjects treated of in my Natiiral History of the Earth, my 
 Defence of it against Dr Camerarius, my Discourse of Vege- 
 tation, or my State of Physick, at his discretion, but in such 
 language, viz., English or Latin, as shall be appointed from 
 time to time by the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Provosts, 
 and Masters of the several Colleges and Halls belonging 
 to the said University ; the said Lectures, or at least one of 
 them, at the Lecturer's own free choice and election, to be 
 published in print every year." 
 
 In the next place he bequeaths to the University his 
 collection of English fossils, with the two cabinets containing 
 them, and their catalogues, copies of which are to be 
 " reposited in the publick Library of the said University, for 
 greater security that the said Fossils be preserved with great 
 care and faithfulness." The executors are to " cause and 
 procure the same to be lodged and reposited in such proper 
 room or apartment as shall be allotted by the said Uni- 
 versity"; the Lecturer is to "have the care and custody of 
 all the said Fossils and the catalogues of them"; he is to 
 " live and reside in or near the said apartment so to be 
 allotted for repositing the said Fossils " ; he is to " be actually 
 ready and attending in the room where they are reposited, 
 from the hour of nine of the clock in the morning to eleven, 
 and again from the hour of two in the afternoon till four, 
 three days in every week (except during the two months in 
 the long vacation, wherein he is allowed to be absent) to show 
 the said Fossils, gratis, to all such curious and intelligent 
 persons as shall desire a view of them for their information 
 
1 84 WOODWARD'S FOUNDATION. 
 
 and instruction"; and he is to "be always present when 
 they are shown, and take care that none be mutilated or lost." 
 
 For the sake of additional security the Chancellor, Vice- 
 Chancellor, and Heads of Colleges are to appoint "two 
 discreet and careful persons" before the admission of every 
 Lecturer, and also once every year, "who shall inspect and 
 examine the said collections of fossils, and compare them 
 with the catalogues." These inspectors are to "give under 
 their hands a report of their examination," and to receive "for 
 their care and trouble," $ a piece out of the testator's estate. 
 Besides these precautions, the Lecturer, before his admission, 
 is to give such security for the safe-keeping of the fossils as 
 the electors shall think proper ; and, further, he is to receive 
 ;io in each year, " to be laid out and employed by him, 
 from time to time, in making observations and experiments, 
 keeping correspondence with learned men on the subjects 
 directed to be treated of in the Lectures, and in procuring 
 additions to the Collections of Fossils... he rendering annually 
 to such of the electors as shall be in the University an account 
 in writing of the ways in which the said sum hath been dis- 
 bursed and employed 1 ." 
 
 Notwithstanding these minute directions and limitations, 
 Woodward clearly intended his benefaction to be modified 
 from time to time; for he directs that a further sum of 10 
 "be appropriated for a dinner, on the first day of May, or, 
 if this fall on a Sunday, then on the second day of May," 
 for the Lecturer, Inspectors, Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, and 
 Heads of Colleges, "to the end that they may then confer 
 and consider of the methods to improve the design and use 
 of the said donation by me hereby made. And I greatly 
 wish that these things that are of so much use and importance, 
 and which I have with great diligence and expense collected, 
 may by this settlement, the care of the electors, and the 
 diligence of the Lecturer, be made serviceable to the setting 
 
 J The addition of this 10 virtually raised the annual salary to ^no, an 
 amount often mentioned as though it had been specified by Woodward. 
 
WOODWARD'S FOUNDATION. 185 
 
 forth the wisdom of God in the works of nature, to the 
 advancement of useful knowledge, and to the profit and 
 benefit of the publick." 
 
 Lastly, the balance left in hand after the discharge of the 
 sums above specified, is to be spent by the University in " the 
 payment of taxes, or any other necessary contingencies " ; 
 and any further surplus " in such manner as the said 
 University shall think fit ; but in hopes, that for the honour 
 of the University, and the benefit that will thence accrue to 
 the publick, if the design of this donation be rightly carried on, 
 that the said University will be pleased to dispose of the said 
 residue in making experiments and observations, in corre- 
 spondence, in natural collections, books, or other things that 
 may serve to the promoting the good ends of this donation." 
 
 It is evident that Woodward's primary object in this 
 foundation was the permanent commemoration of himself 
 and his researches without limitation of subject. Geology 
 was not, in his eyes, more important than Medicine or 
 Botany, provided his collections the monument of his 
 industry and sagacity could be preserved, extended, and 
 displayed to the public. This point having been secured, he 
 did not bind his lecturer to their illustration. He might be 
 a Botanist or a Physician, provided he took the Woodwardian 
 utterances on those subjects as his text-book, and provided 
 always that he was willing to act as an honest and efficient 
 curator of the Woodwardian cabinets. 
 
 Woodward's estimate of the value of his works is worth 
 quotation. After directing his executors to treat his un- 
 finished writings as they shall think fit 1 , he proceeds : 
 
 But for such others of my writings as I have at any time in my 
 life caused to be published, the property and copyright of all which 
 is in myself, and also all such others of my writings as my executors 
 may hereafter appoint to be printed, I say of all those and these I do 
 give and devise one moiety of the said property and copyright, and 
 the benefit and profit thence arising, to the said University ; and the 
 
 1 Notwithstanding this it was found that the MSS. had been placed in a box 
 by Woodward's order, with a request, bearing a date anterior to that of his Will, 
 that they might be destroyed, which was accordingly done. 
 
1 86 WOODWARD'S COLLECTIONS. 
 
 other moiety to the said Lecturer and his successors from time to 
 time, upon this special trust and confidence, that the said University 
 and the said Lecturer and their successors do take care that all my 
 said works from time to time be printed as soon as the former edition 
 of the same or of any part is sold off or become scarce, and that they 
 and he do not by any contracts to be made for the republishing 
 thereof so enhance the price as to prejudice the sale and divulgation 
 of any of the said copies to be reprinted. 
 
 The executors lost no time in carrying out Woodward's 
 instructions. He died, as we have seen, in April, 1728, and 
 by the following September the two cabinets containing the 
 English fossils had been sent to Cambridge 1 . The University 
 seems to have been fully aware of the importance of the new 
 foundation, for at the beginning of the following year 
 (26 February, 1728 29), the Senate agreed to purchase, for 
 a sum not exceeding one thousand pounds, two other cabinets 
 containing " foreign fossils," and " additional English fossils " 
 respectively. These cabinets had at first been included by 
 the testator among the effects which his executors were 
 directed to sell, but by a subsequent clause they were 
 empowered to make any arrangements they thought proper 
 respecting them, or even to give them away. They decided, 
 however, to dispose of them by public auction, and the Grace 
 recommending their purchase dwells at some length upon the 
 importance of preventing a separation of collections so 
 valuable, and collected at so great an expense. 
 
 There is no evidence to show where the cabinets were 
 bestowed on their arrival at Cambridge ; and it was not until 
 1734, during the Vice-Chancellorship of Dr Roger Long, 
 Master of Pembroke College, that a definite. place was devised 
 
 1 Grace of the Senate, 17 September, 1728. "May it please you that the 
 acquittance now read to you be given to the executors of the late Dr Woodward, 
 sealed with your common seal." This Grace can only refer to the collections, for 
 the estate was not bought until 1731 ; and in the University Accounts for the 
 year ending 3 November, 1728, we find : " Paid Colonel King the carpenters 
 bill and other charges in packing Dr Woodward's boxes and two cabinets 
 i\. i$s. Of/." His Library and Antiquities of various kinds were sold by 
 auction. See A Catalogue, of the Library, Antiquities, etc. of the Late Learned 
 Dr Woodivard, [etc.] 8vo. pp. 287. The sale began n November, 1728, and 
 occupied 33 days, 28 of which were devoted to the Library. 
 
A ROOM BUILT FOR THEM. 187 
 
 for their reception. In a letter dated 13 April, 1734, the 
 executors express to Dr Long their " thanks for the room 
 which you have been so good as to appoint for the better 
 standing of the Cabinets ; and hope you will be pleased to 
 order the fitting it up for that purpose." Dr Long was 
 renowned for his mechanical contrivances, and it is probable 
 that he himself suggested the ingenious scheme which was 
 completed in 1736. By dividing off from the north end of 
 the Arts School a space about fifteen feet in length, a room 
 was contrived, now the Novel-Room of the Library, of con- 
 venient size, and fairly well lighted. The comfort of the 
 Lecturer, who was supposed to spend twelve hours of each 
 week in it, was provided for by a fireplace, curtains to the 
 windows, and other luxuries. The whole work was super- 
 intended by Mr James Burrough, of Gonville and Caius 
 College, the popular amateur architect of the day 1 . So long 
 as the geological collections belonging to the University were 
 contained in Woodward's four, or five, cabinets, this room was 
 probably not ill-adapted for its purpose; but even then it 
 was impossible for the Lecturer to "live and reside in or 
 near the said apartment " as the Will directed. As time 
 went on, and new acquisitions had to be displayed, it was 
 found to be wholly inadequate, and we shall have to notice, 
 as we proceed, several abortive attempts to provide a proper 
 Museum. 
 
 The acquisition of an estate of the exact annual value 
 specified in the Will proved a somewhat difficult matter, and 
 was not effected until 1731, when a property near Beccles in 
 Suffolk was conveyed to the University. The annual value was 
 slightly in excess of 150, and the proportional difference in 
 the purchase-money was made up partly by the generosity of 
 Colonel King, Woodward's residuary legatee, partly by a loan 
 from the University. 
 
 This matter having been settled, the four executors drew 
 up a formal document under their hands and seals, dated 
 
 1 University Accounts and Vouchers for 1735 and 1736. 
 
1 88 DR CONYERS MIDDLETON. 
 
 30 July, 1731, by which they appointed Conyers Middleton, 
 D.D., formerly Fellow of Trinity College, to be the first 
 Lecturer. Middleton was a good scholar, and a distinguished 
 man of letters. He wrote an English style of which it has 
 been said that "for elegance, purity, and ease, it yields to 
 none in the whole compass of English literature 1 ." His love 
 of music had gained for him the epithet of "musical Conyers"; 
 which, as he himself played on the violin, was contemptuously 
 changed by Dr Bentley to " fiddling Conyers 2 ." He was a 
 well-bred, courteous man of the world ; and, having married 
 a lady of good fortune 8 , his house had become, to some 
 extent, the centre of Cambridge society. His pamphlets 
 against Bentley, and the subsequent degradation of his 
 opponent on a question which he had been foremost in 
 raising, had made him a prominent person in the University, 
 and the office of Protobibliothecarius, or Principal Keeper of 
 the University Library, had been created for him by the 
 Senate in 1721 as a mark of gratitude to a man whom they 
 regarded as their champion. But he had no knowledge of 
 any department of science, and he probably owed his appoint- 
 ment either to his general distinction as a scholar and a 
 gentleman, or to a personal acquaintance with Woodward, 
 on which he insists in more than one passage of his inaugural 
 lecture. This composition, an elegant piece of Latin, was 
 printed in I732 4 . As might be expected, it refers to science 
 only in language borrowed from Woodward's own writings, 
 without expansion or criticism. It may be described as a 
 string of well-turned compliments to Woodward, to the 
 executors, and to the University. Woodward had brought 
 science out of the depths of the earth, as Orpheus brought 
 Eurydice ; Woodward might claim a place by Newton's side. 
 
 1 Monk's Life of Bentley, ii. 67. 2 Ibid. ii. 38. 
 
 3 Mrs Middleton died 19 February, 1730. 
 
 4 It is entitled : Oratio de novo Physiologic Explicandce Munere, ex cele- 
 berrimi Woodwardi testamento institute, habita Cantabrigice in Scholis Publicis a 
 Conyers Middleton, S.T.P. Academicc Cantabrigiensis Protobibliothecario et 
 Lectore ibidem Woodwardiano : 410. Lond. 1732. 
 
MR MASON. 
 
 Newton had explained the nature of light by study of the 
 sun ; Woodward had made light shine out of darkness a 
 conceit which may have been suggested by Dr Bentley's well- 
 known lines : 
 
 Who Nature's Treasures wou'd explore, 
 
 Her Mysteries and Arcana know, 
 Must high, as lofty Newton, soar, 
 
 Must stoop, as searching Woodward, low 1 . 
 
 From the compliments to the executors, though hardly 
 less rhetorical than those to Woodward, the interesting in- 
 formation may be extracted that the University was princi- 
 pally indebted to Mr Richard Graham for Woodward's 
 benefaction. He had been educated at Cambridge, though 
 he did not proceed to a degree, and actuated by love for his 
 old University he had constantly urged his friend to entrust 
 his collections to Cambridge, as a place of note where they 
 would be seen and valued. 
 
 Middleton held the office for rather less than three years. 
 He resigned, 7 April, 1734, either from a sense of his own 
 unfitness, or because he was meditating the second marriage 
 which he shortly afterwards contracted. 
 
 The executors next appointed the Rev. Charles Mason, 
 M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, apparently at the suggestion 
 of the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr Roger Long. Some passages 
 from their letter to him, dated 13 April, 1734, will be found 
 interesting : 
 
 " Mr Vice-Chancellor, 
 
 Dr Middleton having transmitted to us his Resignation of 
 Dr Woodward's Professorship, in Form, dated the 7th of this month, 
 we proceeded forthwith to the Nomination of a fit Person to succeed 
 him : and have unanimously made choice of Mr Mason : being 
 confirm'd in the good Opinion we all have of his Abilities and 
 
 1 Johnson (Life of Cowley, Works, ed. 1787, ii. 43) speaks of these lines as 
 " the only English verses which he [Bentley] is known to have written." For 
 Johnson's admiration of them, see Boswell's Life, ed. 1823, iii. 468. The whole 
 poem is printed in Monk's Bentley, ii. 174, from Dodsley's Collection, ed. 1765, 
 vi. 189. We have followed an earlier text as given in The Grove; or, a 
 Collection of original Poems, Translations, etc., 8vo. Lond. 1721. In the 4th 
 line Dodsley reads 'delving' instead of 'searching.' 
 
190 MR MASON. 
 
 sufficiency for that Post, by the Character you have been pleas'd to 
 give him. 
 
 There is nothing, Sir, we have more at heart, than the firm 
 Establishment of this Professorship. And therefore we make it our 
 Request to you, that as the Professor is to receive his Salary by the 
 hands of the Vice- Chancellor for the time being, no part of the said 
 Salary may be paid to him till he shall produce a Certificat, sign'd 
 by two Masters of Arts, that he has duly read the Lectures, accord- 
 ing to the Institution ; and at the expiration of every year shall 
 present to the Vice-Chancellor one of them Printed, giving him (at 
 the same time) a particular Account, in writing, how the ^10 
 annually allow'd for Correspondence, Experiments, etc., has been 
 expended for the Year past ; as is directed by the Founder's Will." 
 
 Two contemporary accounts of Mason have been preserved. 
 The first is by the Rev. William Cole, his "particular friend": 
 
 "He is looked upon as rather unhewn, rough, and unsociable.... 
 He is a very ingenious Man, an excellent Mechanic, and no bad 
 Geographer : witness a most accurate Map of Cambridgeshire, which 
 he has made from a personal Visitation of almost every Spot in the 
 County. He has also large Collections for an History of the same 
 County 1 ." 
 
 The next is by Mr Richard Cumberland : 
 
 " A man of curious knowledge in the philosophy of mechanics, 
 and a deep mathematician ; he was a true modern Diogenes in 
 manners and apparel, coarse and slovenly to excess in both ; the 
 witty made a butt of him, but the scientific caressed him ; he could 
 ornament a subject at the same time that he disgusted and disgraced 
 Society. I remember when he came one day to dinner in the 
 College hall, dirty as a blacksmith from his forge, upon his being 
 questioned on his appearance, he replied that he had been turning. 
 'Then I wish/ said the other, 'when you was about it, friend Charles, 
 you had turned your shirt 2 .' " 
 
 Mason was Woodwardian Lecturer for twenty-eight years. 
 During that period he printed a single Latin lecture 3 (in 1734). 
 Like Middleton, he devotes the greater part of it to praise of 
 Woodward and his executors ; and then, after commending 
 
 1 MSS. Cole xxxiii. 156 (Add. MSS. Mus. Brit. 5834). A full account of 
 Mason is given in the Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, ii. 
 674677. 
 
 2 Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, 4to. Lond. 1806, p. 106. 
 
 3 Oratio de Physiologies Explicandce Munere, ex celeb errimi Woodivardi Testa- 
 mento Instituto. Habita Cantabrigice in Scholis P^(blids a Carolo Mason, M.A., 
 Coll. S. S. Trin. Soc. et Lectore ibidem Woodwardiano. 4 to. Cant. MDCCXXIV. 
 (sic}. 
 
MR MICHELL. 191 
 
 the clause in the above letter to the Vice-Chancellor which 
 makes the Lecturer's stipend depend on his reading lectures, 
 he ends with a promise to devote his best energies to the 
 work. Notwithstanding this engagement, we believe that all 
 he did was to make a considerable private collection of fossils, 
 which was sold by auction after his death. It is noteworthy 
 that he was Vicar of Harrington in Cambridgeshire from 1742 
 to 1747, and Rector of Orwell in the same county from 1747 
 to his death. As no man can be in two places at once, and 
 as Woodward had expressly forbidden his Lecturer to hold 
 any preferment, office, or post, which might interfere with his 
 duty as set forth in the Will, it is evident that Mason must 
 have neglected either his parish in favour of his lectureship, or 
 his lectureship in favour of his parish. In 1762, when he was 
 between sixty and seventy years of age, " he quitted Senior- 
 Fellowship, Professorship, and Liberty, for a Lady of small 
 Fortune, but of great Accomplishments 1 ," and took up his 
 abode at Orwell, where he died, 18 December, 1770. 
 
 On Mason's resignation, Colonel King, Woodward's last 
 surviving executor 2 , appointed the Rev. John Michell, B.D. 
 Fellow of Queens' College, a man of talent, who had already 
 distinguished himself by his scientific writings. In 1750, 
 while still a Bachelor of Arts, he had published a Treatise of 
 Artificial Magnets* ; and in 1760 he read to the Royal Society, 
 of which he became subsequently Fellow, Conjectures concerning 
 tJie Cause, and Observations upon the Phenomena, of Earth- 
 quakes*, in which 'he advanced many original and philoso- 
 phical views respecting the propagation of subterranean 
 movements, and the caverns and fissures wherein steam 
 might be generated 5 ." At the outset of this paper he describes 
 
 1 MSS. Cole, ut supra. 
 
 2 Cambridge Chronicle, 10 December, 1762. Mason's marriage had taken 
 place 5 November. 
 
 8 A tract of 81 pages, 8vo. Cambridge, 1750. 
 
 4 Philosophical Transactions, 1760, pp. 566 634. It was reprinted in full in 
 Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, 1818, Vol. Hi. 
 
 5 Lyell : Principles of Geology, Ed. 1867, i. 61; ii. 150, 152. 
 
1 92 MR MIC HELL. 
 
 the general appearance and structure of stratified countries 
 with such remarkable accuracy that so far as principle is 
 concerned, a foremost place may be claimed for him among 
 the founders of modern geology. That he was acquainted 
 with the details also of the beds in certain parts of England 
 is proved by a memorandum in his handwriting discovered 
 in 1810 among the papers of Mr Smeaton, then in the posses- 
 sion of Sir Joseph Banks. In this memorandum several of 
 the principal beds are enumerated, from the chalk down to the 
 coal ; and, in two instances, detached portions, several miles 
 distant from each other, are associated under the same name 1 . 
 On the other hand u he was ignorant of the importance of 
 organic remains, and did not use them as a means of identify- 
 ing strata 2 ." Michell vacated the Lectureship by marriage, 
 in September, 1764*, having held it for rather less than two 
 years. 
 
 We have not been able to discover that he ever delivered 
 lectures, much less published any. Cole says of him: 
 
 " He is a little short Man, of a black Complexion, and fat, but 
 having no Acquaintance with him, can say little of him. I think he 
 had the Care of St Botolph's Church while he continued Fellow of 
 Queens' College, where he was esteemed a very ingenious Man, and 
 an excellent Philosopher 4 ." 
 
 After his marriage he held more than one piece of prefer- 
 ment, and does not appear to have revisited Cambridge. Nor 
 did he continue the geological studies which he had com- 
 menced with so much promise. His subsequent communica- 
 tions to the Royal Society are on astronomical subjects. He 
 died 29 April 1793, atThornhill, near Dewsbury, in Yorkshire, 
 of which place he had been rector since 1767. 
 
 1 This estimate of Michell's geological attainments is derived, in the main, 
 from Notes on the History of English Geology, by W. H. Fitton, M.D. in the 
 Philosophical Magazine, 1832, i. 268. The memorandum alluded to was first 
 published in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, 1810, xxxvi. 102. 
 
 2 Sedgwick's Address to the Geological Society of London, 18 February, 1831, 
 on announcing the first award of the Wollaston prize, pp. 4, 5, and note. 
 
 3 Cambridge Chronicle, 8 September, 1 764. 
 
 4 MSS. Cole, xxxiii. 156 (Add. MSS. Mus. Brit. 5834). 
 
DR OGDEN. 193 
 
 The Lectureship being vacant for a fourth time, Colonel 
 King, now a very old man, appointed the Rev. Samuel Ogden, 
 D.D., Fellow and President of St John's College. Dr Ogden 
 had been master of the grammar-school at Halifax from 1743 
 to 1/53, when he returned to Cambridge, where he resided 
 until his death, 22 March, 1778. He held the livings of 
 Stansfield in Suffolk and of Lawford in Essex, and was vicar 
 of St Sepulchre's, Cambridge, from March, 1759, to May, 
 1777. For his personal appearance we will again quote Cole : 
 
 " Dr Ogden is a bald, swarthy, black Man : of a most extra- 
 ordinary Turn of Humour, great Vivacity, odd, whimsical, and like 
 no one else : a great Epicure, and very parsimonious : a very in- 
 genious Preacher, and on that account his Church of St Sepulcre at 
 Cambridge is usually so thronged as to be difficult to get a Place 1 ." 
 
 This summary of Dr Ogden's peculiarities may be sup- 
 plemented by the following note by Gilbert Wakefield : 
 
 " I heard Dr Ogden preach most of those discourses, which were 
 afterwards made public. His manner, and person, and character of 
 composition, were exactly suited to each other. He exhibited a 
 large, black, scowling figure ; a lowering visage, embrowned by the 
 horrors of a sable periwig. His voice was growling and morose, and 
 his sentences desultory, tart, and snappish. His sermons are inter- 
 spersed with remarks, eminently brilliant and acute, but too epigram- 
 matic in their close.... He was a good scholar, a liberal-minded 
 Christian, and an honest man. 
 
 His uncivilized appearance and bluntness of demeanour were the 
 great obstacles to his elevation in the Church. He kept a public 
 Act for his Doctor's degree at the Installation of the Chancellor, the 
 late Duke of Newcastle, in 1749, with distinguished applause. The 
 Duke was willing to have brought our divine up to Court, to prefer 
 him ; but found, as he expressed it, that the Doctor was not a 
 producible man 2 ." 
 
 Ogden had a turn for writing verse, and his name appears 
 in three of those volumes which, in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, the University used to address to 
 
 1 MSS. Cole, ut supra p. 137. The account is dated 19 June 1770. 
 
 ' 2 Memoirs of the Life of Gilbert Wakefield, 8vo. Lond. 1792, p. 95. Gunning's 
 Reminiscences, ed. 1855, i. pp. 215 219, contain several amusing stories of 
 Dr Ogden. See also Sermons, by Samuel Ogden ; with Life, by S. Hallifax. 8vo. 
 Camb. 1814: and Whitaker's Loidis ad Elmete, p. 387. 
 
 S. I. 13 
 
i 9 4 MR GREEN. 
 
 the sovereign on important occasions. In 1760 he mourned 
 the death of George the Second in Latin elegiacs; in 1761 
 he hailed the marriage of George the Third in English 
 stanzas; and, in the following year, the birth of George 
 Prince of Wales in Arabic. These curious changes of 
 language were satirised in the following lines 1 : 
 
 When Ogden his prosaic verse 
 
 In Latin numbers dressed, 
 The Roman language proved too weak 
 
 To stand the critic's test. 
 
 To English rhyme he next essayed 
 
 To shew he 'd some pretence ; 
 But ah ! rhyme only would not do, 
 
 They still expected sense. 
 
 Enraged the Doctor swore he 'd place 
 
 On critics no reliance, 
 So wrapt his thoughts in Arabic, 
 
 And bid 'em all defiance. 
 
 The extraordinary caprice of choosing an eccentric divine 
 to fill a scientific Lectureship probably gave rise to the story 
 that Ogden had obtained it by a pecuniary gratification to 
 Colonel King, or to one of his female relatives 2 . It is almost 
 needless to add that the Woodwardian Lectureship was a 
 sinecure during the fourteen years that it was held by Dr 
 Ogden. For two or three years before his death he was 
 " much broken with Gout and other Complaints 3 ". 
 
 The next Lecturer was the Rev. Thomas Green, M.A. of 
 Trinity College, elected by the Senate 7 May, 1778*. Our 
 information about him is limited to the solitary fact that he 
 was Librarian to Trinity College from 1763 to his death. He 
 " added some valuable organic remains to the Woodwardian 
 
 1 They were written, according to Cole (MSS. xxxiii. 157. Add. MSS. Mus. 
 Brit. 5834) by R. Pepper Arden, of Trinity College, B.A. 1766, afterwards 
 Fellow, created Baron Alvanley, 1801. 
 
 2 MSS. Cole, ut supra. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ix. 612. The sum 
 paid is fixed by the former authority at ,150, by the latter at ^"105. 
 
 3 MSS. Cole, lit supra, p. 157. 
 
 4 Cambridge Chronicle, 9 May, 1778. 
 
MR HAILSTONE. 195 
 
 cabinets", 1 and at his death, which took place 7 June, 1788*, 
 when he was still a comparatively young man, he bequeathed 
 some books for the use of the Lecturer. 
 
 On this occasion two candidates came forward : John 
 Hailstone, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, and the Rev. 
 Thomas Newton, M. A., Fellow of Jesus College. The election 
 took place on Saturday, 7 June, 1788, when the Senate selected 
 Hailstone by one hundred and twenty-seven votes to forty- 
 three. Hailstone was then in his twenty-eighth year having 
 been admitted 3 in 1778, at the age of eighteen and he had 
 been second wrangler in 1782. The University had, therefore, 
 good reason to expect that a young man, who had taken a 
 distinguished degree, would apply himself with energy to the 
 work of his office. Nor did he wholly disappoint their hopes. 
 
 He proceeded, by permission of the University, to study 
 the progress which Mineralogy, as he terms his science, had 
 made in Germany, where he attended one or two courses of 
 lectures by Professor Werner. In 1792 he published: A 
 Plan of a Course of Lectures on Mineralogy, to which is 
 prefixed an Essay on the different kinds of Mineral Collections, 
 translated from the German of Professor Werner. In the 
 preface he apologises for the defects in "the Geognostical 
 part" of the syllabus; "Geognosy, or the knowledge of the 
 Earth's internal structure", being "a Science yet in its 
 infancy, when ingenious Men may with much more ease 
 fabricate systems than confute them". The syllabus shows 
 that he proposed to lecture on minerals and rocks both 
 of which he calls fossils, just as Woodward did and on 
 their systematic arrangement. Under the head Geognosy, 
 "the Strata of the Earth", divided into Primary, Secundary, 
 Alluvial, Volcanic, are treated according to "their relative 
 
 1 University Calendar, 1820. The article, by the style, is evidently written 
 by Sedgwick. 
 
 2 Cambridge Chronicle, 14 June, 1788. Green had proceeded B.A. 1760, 
 M.A. 1763. He was admitted Librarian of Trinity College 12 September, 1763. 
 
 3 He matriculated as a pensioner of Catharine Hall 17 December, 1778, and 
 removed to Trinity College in the following year. 
 
 132 
 
[96 MR HAILSTONE. 
 
 Antiquity and order of Stratification"; and "Petrifactions" 
 are considered separately, without any reference to the beds 
 in which they occur, unless we except the general statement 
 that " for the most part they appear to have been generated, 
 lived and died, in the beds wherein they are found"; and that 
 " the Fossil Bones of Siberia and the Ohio " are noticed under 
 the heading " Alluvial Strata ". 
 
 Notwithstanding this elaborate syllabus, we believe that 
 Hailstone never lectured. In fact its publication was probably 
 not intended to serve any other purpose than " to excite the 
 attention of the University to a Branch of Knowledge, which, 
 although honoured with an establishment in this place for a 
 considerable number of years, has hitherto been suffered to 
 languish in unmerited obscurity ". 
 
 To the Museum, on the other hand, Hailstone paid con- 
 siderable attention. He held that mineralogy was neglected 
 at Cambridge through " a want of opportunity to consult and 
 examine the different productions of Nature " ; an obstacle 
 which the "institution of a public Museum under proper 
 custody and regulations" would remove. "The Woodwardian 
 collection, which was made near a century ago", was, he 
 thought, "ill-calculated to promote the study of mineralogy in 
 its present state of improvement"; and, he might have added, 
 the restrictions imposed upon its inspection by Woodward 
 himself, must always have prevented its being generally 
 studied. Accordingly he procured in Germany a typical 
 series of rocks and minerals, and on his return home founded 
 a separate collection, assisted by " the munificence of various 
 friends of the University", among whom he gratefully com- 
 memorates the Duke of Grafton, and Mr John Hawkins of 
 Trinity College, both of whom contributed specimens. The 
 accounts of the Woodwardian Estate show that during his 
 tenure of office nearly one hundred and fifty pounds were 
 spent on fossils, and nearly seventy pounds on books and 
 cabinets. When Sedgwick became Professor he found that 
 this collection was "composed of many rare and beautiful 
 
NEW REGULATIONS, 1818. 197 
 
 simple minerals, and of specimens illustrative of the physical 
 structure both of the British isles, and of some portions of the 
 continent 1 ." Nor did Hailstone omit teaching altogether. 
 We are told that though 
 
 "No systematic Lectures are delivered, but the Professor constantly 
 attends to demonstrate and explain the subjects of this Branch of 
 Natural History to such curious persons, whether residents or strangers, 
 as are engaged in the study of them. Much of his time is of course 
 devoted to this part of his duty, as applications to this effect are 
 numerous and frequent 2 ." 
 
 On Hailstone's resignation there was evidently a feeling 
 in the University that Woodward's bequest had not produced 
 the results which might have been anticipated, and, as it was 
 provided in his Will that new regulations might be framed 
 from time to time by the electors, advantage was taken of the 
 vacancy to appoint a Syndicate (8 May, 1818), "to consider 
 what rules and orders should be framed for the development 
 of Doctor Woodward's intentions". The Syndics lost no time 
 in carrying out these instructions, for their report, which they 
 call Statement and Resolutions ', is dated 19 May following. 
 
 I. It appears, that the clear annual income of the Woodwardian 
 Estates is about ; 430, of which the sum of .108. 6^. 5^. 3 is paid to 
 the Lecturer for his own use, and about fifty pounds are applied to 
 other purposes, in conformity with the Will of Dr Woodward. 
 
 II. That there is an accumulation of about ^"1200, which has 
 been invested in the public Funds. 
 
 III. That the Room, in which the Fossils and Minerals are at 
 present kept being too confined to exhibit them to advantage, or to 
 receive many more with convenience, it is desirable that a larger 
 should be built with a contiguous room for the accommodation of the 
 Lecturer. 
 
 IV. It is proposed, that to effect this object as soon as possible, 
 the surplus annual income shall be added to the above accumulation, 
 with the exception of such sums as it may be judged proper to apply 
 
 1 Cambridge Calendar, 1820. Compare also what Sedgwick says, Commission 
 Report, 1852, Evidence, p. 116. 
 
 2 Cambridge Calendar, 1803. This passage is repeated annually until 1820, 
 when the whole account is replaced by a different article, evidently written, as 
 mentioned above, by Sedgwick. 
 
 3 The 8. 65-. 5/7. is the surplus of the original rental (,150), left after paying 
 the other charges. 
 
198 NEW REGULATIONS, 1818. 
 
 to the purchase of Fossils and Books, and to other necessary 
 purposes. 
 
 V. That to entitle the Woodwardian Lecturer to the receipt of 
 his annual stipend, it shall be certified to the Vice-Chancellor, that 
 Lectures have been given. 
 
 VI. It is agreed, that the knowledge of Fossil organized bodies, 
 and of the Constitution of the Earth's Strata having been very much 
 extended since the time of Dr Woodward, it would conduce to the 
 diffusion of science, and to the credit of the University, as it would 
 certainly be in perfect conformity with the Will of Dr Woodward, 
 that a Course of Lectures should be read upon these subjects ; and 
 if, after a new room has been built, the Professor, in addition to 
 the lectures and duties prescribed by the Founder, should give such 
 a course, it is proposed that his stipend be increased by one hundred 
 pounds a year, and that all Members of the University have free 
 admission. 
 
 This "good and stringent" report, as Sedgwick terms it 1 , 
 was passed by the Senate without opposition two days 
 afterwards. The recommendation that the Lecturer's stipend 
 should depend on the delivery of lectures was merely a 
 revival of what Woodward's executors had pleaded for so 
 far back as 1734. The affirmation of such a condition in 1818 
 is therefore only a proof that the University had determined 
 to insist upon the performance of so special a part of his 
 duties. The curious proviso that his stipend should not be 
 increased until a proper building had been erected was soon 
 rescinded, as will be related in the next chapter. 
 
 1 Evidence, ut supra, p. 116. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (18181822.) 
 
 EXCURSION TO DERBYSHIRE AND STAFFORDSHIRE (1818). FIRST 
 COURSE OF LECTURES. VlSIT TO ISLE OF WlGHT WITH 
 HENSLOW. FOUNDATION OF CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL 
 SOCIETY. VISIT TO SUFFOLK COAST. COMMENCEMENT FES- 
 TIVITIES. GEOLOGICAL TOUR IN DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
 HENSLOW'S WORK IN THE ISLE OF MAN (1819). GEO- 
 LOGICAL TOUR IN SOMERSET AND DORSET. ACQUAINTANCE 
 WITH REV. W. D. CONYBEARE. DEATH OF HIS MOTHER (1820). 
 VISIT TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT. GEOLOGICAL TOUR IN 
 YORKSHIRE AND DURHAM (1821). CONTROVERSY RESPECTING 
 PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY (1822 1824). 
 
 WHATEVER may have been the amount of geological know- 1818. 
 ledge which Sedgwick possessed when elected to the Wood- yEt 33- 
 wardian chair, it must have been derived from study, and 
 not from experience. But he was the last man in the- world 
 to take facts at second-hand, and therefore, so soon as the 
 Easter Term was over, he set out to use his eyes in the 
 field. This excursion must not be confounded with his sub- 
 sequent systematic explorations. In 1818, his object was to 
 learn, not to instruct others ; and it is not impossible that he 
 returned, as Darwin fancied he might himself return from 
 his first geological expedition, " very little wiser, and a good 
 deal more puzzled 1 ," than when he started. We believe that 
 
 1 Life of Charles Darwin, i. 189. 
 
200 EXCURSION TO DERBYSHIRE. 
 
 1818. this first attempt at field-work is not alluded to in any of 
 
 Et 33- Sedgwick's scientific papers ; and that, in fact, the only record 
 
 of it is contained in the following letter, the tone of which, 
 
 it may be remarked, is very different from the depression to 
 
 which his correspondents had lately been accustomed. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. October 23, 1818. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 My excursion for this summer is ended. I have 
 been about twenty four hours in Cambridge, during the greater 
 part of which time I have been employed in packing and 
 unpacking, till every table and chair in my room is nearly 
 filled with the spoils of my labours this summer. I have once 
 or twice thought of sending you some account of my opera- 
 tions ; but I have always been too lazy or too busy to take up 
 the pen for any such purpose. 
 
 I did not leave Cambridge before the 3<Dth of July. The 
 weather had been so dreadfully hot the early part of that 
 month that I hardly ventured from under my own roof. After 
 spending a day in the neighbourhood of Mount Sorrel, I 
 advanced to Matlock, the immediate place of my destination. 
 In that neighbourhood I remained about five weeks. My 
 mornings were spent in professional pursuits ; that is, in 
 following the strata of the different rocks, collecting specimens, 
 and diving into the mines. The last operation was often 
 attended with no little fatigue, for the rake veins, (i.e. vertical 
 fissures, filled with spar and lead ore), are sometimes excavated 
 to an enormous depth. What the miners call climbing shafts 
 are formed in these veins, by which you descend to the 
 works ; not in buckets as in the coal-mines in your neighbour- 
 hood, but on cross-bars of wood (called stemples] which are 
 placed, like two perpendicular ladders, on opposite sides of the 
 pit. Between these you descend in a straddling position. I 
 let myself down in this way to the bottom of several of the 
 most remarkable mines in the county. In one or two of them 
 the works were nearly 1000 feet below the surface of the earth. 
 
MA TLOCK. 201 
 
 Matlock is one of the most beautiful spots under heaven, 1818. 
 and was sometimes during my stay filled with very gay ^ 33- 
 company. After being there a day or two I was advanced by 
 the right of seniority to the chair, and in right of the same 
 office was Master of the Ceremonies at the balls which took 
 place every other evening. You see therefore that my employ- 
 ments have been not a little diversified. On the whole, I 
 believe I got through my most arduous duties better than 
 could have been expected. 
 
 After leaving Matlock I travelled on foot with a knapsack 
 to the copper-mines in Staffordshire, by far the most wonder- 
 ful excavations of the kind I have ever seen. I afterwards 
 made Buxton my head-quarters for a fortnight, and finally 
 found my way to Dent by the way of Macclesfield, Chester, 
 Liverpool, and Lancaster. I remained one day at Northwich 
 to visit the famous salt-mines in that neighbourhood. But I 
 have no time to describe them. 
 
 My Father is becoming very thin ; but his health is good, 
 and his spirits do not indicate any of the infirmities of old 
 age. I have not time for a word more, as I am off to a supper 
 party. Give my best respects to Mrs Ainger, and believe me 
 very busy, and very truly yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The reference to Sedgwick's social duties at Matlock in the 
 above letter is thoroughly characteristic. He always contrived 
 to combine a large amount of amusement with business. 
 * That lively gentleman Mr Sedgwick,' as he was called by a 
 stranger who met him in a stage-coach, had a happy knack of 
 making himself agreeable to everybody with whom he happened 
 to be brought into contact, and his geological tours gave him 
 a wide and varied experience of mankind. With all sorts and 
 conditions of men, quarrymen, miners, fishermen, smugglers, 
 shepherds, artisans, grooms, inn-keepers, clergy of all denomi- 
 nations, squires, noblemen he was equally communicative, 
 and soon became equally popular. He could make the most 
 
202 EXCURSION TO DERBYSHIRE. 
 
 1818. silent talk, and could extract information and amusement out 
 t. 33. O f materials that seemed at first sight destitute of either quality. 
 It may be questioned whether his adventures would have been 
 as diverting had they happened to anybody else ; he had a 
 happy knack of meeting with strange experiences and untoward 
 incidents ; and his return to Cambridge, after a summer's 
 excursion, was eagerly looked forward to by his friends, for 
 the sake of the budget of fresh stones with which he was 
 certain to regale them. 
 
 The weeks spent in Derbyshire may be credited with at 
 least one good result ; they convinced Sedgwick that in 
 selecting geology as the work of his life he had made a 
 wise choice. In a letter to one of his nieces, dated 12 August, 
 1854, thirty-six years afterwards, he gives some interesting 
 and amusing particulars of this then distant period of his life : 
 " When I was a young man, this was always a joyful day, the 
 opening day of the grousing season ; and for a week before 
 the 1 2th of August I could hardly sleep for thinking of the 
 coming sport. Why we should take such delight in killing 
 God's creatures is more than I can tell you ; but so it was, 
 and so it is, and so it will be. I think it proves that by 
 nature man is a savage carnivorous creature. Is he not ? 
 The last time I ever fired a gun at a heath-cock was August 
 1817, thirty-seven long years since! The year following I 
 threw down the gun, and took to the hammer, and I enjoyed 
 my new sport so much, that in 1818 (my first year of pro- 
 fessional geology) I heard the sportsman's gun on the heaths 
 of Derbyshire without a thought of regret or envy. And that 
 year I was a dancing-man, and I fell three-quarters in love ; 
 but, as you know, did not put my head through love's noose. 
 But alas ! times are sadly changed with me. I am now a 
 gouty old man in my seventieth year 1 ." The bright parti- 
 cular star of the Matlock assemblies, whose charms had nearly 
 deprived Cambridge of her new geological Professor, married a 
 goldsmith in Glasgow, and when Sedgwick was there in 1848, 
 
 1 To Miss Fanny Hicks, 12 August, 1854. 
 
FIRST COURSE OF LECTURES. 203 
 
 he called at her husband's shop, in the hope of renewing his tSig. 
 acquaintance. But, as ill-luck would have it, the lady was ^ 34- 
 away at the sea-side, and her former partner had to content 
 himself with an interview with her son *. 
 
 Soon after his return to Cambridge Sedgwick delivered the 
 first of those annual courses of lectures which became so 
 celebrated, and were never interrupted except for very brief 
 intervals until 1872, when he was compelled, by failing 
 health, and the advance of old age, to appoint a deputy. It is 
 provoking that no contemporary reference to this first course 
 should occur either in his letters, or in any other source of 
 information to which we have had access. In later years 
 Sedgwick was fond of enumerating the courses of lectures he 
 had given ; and he used to describe the one on which he was 
 engaged according to its place in the series. " I am delivering 
 my 40th course," or "my 4;th course," and so forth. Had he 
 been a man of scrupulous accuracy, it would be easy, by merely 
 counting backwards, to discover in what year he began to 
 lecture ; but, unfortunately, we frequently find two different 
 courses denoted by the same numeral. On three occasions, 
 however, he tells his correspondents that he began to lecture 
 in 1819, and in two of these letters he states explicitly that 
 the course was delivered in the spring. In 1851 he says: 
 " The load of sixty-six years tells upon me, and I am not so 
 fresh as I was when I gave my first course of geological 
 lectures in the spring of iSiQ 2 ;" in 1859 he describes himself 
 as " a toothless Professor who has been lecturing every year 
 since he began his first course in the spring of i8i9 3 "; 
 and in 1861 he says: "I am trying to wind up my last 
 course. It may well be my last\ for I began to lecture in 
 i8i9 4 ." These direct statements can hardly be erroneous, 
 and we may safely assume that his first course was delivered 
 
 1 To the same, 21 August, 1848. 
 
 2 To Miss F. Hicks, 12 December, 1851. 
 
 3 To Miss Malcolm, 29 November, 1859. 
 
 4 To Rev. B. P. Brodie, 29 November, 1861. 
 
204 EXCURSION TO ISLE OF WIGHT. 
 
 1819. either in the Lent or Easter Term of 1819, probably in the 
 
 * 34- former. 
 
 The Easter vacation of 1819 was spent in the Isle of 
 Wight 1 . Sedgwick was accompanied by Mr J. S. Henslow 
 of St John's College, who became, in after years, Professor 
 first of Mineralogy and then of Botany, and who deserves 
 grateful recognition as one of the founders of the modern 
 school of Natural Science at Cambridge. As a boy he 
 had achieved considerable distinction in zoology, and while 
 still an undergraduate had found leisure to learn as much 
 of chemistry and mineralogy as was then possible at Cam- 
 bridge. He had proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts 
 in the previous January, and had therefore leisure to learn 
 something of the cognate science of geology. Mr Henslow's 
 brother-in-law and biographer, Mr Leonard Jenyns, speaks 
 of him as Sedgwick's pupil. In a certain sense this is un- 
 doubtedly true. Sedgwick was his senior by ten years and 
 therefore superior to him in experience, and general know- 
 ledge both of science and of letters. As a practical geologist, 
 however, he could have known little more than Henslow, 
 while in the special subjects which the latter had already 
 studied with success Sedgwick had much to learn. The 
 expedition was successful in more ways than one. The 
 characters of the two men were very similar: they differed 
 for a time in politics, for Henslow began life as a conservative; 
 but in religion, love of truth, and hatred of wrong, they were 
 in exact agreement ; and their intercourse begun almost by 
 an accident ripened into a warm friendship which was termi- 
 nated only by Henslow's death. As regards the special 
 science they went out to study, Henslow learnt enough to 
 work out the geology of another part of England by himself 
 in the course of the following summer a subject to which 
 we shall return presently and Sedgwick brought home his 
 usual practical result in the shape of "a very large collec- 
 
 1 Our principal authority for this tour is a Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens 
 by the Rev. L. Jenyns, 8vo. Lond. 1862, pp. 13 20. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 205 
 
 tion" of geological specimens, intended for the Woodwardian 1819. 
 Museum, but for which at that time it was impossible to find &*-. 34. 
 room l . 
 
 This short excursion deserves an honourable place in 
 the annals of Cambridge for another reason. In the course 
 of it the two friends discussed the want of some place to 
 which those interested in Natural Science might resort, with 
 the certainty of meeting men of the same or kindred tastes 
 with themselves and where they might learn what was going 
 forward abroad. In these days of cooperation, when there is 
 almost a plethora of societies and associations more or less 
 learned for the promotion of every sort of object, it is difficult 
 to realise that barely seventy years ago there was a complete 
 dearth of such bodies ; and that at Cambridge, which is now 
 taking the lead in Natural Science, there were only two lecture- 
 rooms for the scientific Professors the one appropriated to 
 chemistry, the other to anatomy no class-rooms, no museums, 
 no collections, except the Woodwardian, and the mineralogical 
 series then the private property of Dr E. D. Clarke. 
 
 The project thus started was eagerly prosecuted, after their 
 return to Cambridge, by the two energetic men who had 
 originated it. At first they proposed to establish a Corre- 
 sponding Society, and with this idea they not only consulted 
 the residents likely to favour such a scheme, but solicited by 
 letter the cooperation of men of science at a distance. At the 
 beginning of the Michaelmas Term they laid their views 
 before Dr E. D. Clarke, who gave them such cordial support 
 that Sedgwick always spoke of him as one of the founders of 
 the Society which was presently established. At his sugges- 
 tion the following notice was issued : 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, y>th Oct., 1819. 
 
 The resident Members of the University, who have taken their 
 first degree, are hereby invited to assemble at the Lecture Room 
 
 1 Report of the Inspectors, May 7, 1819. It will be understood that these and 
 other similar documents are preserved in the Registry of the University, unless 
 otherwise stated. 
 
2o6 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 under the Public Library, at Twelve o'clock, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, for 
 34. the purpose of instituting a Society, as a point of concourse, for 
 scientific communications. 
 
 This notice was signed by thirty-three persons, among 
 whom were the Heads of the following colleges : Clare, 
 Gonville and Caius, Queens', Christ's, Magdalene, and Trinity ; 
 Professors Haviland, Monk, Cumming, Sedgwick, and Lee ; 
 and ten tutors, or assistant-tutors, of colleges. Among the 
 latter occur the names of Peacock and Whewell. 
 
 The proceedings at the meeting were not reported, but we 
 learn from a second notice, issued on the day following, that 
 the second Resolution : " That a Society be instituted as a 
 point of concourse for scientific communication," was proposed 
 by Sedgwick ; and that he was appointed a member of a 
 committee to frame " such regulations as shall appear to them 
 to be proper for the proposed institution." We can easily 
 imagine, from the speeches made by him in after years, when 
 he had to commend to audiences either lukewarm or hostile 
 some scheme in which he was interested, the fire and energy 
 with which he addressed the members of the Senate assembled 
 on that November afternoon ; and we are not surprised to 
 learn that the resolution entrusted to him was passed unani- 
 mously. 
 
 The Committee lost no time in discharging the duties 
 assigned to them. Their first draft of the rules, endorsed, 
 
 '* Report of the Committee appointed to form the Regulations of 
 a Society, to be instituted in this University, for Philosophical 
 Communication, to be read at the first meeting of the Society, on 
 Monday, November 15, at one o'clock, in the Lecture Room under 
 the Public Library," 
 
 is dated 8 November, and, at the meeting therein announced, 
 Sedgwick moved its adoption. This motion having been 
 carried, those present voted themselves a Society, to be called, 
 The Cambridge Philosophical Society, and the officers and 
 Council were appointed. Professor Parish was the first Presi- 
 dent, Professors Sedgwick and Lee the first Secretaries. The 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 207 
 
 first formal meeting of the Society was held in the Museum 1819. 
 in the Botanic Garden, 13 December, 1819, when, by request ^ l - 34- 
 of the Council, Dr E. D. Clarke read an address, explaining 
 the objects of the Society. 
 
 The first rule had originally run as follows : 
 
 "That this Society be instituted for the purpose of promoting 
 Scientific Enquiries, and of facilitating the communication of facts 
 connected with the advancement of Philosophy." 
 
 At this meeting the words " and Natural History " were 
 appended to this sentence. The addition is important, because 
 it determined, for many years, in fact so long as Henslow 
 resided in Cambridge, the direction of the labours of the 
 Society. We may justly credit Sedgwick with disarming 
 opposition, and launching the Society so successfully, that 
 before the end of the year 1820 it could boast of 171 members ; 
 but it was Henslow's patient devotion to zoology which 
 enabled it to form an excellent Museum, long the only 
 zoological Museum in the University, and the legitimate 
 parent of that large family of Museums which have grown up, 
 and are still growing up, in the old Botanic Garden 1 . 
 
 Sedgwick always spoke with great delight of the share 
 which he had taken in the founding of this Society. The 
 annual dinner was one of his red-letter days ; and no matter 
 how ill he might be, or imagine himself to be, he made a 
 point of attending it, and of making a speech after dinner. 
 This speech was one of the events of the academical year ; 
 and was, with most of the members, the principal, if not the 
 sole, reason for attending the dinner. It is no easy matter to 
 describe a speech especially when it depends, as those 
 delivered by Sedgwick did, on the personality of the speaker; 
 but these particular postprandial orations have found a graphic 
 chronicler in the Lord Bishop of Carlisle : 
 
 1 This account is derived from the following authorities : a complete set of the 
 early notices, etc., of the Society, preserved by Prof. Sedgwick : Henslow's Life, 
 ut supra, pp. 17 19: Otter's Life of Dr E. D. Clarke, ed. 1824, p. 649: The 
 Cambridge Chronicle, 5 November, 1819: The Cambridge Portfolio,^. 121 129; 
 Macmillarfs Magazine, April, 1880, p. 478. 
 
208 SEDGWICK'S SPEECHES. 
 
 1819. "His speeches were the most remarkable things of the kind I 
 
 t . 34. na ve ever heard ; they sometimes began with a wild exuberance that 
 nearly touched upon the region of nonsense, and then, apparently 
 without effort, they rose to the solemn and almost to the sublime ; 
 the combination, without incongruity, of lofty morality with almost 
 boyish fun was quite wonderful, and almost Shakespearean. It must 
 have been on getting up at one of these dinners, that he explained 
 the nervousness often felt on standing up to speak by maintaining 
 that the vital spirits were very much in the nature of a fluid ; as long 
 as you were sitting all was right, but the moment you stood up they 
 left your head and went down into your boots. He used to tell us 
 that the first conception of the Society was that of an organisation 
 for the study of natural history; and he somewhat regretted that 
 the overwhelming mathematical bias of Cambridge had, to a great 
 extent, changed the original design, and that our Memoirs were so 
 exclusively mathematical as they then were. He was, however, 
 proud of Cambridge mathematics, and I remember to have heard him 
 express his satisfaction thus : ' I rejoice in the progress of mathemati- 
 cal science ; I measure it in this way ; I am a stationary kind of 
 being with regard to mathematics; the progress of the science may 
 be measured by the small amount of that which I am able to under- 
 stand; and I give you my word of honour that I have not been able 
 to understand a single paper that has been read before this Society 
 during the last twenty years 1 '." 
 
 At the present day, when the study of Natural Science has 
 been so long accepted in Cambridge, it is amusing to find 
 Sedgwick recording the alarm which the establishment of this 
 very harmless Society seems to have aroused. 
 
 To y. F. W. Herschel, Esq? 
 
 TRIN. COLL. February 26, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I ought before this to have conveyed to you the 
 thanks of our Society for your communication 3 . It will be 
 
 1 Macmillari's Magazine, ut supra, p. 479. 
 
 ' 2 John Frederick William Herschel, Fellow of St John's College, B.A. 1813. 
 Sedgwick informs him, 14 November, 1820: "The first meeting of our Philo- 
 sophical Society took place yesterday evening. We elected several new members, 
 and among the rest the Rev. J. Wood, D.D., Master of St John's. This was 
 more than we expected, and certainly more than Dr Wood intended last year. It 
 seems as if we had risen in his good opinion." 
 
 3 On certain remarkable instances of deviation from Newtorfs scale in the tints 
 developed by Crystals with one axis of Double Refraction, on exposure to Polarized 
 Light, read i May 1820, and printed Trans. Camb. Phil. Soc. i. 21. 
 
VISIT TO SUFFOLK COAST. 209 
 
 read at our next meeting. Now that we are launched I have 1819. 
 little fear : we shall, I doubt not, go on and prosper. Among &* 34- 
 the senior members of the University some laugh at us; 
 others shrug up their shoulders and think our whole pro- 
 ceedings subversive of good discipline ; a much larger number 
 look on us, as they do on every other external object, with 
 philosophic indifference ; and a small number are among our 
 warm friends. We may count on the zeal of our members 
 for a sufficient number of communications; we may also 
 venture to found some hopes on an active spirit infused by a 
 new system. When you visit Cambridge, I shall hope to have 
 the pleasure of seeing you. Peacock presents his kindest 
 regards. 
 
 Believe me, Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours most faithfully, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 At the beginning of the Long Vacation in June, 1819 
 Sedgwick went into Suffolk to study the geological structure 
 of the coast. Before he could set to work, however, he met 
 with a serious accident, the nature of which has not been 
 recorded, but the following extract from a letter, written in 
 1866 to the Reverend Osmond Fisher, then Vicar of Elmstead 
 near Colchester, shows that it must have been severe. It is, 
 we believe, the only record of the occurrence. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. Good Friday Morning. 
 
 [30 March, 1866.] 
 
 " I do hope within the next two or three months to see the 
 Chillesford beds, and to have a look at the beds near Orford, 
 Aldborough, etc., where we have the lowest (so-called) Coral- 
 line Crag. I had just touched these when I nearly lost my 
 life, and, instead of working at Aldborough, I was lying on a 
 sofa for nearly three weeks, and only left the room to move 
 away in a post-chaise ; and since then (i.e. June, 1819 !) I 
 have never seen these lower Crag beds. So bravo for a merry 
 meeting, some time hence, at Chillesford, etc." 
 
 S. I. 14 
 
210 COMMENCEMENT GAIETIES. 
 
 1819. Sedgwick was detained at Cambridge until the end of 
 
 Et. 34. July partly by the aforesaid accident partly by his social 
 duties at the Commencement, which was attended by the 
 Chancellor, the Duke of Gloucester, accompanied by his 
 Duchess, and his sister the Princess Sophia Matilda. Sedg- 
 wick was appointed one of the "managers," as they were 
 styled, of the public breakfast given by the University to 
 these distinguished persons. It was held in Nevile's Court at 
 Trinity College, and Sedgwick presided at a table in the north 
 cloister 1 . When all was over he started for his summer's 
 work. 
 
 This year, 1819, may be regarded as the commencement 
 of Sedgwick's geological career, not only as an academic 
 teacher, but as an original investigator. In the spring, as we 
 have seen, he began to lecture ; and in the summer he under- 
 took the first of those tours, to which, either in England or on 
 the Continent, he usually devoted several months of each year 
 during the most active period of his life. These journeys 
 were undertaken on a regular system, for the investigation of 
 some definite group of rocks, and the results the most im- 
 portant of which, as we shall hope to show, have been con- 
 firmed, rather than shaken, by subsequent research were 
 duly recorded in a series of papers. In the present chapter 
 and the next we propose to consider the period from 1819 to 
 1827, during which he explored the west of England in the 
 first instance, and next Yorkshire, Durham, and the Lake 
 District. 
 
 The tour of 1819 is described, in part, in the following 
 letter : 
 
 T AVI STOCK, August 14, 1819. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 It is now nearly a month since I left Cambridge on 
 a mining expedition to the West of England. I have not yet 
 
 1 Cooper's Annals, iv. 524; Grace of the Senate, 29 April, 1819; Report of 
 Syndics, 3 July, 1819. 
 
TOUR TO WEST OF ENGLAND. 211 
 
 reached Cornwall, the great object of attraction, though I have 1819. 
 now for about a week been hovering on its confines. Before &*. 34. 
 I proceed any farther, let me request you to write to me, at 
 Penzance, by return of post. I long to know how you all are, 
 and what has been the fruit of your last year's labours. I 
 shall probably be in the neighbourhood of Penzance in 
 about a fortnight, and shall remain there some time. If your 
 letter should come after I have left that place, I may probably 
 miss it, though I shall order the Postmaster to forward it to 
 some town in the north of Cornwall. 
 
 Half-past ten o'clock. I am just returned from a long and 
 fatiguing expedition to some mines on the banks of the Tamar. 
 A cup of tea has so far refreshed me that I think I may have 
 it in my power to finish my sheet before my eyelids come 
 together. I started on my western course the week after our 
 Commencement festivities. The vicinity of Bristol detained 
 me four days. I saw it in the company of Dr Gilby to great 
 advantage. He has paid great attention to geology, and 
 has published two papers on the structure of that neighbour- 
 hood \ I was therefore enabled by his assistance to observe 
 everything best worth seeing. I afterwards rambled on foot 
 all over the Mendip and Quantock hills, and examined almost 
 all the cliffs on the north-west coast of Somersetshire. They 
 afford fine specimens of the contorsions exhibited by that 
 rock to which geologists have given the name of greywacke. 
 What a delightfully sounding word ! It must needs make you 
 in love with my subject. The country I have been just 
 describing wants some of the grander features, but in beauty, 
 luxuriance, and variety, yields to none. The rugged cliffs 
 which rise perpendicularly on both sides of the Bristol Channel 
 are in many places exquisitely contrasted with the fine lawns 
 and rich foliage which go sweeping down to the very edge of 
 
 1 W. H. Gilby, M.D. published A Geological Description of the Neighbourhood 
 of Bristol in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, Vol. xliv. (1814); and On the 
 Magnesian Limestone and Red Marl or Sandstone, of the Neighbourhood of Bristol, 
 Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. 1817, iv. pp. 210 215; besides other papers. 
 
 142 
 
212 PL YMO UTH BREAK IV A TER. 
 
 1819. the water. As for the people of Somersetshire, they seem a 
 * 34- mighty stupid good sort of people, who have not wit enough 
 to cheat a stranger. The men get drunk with cider, and the 
 women make clotted cream. I remained a week with an old 
 friend and relation of my father 1 , and then proceeded to 
 Plymouth by the way of Exeter and Ivy Bridge. 
 
 Devonshire has rather disappointed me. I had heard too 
 much of it, and perhaps have not seen the finest part of the 
 county. The country about Plymouth is, however, in its way 
 of unrivalled beauty. You of course have often heard of 
 the breakwater. When completed it will form a mound of 
 solid masonry a mile long, in many places seventy feet high, 
 and more than five hundred feet wide. The blocks of which 
 it is composed weigh from three to nine tons each, and are all 
 procured in the quarries of limestone which fortunately 
 abound immediately on the Plymouth shores. More than six 
 hundred day-labourers, and upwards of forty transport- vessels, 
 are employed in this enormous work. I was greatly delighted 
 in observing the operations of the workmen in the quarries. 
 They commence operations by clearing away till they have a 
 kind of terrace. They then proceed to form a hole in the rock 
 in the usual manner, but not of the usual dimensions, for they 
 penetrate to the depth of five or six feet, and run down eight 
 or nine pounds of gunpowder into one opening. One of these 
 blasts, when well-placed, will sometimes bring down as much 
 as forty tons of limestone. It is a sight well worth seeing to 
 observe these masses rolling down into the lower part of the 
 works from the height of 1 50 feet. The number of explosions 
 adds greatly to the effect, for the fires are communicated by a 
 signal through the whole line of the works. These masses are 
 elevated by cranes into low waggons which are conveyed by 
 machinery into the vessels moored close by. They are in due 
 time conveyed away to the breakwater, and discharged upon 
 it by appropriate machinery. You may imagine that no 
 
 1 The Rev. James Sedgwick, of Curry Rivell near Taunton, a descendant of 
 the Sedgwick of Bankland. See above, p. 35. 
 
CORNWALL: MR J. J. CONYBEARE. 213 
 
 time is lost when I tell you that in this way a mass of stone 1819. 
 is daily deposited on the work equal to the burden of two &* 34- 
 of our largest Indiamen. 
 
 I have no time to tell you how an alarm of fire threw the 
 whole house in confusion how I found my way to Tavistock 
 how I mean to get back again how I purpose to proceed 
 to Cornwall what I mean to see there &c. &c. So no more 
 at present. 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 At Penzance Sedgwick fell in with the Rev. John Josias 
 Conybeare of whom and his brother we shall have occasion 
 to speak at length in connexion with the tour of 1820 and 
 impressed him very favourably, to judge from the following 
 passage, which occurs in a letter from Conybeare to Buckland, 
 written shortly afterwards : 
 
 ' In the line of Geology the best thing I have done is to contract 
 a sort of liaison with the new Woodwardian Professor of Cambridge, 
 Mr Sedgwick, whom I met here. He had in his company another 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Mr Gilby, cousin to Dr Gilby of Clifton. 
 Mr Sedgwick appears a remarkably clever, active man, and had done 
 all he had gone over in a very accurate and masterly manner. Having 
 been for some time head Mathematical Tutor of Trinity, he brings 
 to the study of Geology all the subsidia that a thorough knowledge 
 of mathematics and natural philosophy can give him 1 .' 
 
 The geological results of this tour were communicated to 
 the Cambridge Philosophical Society in two papers in 1820 
 and 1821, and from them we learn that it concluded with a 
 thorough exploration of a great part of Cornwall, especially 
 the district adjoining the Lizard. Unfortunately no hint is 
 given of the reasons which induced Sedgwick to select this 
 part of England for exploration, but it may be conjectured 
 that his friendship with the Reverend W. R. Gilby, who was 
 his companion throughout, may have had something to do 
 with it. Mr Gilby had relations at Bristol, and therefore 
 probably knew the West of England, or part of it, himself; 
 
 1 The letter is dated Penzance, 25 September, 1819. 
 
214 HENSLOW IN THE ISLE OF MAN. 
 
 1820. and, besides this, he would be able to urge upon Sedgwick 
 *- 35- the advantages to be obtained from his cousin's local know- 
 ledge. 
 
 While Sedgwick was thus employed in Cornwall, Henslow 
 was doing similar work in the Isle of Man. His visit to the 
 island happened to coincide with the first discovery there of 
 the great pre-historic elk commonly called the Irish Elk 
 (Megaceros hibernicus). One nearly perfect skeleton was 
 sorted out from the mass of bohes obtained, and passed into 
 the hands of a local blacksmith. Sedgwick was eager to obtain 
 it for his own museum ; and Henslow, no doubt at his sugges- 
 tion, returned to the island in the following March, in the 
 hope of being able to buy it. After a stormy passage of 30 
 hours from Liverpool he landed in Ramsay Bay, and on the 
 following day having borrowed a horse of one man, and 
 a saddle of another he rode to Bishop's Court. The ingenious 
 possessor of the elk, though ignorant of anatomy, had put 
 the bones together by comparing them with the mounted 
 skeleton of a horse, and had placed his prize in a caravan 
 for exhibition. After examining it Henslow wrote : 
 
 " You know I am not much given to the marvellous, but I really 
 think I never saw a more magnificent sight of the kind in my life, 
 and doubt if the Petersburg Mammoth 1 would surpass it. The only 
 parts missing are half of one hoof, and the end bones of the tail; the 
 rest is in the highest preservation. I could not have conceived it 
 would have cut half so good a figure, and the fellow has really put it 
 together with very great ingenuity 2 ." 
 
 The negotiation to buy the skeleton failed, and it was 
 ultimately acquired for the Museum at Edinburgh ; but the 
 attempt to secure it for Cambridge forms an interesting epi- 
 sode in the early history of the Woodwardian Museum and 
 
 1 The nearly complete skeleton of a Siberian Mammoth, acquired by an 
 Englishman named Michael Adams in 1807, and mounted in the Museum of St 
 Petersburg. It is described (with a complete history of the discovery) in the 
 Memoires de V Academie Imperiale des Sciences de St Pctersbourg^ for the year 
 1812, v. 406. The paper, published only four years before Henslow wrote, had 
 greatly interested all men of science. 
 
 2 Henslow to Sedgwick, 31 March, 1820. The letter is dated 1819, but that it 
 
SECOND TOUR IN WEST OF ENGLAND. 215 
 
 shows that Sedgwick had already begun to pay attention to 1820. 
 Palaeontology. &*. 35. 
 
 In the following summer (1820), Sedgwick resumed work 
 in the west of England. 
 
 To Professor Monk, Trin. Coll. Cambridge. 
 
 MAIDENHEAD BRIDGE, Monday Evening, 
 
 [17 July, 1820]. 
 Dear Professor, 
 
 About the time that we parted I mentioned to you 
 a subject on which I am now requesting your good offices. I 
 am so much in want of money that without some assistance I 
 shall be obliged to abridge my summer's labours for want of 
 funds to carry me through them. By the Will of Dr Wood- 
 ward, of blessed memory, I am entitled to a quarterly payment 
 of my salary 1 . The Vice-Chancellor knows the fact as well as 
 myself; and will, I have no doubt, order twenty-five or thirty 
 pounds to be placed to my credit at Mortlock's Bank. That 
 sum, with what I now have, will enable me to pay my way 
 among all the Oolite Beds in the south-west of this island. 
 I hoped before this time to have been fairly at work, but a 
 violent diarrhoea has retarded my progress. I am half dis- 
 posed to rejoice in my misfortunes as they have induced me 
 to spend a day (and God only knows whether I shall ever 
 spend another day), with our dear friend Mill 2 . He rejoices in 
 his appointment, because it holds out to him a rational expec- 
 tation of being enabled to employ his great talents in pro- 
 moting the highest interests of his fellow-creatures. He is 
 now dining with his Rector; I excused myself on the score of 
 bodily infirmity. Tomorrow I hope to be in travelling 
 condition, in which case I shall endeavour to reach Devizes. 
 
 should be 1820 is evident from Henslow's Supplementary Observations to Dr 
 Berger's Account of the Isle of Man ; Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond., 1821. Vol. v., 
 p. 502, note. 
 
 1 See above, p. 182. 
 
 2 The Rev. W. H. Mill, Fellow of Trinity College, was at that time curate 
 of Taplow. His rector was the Rev. Edward Neale. 
 
216 SECOND TOUR IN WEST OF ENGLAND. 
 
 1820. There I shall unpack old Thor, and commence a furious 
 * 35- assault on all the solid materials I may meet with on the 
 surface of the earth. 
 
 You will greatly oblige me by mentioning the subject I 
 began to write about to the Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 Believe me, Dear Professor, 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. You fire your thunderbolts 1 ; other men must be 
 content with squibs and crackers. I have several times 
 thought of getting up a geological article for the Quarterly. 
 Some interesting foreign works (French and Italian) have 
 appeared on the subject, which might be made the foundation 
 of a dissertation. My health is never to be depended on ; I 
 have no facility of composition ; what is more I am much 
 engaged ; still I think that I might be able to bring together 
 some remarks not entirely undeserving of insertion in that 
 Journal. Perhaps you would have the goodness some time or 
 other to mention this to the editor. Vale. 
 
 CHARLTON MACKEREL, September 5, 1820. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I am now halting with my old friend Sharpe 2 , who 
 has been married for several months, and is bearing him- 
 
 1 This expression refers to the controversy, in 1818 19, between Professor 
 Monk and Sir J. E. Smith, President of the Linnean Society. The latter had 
 been authorised by the Rev. T. Martyn (who had been Professor of Botany since 
 1761, but had not lectured since 1796, nor resided since 1798) to deliver a course 
 of lectures on Botany. The Vice-Chancellor, Dr Webb, Master of Clare Hall, 
 had given his consent, and the lectures had been announced to begin on Monday, 
 6 April; when on Saturday, 4 April, a remonstrance was forwarded to the Vice- 
 Chancellor, signed by eighteen Tutors of Colleges, who objected to their " Pupils 
 attending the Public Lectures of any Person who is neither a Member of the 
 University, nor a Member of the Church of England." After this Sir J. E. Smith 
 declined to lecture, and wrote an indignant pamphlet, which Monk answered. In 
 July, 1818, an article in favour of the course pursued by Monk and his fellow-tutors 
 appeared in the Quarterly Review, Vol. xix. pp. 434 446. Smith wrote a 
 pamphlet in answer to it, and Monk a counter-pamphlet. Here the controversy 
 ended. 
 
 2 William Sharpe, Trin. Coll., B.A. 1807. 
 
MR IV. D. CONYBEARE. 217 
 
 self with all meekness after his exaltation to the Benedictine 1820. 
 honours. Perhaps your brother will have informed you that I ^ L 35- 
 started on an expedition to the West of England in the second 
 week of July. My first object was to examine all the strata 
 from the foot of the Wiltshire chalk-downs to their termination 
 in the ravines near Bath. This part of my summer's labours 
 employed me about three weeks. I was, however, interrupted 
 by a severe cold, which yielded immediately to the effects of 
 the hot bath. Though I started alone, this part of my expedi- 
 tion has not been quite solitary. I was joined near Bath by 
 an Oxford gentleman with whom I formed an acquaintance 
 on the road. I also experienced the greatest possible kind- 
 ness from Mr Conybeare, an Oxford Professor and a stone- 
 eater. After leaving Bath I went to the house of Mr William 
 Conybeare, brother of the aforesaid Professor (perhaps you 
 will like these men better when you know that they are grand- 
 sons of Bishop Conybeare) *, who accompanied me in my 
 expeditions for three weeks, during which time we examined 
 the most interesting portions of the country to the north of 
 Bristol. If I were to give a minute account of our labours I 
 should be obliged to use language which would hardly be 
 understood, and, if understood, would not, I fear, be very 
 amusing. I must therefore leave the lower regions of the 
 earth and talk of its surface. The whole face of the country 
 north of Bristol, and up to the banks of the Severn, is most 
 lovely. The hills are not very lofty, but they are beautifully 
 broken, and the woodland scenery is among the richest in 
 the world. Part of the country you are, I believe, acquainted 
 with. 
 
 About the time that I purposed leaving Mr Conybeare's 
 house I was attacked by my old enemy ; after being raked 
 fore and aft for eight and forty hours, I really thought that 
 the whole vessel was going to the bottom ; the internal hurri- 
 cane, however, suddenly abated; a state of calm for three days 
 succeeded, and after that time I was able to spread my sails, 
 
 1 John Conybeare, D.D., Bishop of Bristol 1750 1755. 
 
218 GEOLOGY OF THE MEN DIPS. 
 
 1820. and steer with a fair wind for the Mendips. Mr Conybeare 
 - 35- accompanied me in that excursion. We spent five days in 
 examining a most interesting mountain ridge. We have 
 here on a small scale examples of every variety of strati- 
 fication, and of almost every species of secondary rock. The 
 great mass of rock is the same limestone we have about 
 Sedbergh, and in the district of the caves. The strata of 
 the Mendips are, however, much more highly inclined, being 
 in some instances nearly vertical, and are surmounted by 
 many newer strata which ride upon their edges in an 
 horizontal position. This singular conformation is exhibited 
 in many of the deep glens which traverse the strata near the 
 eastern end of the chain. 
 
 Mr Conybeare and I parted on the top of the Mendips on 
 Saturday last. I descended to Wells. The Cathedral is small, 
 but very perfect ; and the west front is ornamented by a great 
 many good examples of ancient gothic sculpture, which the 
 fanatical zeal of our blessed reformers has fortunately spared. 
 All revolutions are accompanied with violence, which is an 
 evil great enough in some instances to counterbalance the 
 good of change. It was, however, better that our protestant 
 ancestors should break the heads of stone images than of men 
 and women, after the manner of our neighbours on the other 
 side of the water. 
 
 Sharpe is coming down to breakfast, so that I must cut 
 short my narration. My next great move will be to the coast 
 near Sidmouth, from which place I intend to face about, and 
 trudge my way back by the coast as far as Portsmouth. 
 Thence to Cambridge. Best respects to Mrs A. and the 
 
 young ones. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 TUXFORD, NOTTS, November 10, 1820. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I wrote to you during the labours of the Long Vaca- 
 
DEATH OF SEDGWICK'S MOTHER. 219 
 
 tion, but from what place I do not at this moment recollect. 1820. 
 I presume that I gave you some account of what I had been ^- 35- 
 about, and what I intended to do. How uncertain are all 
 our expectations ! I have not yet reached the University. 
 
 After an examination of some parts of the country near 
 Taunton, which I visited last year, I crossed the Black- 
 downs to Sidmouth, and there commenced a laborious 
 examination of the coast. The cliffs are on a most magnificent 
 scale, abound in organic remains, and are of great geological 
 interest. Almost the whole coast of Dorsetshire presents a 
 succession of rugged precipices of varied forms, arising from 
 the peculiar disposition of the strata. Weymouth detained 
 me three weeks. The geological map of that district is so 
 erroneous that I resolved to rectify it as far as my time would 
 allow, and I succeeded almost to the extent of my wishes. 
 From thence I found my way to the Isle of Wight by 
 Southampton, and there heard, from my brother James, 
 such an alarming account of my mother's health that I im- 
 mediately recrossed the Channel, and hastened down to the 
 North with all the expedition which I could command. 
 
 I should have been very thankful had it pleased God to 
 have allowed me to arrive in time to receive my poor mother's 
 last blessing ; but that melancholy satisfaction was denied me. 
 She died early on Sunday the I5th, after an illness of a week. 
 I rejoice to say that she possessed her self-possession almost 
 to the moment of her death, and expressed her entire resigna- 
 tion to the will of God. We have all reason to thank Him for 
 His great mercy in so long sparing our dearest friends. This 
 is the first affliction with which our family has been visited. 
 My father and sisters are quite well. My father looks much 
 better now than he did last spring when I was in the North. 
 He is much afflicted at losing the companion of his old age, 
 but on the whole is less weighed down than I could have ven- 
 tured to hope. It may still, I hope, please God to spare him 
 to our family for some years. 
 
 I am now resting on my way to Cambridge with my old 
 
220 WILLIAM HODGE MILL. 
 
 1820. friend Mr Mason. I hope to be in Cambridge tomorrow, and 
 L 35- shall find abundant employment for the term in my profes- 
 sional duties. My spirits are not good, but I hope to rally 
 sufficiently to give a few public lectures before the Christmas 
 vacation. My sister Ann was married about two months 
 since to Mr Westall jun. I have no doubt you heard of the 
 engagement when you were in the north. God bless you and 
 
 yours. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The touching allusion in the first of the above letters to 
 the Reverend William Hodge Mill, Fellow of Trinity College, 
 then about to leave England as Principal of the newly founded 
 Bishop's College at Calcutta, is a proof of the breadth of 
 Sedgwick's sympathies, and of the strength of his affections. 
 No two men could have differed more widely Mill was a 
 High Churchman Sedgwick, if he belonged to any party 
 in the Church, an Evangelical. Yet they exchanged letters 
 frequently during Mill's absence in India, and after his return, 
 when he resided in Cambridge as Regius Professor of Hebrew, 
 notwithstanding the very decided attitude taken up by both 
 in the religious controversies of that day, their friendship did 
 not suffer any interruption. 
 
 Sedgwick's meeting with the brothers Conybeare, briefly 
 mentioned in the second letter, is specially noteworthy. With 
 John Josias Conybeare, Professor first of Anglo-Saxon, and 
 next of Poetry at Oxford, then rector of Batheaston, close 
 to Bath, he had become acquainted while exploring Corn- 
 wall the year before, as mentioned above 1 ; but his brother, 
 William Daniel Conybeare, afterwards Dean of Llandaff, who 
 then held a lectureship in the church of Brislington near Bristol, 
 seems to have been unknown to him until this occasion 2 . 
 
 1 See above, p. 213. 
 
 2 In a letter written to the Rev. John Charles Conybeare, second son of the 
 Dean of Llandaff, dated 15 October, 1858, Sedgwick refers to his first acquaintance 
 with the family : " Tell Mrs Conybeare that I love all ladies who pass under the 
 
THE BROTHERS CONYBEARE. 221 
 
 The introduction led to important results. Not only was the 1820. 
 foundation laid of a lifelong friendship, continued to the &* 35- 
 younger members of the Conybeare family long after their 
 parents had been laid in the grave, but Sedgwick obtained so 
 large a measure of geological instruction that he used to speak 
 of Mr W. D. Conybeare as his master in the science. The 
 two brothers were both fond of geology, and while still at 
 Oxford, in conjunction with Buckland, had established a sort 
 of club for the study of it. Thus educated in the methods 
 of the science, and, we may be certain, well-informed respect- 
 ing the geology of the district in which they resided, they 
 would both be eminently qualified to serve as guides to one 
 who until he met with them had had little except his natural 
 talent to help him. The extent of his obligations, as realised 
 by himself at the time, is forcibly expressed in the last letter 
 which he wrote to Conybeare from Weymouth, detailing his 
 discoveries and difficulties. " My Long Vacation is now ended, 
 and I go home with the conviction of having completely 
 accomplished the great objects of my summer's tour. I may 
 add, with great truth, that I consider the acquaintance I have 
 formed with you among the most fortunate and agreeable 
 circumstances of my vacation. If I had not been under your 
 tuition for three weeks, I should, I fear, never have been able 
 to disentangle the difficulties of this neighbourhood." 
 
 By a strange coincidence this letter throughout which 
 Sedgwick expresses himself in a tone of elation at his well- 
 merited success was written on the very day of his mother's 
 death. How deeply he felt this sudden calamity 'the first 
 deep domestic pang I ever endured' is shown by the letter in 
 which he informed Ainger who must have known her well 
 of his irreparable loss; but the depth of his sorrow may be 
 
 name of Conybeare; and tell little Mary that I mean to love her as dearly as 
 I loved another Mary [the Dean's only daughter] whom I first knew at Brislington 
 in 1820, when little Johnny was on the knees. It was the year I first became 
 acquainted with your Father. I knew his brother John before, having been 
 acquainted with him in Cornwall. But what ancient memories these are now!" 
 
222 WORK: IN. MUSEUM. 
 
 1820 to estimated more truly still from the casual references to his 
 mother which are scattered through his later correspondence. 
 36. Thirty years afterwards, when one of his friends was anxious 
 about her own mother, he wrote : " The word Mother has a 
 charm in its sound ; and there was a blank in the face of 
 nature, and a void in my heart, when I ceased to have one;" 
 and again, to the same ; " It was my first great domestic 
 sorrow, and deeply did I feel it. I pity the man who has no 
 remembrance of a mother's love. The memory of my dear 
 mother and my dear old father throw a heavenly light over all 
 the passages of my early life 1 ." 
 
 During the months which elapsed between Sedgwick's 
 return from Dent in 1820, and the commencement of the 
 Long Vacation of 1821, he was fully occupied with what he 
 termed c professional pursuits.' Not to mention lecturing 
 digesting the information acquired in the course of the 
 previous summer and writing at least one paper for the 
 Philosophical Society he had plenty to do in his Museum. 
 His report (dated I May, 1821) speaks of three months spent 
 in arranging the contents of seven large cases of " specimens 
 from all the strata of Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and 
 Dorsetshire which appear between the old red sandstone and 
 the chalk;" "the arrangement of a series of specimens from 
 all the English strata, commencing with the granite of Corn- 
 wall, and ending with the alluvial deposits of Suffolk, which 
 the Professor has employed three vacations in collecting;" 
 and he gratefully acknowledges "the assistance of Mr Henslow 
 in arranging the simple minerals 2 /' 
 
 It is pleasant to be able to record that Sedgwick's delivery 
 of a course of lectures in excess of the minimum of four 
 prescribed by Dr Woodward did not pass unrewarded. It 
 
 1 To Miss Malcolm, 7 December, 1856; 21 December, 1859. 
 
 2 It must be remembered that the Woodwardian Audit, at which the Pro- 
 fessor made his annual report, was held on the first day of May. As Sedgwick 
 usually left Cambridge soon after the commencement of the Long Vacation, most 
 of the work chronicled in these reports must have been done between his return in 
 October and May of the year following. 
 
INCREASE OF STIPEND. 223 
 
 will be recollected that on the day of his election the Senate 1820 to 
 had accepted a supplementary scheme for the government of ^ 2I J_ 
 the Professorship. In this document three points were mainly 36. 
 insisted upon : (i) that a Museum, with an apartment for the 
 Professor thereto adjoining, ought to be built without delay ; 
 (2) that the payment of the Professor's stipend should be 
 contingent on his delivering lectures ; (3) that if he gave 
 additional lectures, he ought to receive an additional stipend, 
 but only after the erection of the aforesaid buildings. Two 
 years had elapsed, but nothing had been done ; nor was it 
 probable that any building-scheme would be accepted for 
 some time. Sedgwick was naturally unwilling to see his 
 promised increase of stipend adjourned sine die, and therefore 
 addressed a letter, dated 22 June, 1820, to the Vice-Chancellor 
 and Heads of Colleges. This letter contains some interesting 
 biographical details, and therefore we may be excused for 
 quoting a considerable portion of it. After giving an analysis 
 of that portion of Dr Woodward's Will which dealt with the 
 annual income of his estate, he proceeds, 
 
 u ln consequence of the great change in the value of money since 
 1727, the Woodwardian estate now rents for ^430, but none of the 
 specific payments have received any augmentation whatever. The 
 present Lecturer does not therefore stand in the situation intended 
 by the Founder, the stipend he receives being virtually not much 
 more than one-third of the sum intended. 
 
 In the same Will it is directed that the Woodwardian Cabinets 
 be 'reposited in a proper Room or Apartment allotted by the 
 University,' and, ' that the Lecturer reside in or near the said 
 Apartment.' When therefore the University accepted the Cabinets, 
 they contracted an obligation to find an Apartment, suitable at the 
 same time to the Collection and to the accommodation of the 
 Professor, out of their own funds. It certainly does not appear to 
 have been the intention of Dr Woodward that any part of the rents 
 of his estate should be held back as a building-fund. As however 
 there is at present an accumulation of fourteen or fifteen hundred 
 pounds out of the Woodwardian estate, the said accumulation might, 
 with the addition of such sums as the University shall think fit, be 
 employed in erecting a ' proper apartment ' for the reception of the 
 Geological Cabinets, in fitting up a Lecture-Room, and, if thought 
 expedient, in building rooms for the Lecturer, contiguous to the said 
 Apartment. 
 
224 INCREASE OF STIPEND. 
 
 1820 to ^ i further obvious, from the said Will, that Dr Woodward 
 
 1821. intended his Lecturer to perform important duties 1 .... In the year 
 
 t> 35 1727, a salary of ;no was a sufficient remuneration to a member 
 
 36. of the Senate for performing the conditions in question. At present 
 the same sum is not sufficient. 
 
 The Woodwardian Lecturer wishes finally to observe that, since 
 his appointment, he has endeavoured to comply with the severest 
 clauses of the Founder's Will. 
 
 1. He resigned, on his appointment to the said Lectureship, 
 offices and employments in College of the yearly value of ^200. 
 
 2. He has read 22 public Lectures to the University and 
 gratuitously, and will engage to give at least that number annually. 
 
 3. He is preparing to print the substance of two of the said 
 Lectures. 
 
 4. He has been always ready to exhibit the Museum, and 
 during term has spent more hours in it than are specified in the 
 Founder's Will. 
 
 5. He has, at a personal expense of between three and four 
 hundred pounds, made a Geological Survey of several parts of 
 England, by which he has been enabled to deposit large, and, he 
 believes, important additions to the specimens in the University 
 Cabinets ; for an account of which he refers to the report drawn up 
 under the sanction of the Inspectors and presented to the Auditors 
 on the first of May 2 /' 
 
 The persons addressed took six months to consider this 
 letter, but early in the following year (24 January, 1821), a 
 Grace passed the Senate, by which, after several well-turned 
 compliments to Sedgwick's energy and capacity, it was 
 provided that 100 should be paid to him for the extra 
 lectures delivered in the past year; and ;ioo in each future 
 year, on the condition that he delivered fifteen lectures, at 
 the least, in each year, in addition to the four stipulated for 
 by Dr Woodward. 
 
 The next three letters describe the employment of the 
 Long Vacation of 1821. For once, it may be remarked, we 
 hear nothing of his health perhaps he was too busy to 
 pay attention to it. 
 
 1 In the omitted passage Sedgwick enumerates the principal duties imposed by 
 Dr Woodward, as related in the previous chapter. 
 
 2 The only copy of this letter which we have seen is in the rich collection of 
 University Papers formed by the late Dr Webb, Master of Clare Hall 1815 5^, 
 now in the University Library. 
 
BACHELOR GODFATHERS. 225 
 
 TRIN. COLL., April 13, 1821. 1821. 
 
 Dear Ainger, ,Et. 36. 
 
 Your letter was left on my table on Tuesday last. 
 When I saw the direction I believe I should have blushed if 
 my complexion would have allowed it. For my conscience 
 told me that I had been your debtor three or four months, 
 both for a letter and for a small book of goodly admonition. 
 Let me thank you for one or both of them now, if it be not 
 too late. I have myself turned author since we met last. I will 
 send you a copy of my paper in the Cambridge Transactions 
 when I have an opportunity. Not that I wish you to read it. 
 I will therefore give it to Mrs A. to tie up sugar-plumbs for 
 my god-daughter. But hold I am quite out of all order. I 
 must first congratulate you and Mrs A. on your new accession 
 of domestic honours, and then express my own joy in the 
 hopes of establishing this spiritual relationship with the young 
 stranger. Both my god-fathers are old bachelors, and my 
 god-mother (God be with her), is as arrant an old maid as 
 ever whispered scandal round a tea-table. My own destinies 
 were therefore fixed at the font, and I already feel myself fast 
 sinking in the mire of celibacy. I hope I shall bring no evil 
 on my charge. But do contrive to have some one joined with 
 me who is either married or given in marriage, otherwise we 
 cannot answer for the consequences. Experto crede. 
 
 Geology has not, I hope, dried up all the social affections ; 
 it has, however, left me very little time for the exercise of 
 them. I am too much engaged to be down this short vaca- 
 tion. The last week in May and the first week in June I shall 
 be engaged with our examination in Hall. A stupid com- 
 panion you will find me if here at that busy time ; still let us 
 meet if possible. I will promise to do my best during the 
 intervals. Immediately after that troublesome business is 
 over I start for the Isle of Wight 1 , to relieve my brother who 
 
 1 Whewell, writing to his sister, 18 June, 1821, says: " I am going for a short 
 time to the Isle of Wight. I expect to join there Professor Sedgwick, a very 
 intimate friend of mine." Life, p. 64. 
 
 S. I. 15 
 
226 SUMMER TOUR. 
 
 1821. is going down to the North. In the months of July, August, 
 Et. 36. anc [ September I must make a regular geological tour, but my 
 actual destination is not quite fixed. You may suppose that 
 my hands are full when I tell you that besides the care of our 
 college examination I have to give public lectures four times 
 a week during the next term, and that I am now preparing a 
 syllabus of my course for the press. Present my kindest 
 remembrances to Mrs Ainger, and believe me, 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 WHITBY, September 2, 1821. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 For the life of me I cannot tell when or where it was 
 that I last wrote to you. It must surely have been since my 
 return from the Isle of Wight. Let us now therefore take it 
 for granted that I did return from the Isle of Wight that I 
 did sojourn about three weeks in the University of Cambridge 
 that I then took a tour through Coventry, Kenilworth, 
 Warwick, Birmingham, and Lichfield, where I saw churches, 
 ruined castles, hardware manufactories, and Cathedrals that 
 I attended an auction of old bones, of which I bought enough 
 to fill fat Lambert's coffin that I then found my way thro' 
 Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln, to the residence of my 
 brother John 1 that after three days I left the lodgings of my 
 said brother, and was conveyed in a steam-packet down the 
 waters of the Humber as far as Hull that I left Hull on the 
 top of a coach that I was set down by the said coach at the 
 door of my old friend Gilby, who is now married and perform- 
 ing the duties of a parson and a magistrate in a small village 
 about five miles from Bridlington. All this I give in the way 
 of summary, because: 1st, it is no easy matter to give it in 
 any other form ; 2dly, I do verily believe that I have given 
 you the greater part of it before. 
 
 1 At that time curate of Stowe in Lincolnshire. 
 
COAST OF YORKSHIRE. 227 
 
 With Gilby I remained three or four days, during which 1821. 
 time I made an excursion almost as far as Spurn Head. &* 36. 
 Holderness is well cultivated and well inhabited, but as dull as 
 the fens of your native county. Its physical structure did not 
 supply me with a single new fact. The sea is making terrible 
 encroachments on the whole district. In one place the cliff 
 cuts through an ancient burial-ground, and the upper face of 
 the precipice is literally studded with human bones. Gilby 
 accompanied me on foot almost as far as Scarborough. North 
 of Bridlington the character of the country is completely 
 changed. We crossed the great chalk range, which at its 
 northern termination is nearly ten miles broad. As we went 
 along the top of the cliff we frequently had on our right hand 
 a naked precipice of chalk more than three hundred feet high. 
 The chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight must, I think, yield to 
 these in grandeur. But in the wolds of Yorkshire we entirely 
 want that combination of woodlands which makes the scenery 
 in the Isle so peculiarly beautiful. North of the chalk range 
 the cliffs are of less elevation, but more varied in form, and 
 perhaps more beautiful than those of Flambro' head. The 
 bay of Scarborough viewed from the south is not inferior to 
 any part of the coast which I have seen. It is bounded to the 
 north by a fine mass of perpendicular rock, which is crowned 
 with the ruins of the Castle. So far I have got on without 
 taxing your patience with any account of my peculiar craft, 
 and I hope to finish without doing so. I am, however, partly 
 disqualified from enjoying the picturesque beauties of this 
 country, as I have nearly lost the use of one eye in my combats 
 with the rocks. A splinter struck it with such violence that it 
 has for the last three or four days been of very little use 
 to me 1 . 
 
 I am sitting in the travellers' room, and they are beginning 
 
 1 Sedgwick's eye never recovered from this accident. Writing to Lady 
 Augusta Stanley, 23 July, 1865, he says : "My old eyes I ought to say my old 
 eye, for one of my original pair has struck work ever since 1821, when I offended 
 it by a splinter of rock which flew from my hammer in Robin Hood's Bay 
 work badly by candle-light." 
 
 152 
 
228 WHITBY. 
 
 1821. to be so noisy that I really hardly know what I write. Let 
 - 36- me then tell you at once that I have paced my way to this 
 place along a most rugged coast, and that I hope to proceed 
 with my tour on Tuesday next. Whitby is a dirty, stinking, 
 town in a very picturesque situation, but I have no time to 
 describe it. Pray write to me Post Office, Sunderland. Give 
 
 my best respects to Mrs Ainger. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. Monday morning. I concluded last night rather 
 bluntly. Wine and tobacco seemed to excite some of my 
 companions above all measure. Among the rest an old, fat, 
 deep-mouthed Scotsman became so enthusiastic in his admira- 
 tion of the native genius of his country, that he roared, ranted, 
 or sung, whole pages of Burns. The entrance to the harbour 
 of Whitby is by a narrow opening in the cliff. It winds up 
 two or three miles into the country flanked on both sides by 
 very steep hills. The town is disposed on both sides of this 
 estuary just at its entrance into the sea. St Hilda's domain 
 was on the south side of the estuary. The ruins of the abbey 
 are still very imposing, and in a very beautiful style of 
 architecture. The choir and transept are nearly perfect, and 
 in the Early English order ; the nave is more ruinous, yet has 
 some exquisite arches of the more modern Gothic. About 
 two-thirds of the great tower is standing 1 . The old Scotsman 
 is again come into the room coughing, and breathing hard, so 
 I must conclude. I hope to emerge from this district to 
 Stockton in about a week. I shall then go up the coast of 
 Durham. The greater part of the expedition must be per- 
 formed on foot. Vale. 
 
 DENT, October 16, 1821. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 My memory does not improve, for I am as much 
 abroad as I was before in regard to the place from which I 
 directed my last letter. It was I suppose from some place or 
 
 1 These remains of the great tower fell at i p.m. 25 June, 1830. 
 
TEESDALE. 229 
 
 other on the Yorkshire coast. My sisters and Miss Davoren 1 1821. 
 are so noisy that my poor confused brain is not much aided in ^ Et & 
 its recollection. I will not give you any details respecting the 
 cliffs of alum-shale, and the mode of extracting the salt, lest 
 I should bore you with a second edition of what I told you in 
 my last. These cliffs in some places rise to the elevation of 
 600 feet, and then take a sweep round into the interior, 
 forming a magnificent natural terrace overlooking the fine flat 
 district of Cleveland and part of Durham. From Stockton I 
 made a two days' excursion up the Tees, and called upon our 
 old friend Wallace 2 . He looks charmingly for a man of fifty, 
 and is as much alive as ever. Old time, that unmerciful 
 scratcher of faces, has, however, worn a few lines in his face 
 since you were of his household. The coast of Durham, in a 
 picturesque point of view, is very inferior to the north-east 
 cliff of Yorkshire. The rocks prevailing in that district are 
 composed of a magnesian limestone which performs more 
 freaks in its mode of aggregation than any mineral substance 
 I have yet examined. The mouth of the Tyne has an 
 interest peculiar to itself. The river finds its way into the sea 
 through a chasm in a rock which on the Northumberland side 
 is of great elevation, and crowned by a very picturesque ruin 
 of an old abbey. The eternal bustle on the river, which a 
 little above Tynemouth is wider than the Thames, reminds 
 one of the scene below London Bridge. I found my way up 
 this river to Newcastle in a steam-boat; and in getting out of 
 it had my ribs nearly staved in by a fall in the hatchway. Old 
 Robert Foster now lives there, and is very hoary. I returned 
 by Durham, and spent a day or two with Carr, who has now 
 three children, and will soon (D. V.) have a fourth. From 
 
 1 Miss Jane Davoren, niece to Mrs Brownrigg, a lady who had resided for 
 several years at Broadfield in Kirthwaite, married the Rev. John Sedgwick in 
 April, 1822. 
 
 2 Dr Wallace, a physician who lived at Sedbergh when Sedgwick was a boy, 
 and was a great friend of his. Ainger boarded in his house. A few years before 
 the date of this letter Dr Wallace removed to the neighbourhood of Barnard 
 Castle. 
 
230 TEESDALE. 
 
 1821. there I went to Darlington, to take possession of a horse 
 t- 3 6 - which the Doctor had bought for me ; on this beast I went up 
 the higher part of Teesdale. It is perhaps more beautiful 
 than any valley in the North of England. I had before 
 examined the country on the borders of the river near Rokeby, 
 which has been so well described by Scott. In the highest 
 part of the valley, which is ornamented with foliage, the whole 
 river is precipitated over a fine mass of columnar basalt, and 
 forms a fall not inferior to any in the Lake district. The 
 columnar basalt is also found on both sides of the valley for 
 some miles above the High Force, and is arranged in magnifi- 
 cent clusters of pillars. I was driven from this interesting 
 district by the most incessant rain with which I was ever 
 persecuted, and found my way to Dent by the way of Brough 
 and Kirkby Stephen. When I reached Sedbergh I was 
 soaked with wet like a piece of blotting-paper. 
 
 My friends here are all well, but complain of the shortness 
 of my visit. I arrived last Friday morning and intend to 
 start for Cambridge the day after tomorrow. Under the 
 circumstances of my visit you will see that it was impossible 
 for me to reach St Bees. I shall be happy to assist in the 
 procession when you keep your Act 1 . The ladies, who are as 
 noisy as ever, now desire their kind regards. For the last 
 quarter of an hour I have not been able to see a word that I 
 am writing, and Miss D. is just beginning to rattle the keys of 
 the piano, so I must needs conclude. My best regards to Mrs 
 Ainger and my love to my god-daughter. Yours ever 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Mr Robert Foster, whom Sedgwick met at Newcastle, was 
 a friend of his boyhood at Sedbergh, and he has sketched his 
 portrait with singular vividness among his reminiscences of 
 those early days. 
 
 " The next person who rises before my mind's eye is Mr Foster 
 of Hebblethwaite Hall, a beautiful property a little more than two 
 
 1 Mr Ainger proceeded to the degree of B.D. in 1822. 
 
ROBERT FOSTER. 231 
 
 miles above Sedbergh. He was of the Society of Friends, and some- 1821. 
 times when he drove over to visit the brotherhood in Kirthwaite, or >Et. 36. 
 at other times when tempted by the bright weather to make a short 
 cut over the hills to the old vicarage of Dent, he would halt a few 
 hours in friendly intercourse with my father. I remember his 
 presence well, when I was but a little boy : his dark complexion 
 which had been made darker by a tropical sun; his small and regular 
 features ; his dark and bushy eyebrows ; his earnest and grave look, 
 which at first sight gave me an impression of sternness. But all 
 that feeling went off when he began to speak ; for his voice was 
 pleasant, and his discourse at once earnest and genial. Even in my 
 childhood I felt joy whenever he came to the vicarage ; and T used 
 to creep behind his chair that I might hear him talk. He wore a 
 broad-brimmed hat, and a grave outer garb of a quaker cut ; but I 
 never thought that he looked quite like a quaker. He had not the 
 soft, bland, expression of a good old quaker statesman ; and he had 
 a confirmed habit of slovenliness, which was utterly unlike the 
 precise and perfect neatness of all other men of his grade in the 
 Society of Friends. 
 
 While at Sedbergh School he soon outstripped all the boys of his 
 class in making his way through the standard authors in Greek and 
 Latin; and he outstripped them quite as much in audacious deeds of 
 eccentric waggery. His mind became inflamed by dreams of foreign 
 lands, and thoughts of enterprise ; and while in such moods, spite of 
 the beautiful scenery of his native home, his yearnings were little 
 satisfied by the thoughts of settling down into the placid life of a 
 leading quaker statesman. So he one day packed up bag and 
 baggage, and walked off to seek his fortune ; and a few days after- 
 wards (I think at Liverpool) entered himself in a foreign-bound vessel 
 as a common sailor. He set to work in his new life with all the 
 energy of his ardent will ; and the master of the vessel, who was 
 a man of good sense and humanity, marked the boy's style and 
 manner, took him to his cabin, and drew from him his secret. 'You 
 have done wrong in leaving your parents,' said the captain ; ' but 
 spite of that I like your spirit, and I give you the choice of two 
 things : If you have the heart to go on with this profession you must 
 leave this ship, and be rated as a midshipman in a man-of-war, and I 
 have a friend in the royal navy to whom I will send you, and you 
 will be put, as a young gentleman, in a right position. If this do 
 not suit you, I have no choice left but to put you under arrest, and 
 send you back to your father.' 
 
 There could be no doubt which alternative the boy would choose. 
 He was rated as a midshipman in a man-of-war; and by an 
 enthusiastic devotion to all the duties and studies of his profession, 
 he gradually became an accomplished sailor ; and during one of the 
 early wars of the reign of George III. performed in the West Indies 
 such acts of well-timed and daring courage, that he obtained the 
 commission of lieutenant much sooner, I believe, than would be 
 compatible with the rules of modern service. 
 
232 ROBERT FOSTER. 
 
 1821. Once or twice during the intervals of active service he came down 
 
 Et. 36. to Hebblethwaite Hall ; and it is said that he appeared at Briggflatts 
 Meeting-house, with his laced cocked-hat on his head, and a cutlass 
 by his side; perhaps to the suppressed admiration of the younger 
 Sisterhood, but certainly to the horror of the venerable and peaceful 
 Fathers of the Society. Every effort was made to win him back to a 
 peaceful life. He loved his friends, and he loved the Dales ; but he 
 resolved to continue in that profession in which he had already w_on 
 some glory. 
 
 At another interval in the service he again came down to 
 Sedbergh, and mingled once more with the tried friends of his early 
 youth : and then it was that he proved in his own person what he 
 had read of in the poets of antiquity that love is in conflict mightier 
 than fire and sword. He was smitten by one of the youthful Sister- 
 hood, as by a fire from a masked battery, and brought to the ground, 
 never again to rise in his former strength. His courage was gone, 
 for no heart was left in him. His dearest friends seized the oppor- 
 tunity; and by every entreaty of duty, by the power of youthful 
 passion, and by the prospect of realising new dreams of happiness in 
 the immediate possession of the family estate and the lady of his first 
 love by the might of all these motives acting together, he was 
 conquered, and struck his flag for ever. His visions of future glory 
 vanished like the colours upon an air-bubble, and he collapsed into 
 the condition of a country gentleman, much honoured in the Dale, 
 and of a leader in that Society in which fate had first placed him. 
 
 These events happened long before I was counted among the 
 inhabitants of the Dales ; and after the lapse of many years, while I 
 boarded with a kind quaker family, we often saw Mr Foster ; and 
 greatly rejoiced when we were invited to spend a half-holiday at 
 Hebblethwaite Hall. He loved the society of boys who had risen to 
 the upper classes of the school ; and he had resumed his studies of 
 the classics, and become a very accomplished Latin scholar. Some- 
 times he half alarmed us, when he took down some ancient classic, 
 and began to discuss a point of criticism. We thought we had 
 enough of such matters when before our schoolmaster. But our fears 
 were of short duration ; for he was soon carried on by his love of the 
 author ; and then, in a way peculiar to himself, he would roll out a 
 noble translation of some favourite passage. It might be from one 
 of the orations of Cicero, or some pregnant and pithy chapter out of 
 the works of Tacitus ; or it might be some burst of indignant scorn 
 and mockery out of one of the old Roman Satirists. These were 
 days of delight to the schoolboys who had the honour of being 
 admitted to such genial and healthy visits. 
 
 Sometimes, but rarely, he and my father had discussions at the 
 vicarage on subjects of religious ordinances ; but I think I may say 
 with full assurance that no word of bitterness ever escaped from the 
 tongue of one or the other. They agreed in many of the great 
 essentials of Christian truth : and they agreed that the end of all 
 religious ordinances was to bring the heart the fountain-head of all 
 
GEOLOGICAL WORK. 233 
 
 true religious emotion into conformity, both in thought and outward 1822. 
 act, with the revealed will of God. ^E t> 3 
 
 The last time I saw Mr Robert Foster was at Newcastle, I believe 
 in the year 1821, while I was upon a geological tour. The load of 
 years had then been resting upon him : but his heart had not 
 become cold ; for the old man received me with the warmest 
 welcome ; and then he walked with me (no longer with his firm step 
 of former years), and shewed me some of the neighbouring establish- 
 ments on the river Tyne. He seemed to be again in his own 
 element ; and all the persons connected with the shipping interests 
 of the river treated him with marked respect and confidence. After 
 a while he said, ' We will go and rest ourselves at the study of one of 
 my friends. You will like to know him, for he is a man of genius, 
 and a great humourist.' It was Bewick, the well-informed naturalist, 
 and celebrated engraver upon wood ; and we had a long and delight- 
 ful interview with that great artist 1 ." 
 
 The geological work of the next four months as well as 
 the results of the tour of 1821, are well described in Sedg- 
 wick's report to the Woodwardian auditors dated I May, 
 1822. 
 
 . " The Professor spent the month of June and the early part of 
 July in examining the structure of the Isle of Wight, the coast of 
 Hampshire, and part of Oxfordshire. The spoils obtained during 
 this excursion were conveyed to the University in four large cases. 
 
 " He afterwards went to Lichneld for the purpose of attending an 
 auction of fossils, and was fortunate in obtaining some very valuable 
 specimens at what he considered a reasonable price. They were 
 conveyed to the University in one very large case. 
 
 " He then employed between two and three months in a geologi- 
 cal survey of the coasts of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland. 
 During this excursion (the greatest part of which was necessarily 
 made on foot) he collected many illustrative specimens, which were 
 sent off from Whitby, Sunderland, and Newcastle, in four large 
 packing-cases. He also succeeded, through the assistance of a 
 clergyman at Whitby, in purchasing some valuable spoils of the 
 Ichthyosaurus, which have been conveyed to Cambridge in three 
 large cases. On his return from the coast of Northumberland in the 
 month of October, he examined the basaltic and mining districts of 
 High Teesdale, and collected many interesting specimens. 
 
 " Of the preceding collections a part is at present in the progress 
 of arrangement. The remaining specimens must be returned to the 
 packing-cases until some more accommodation is found for their 
 reception : as there is at present hardly a single drawer in the 
 Museum which is unoccupied. 
 
 1 Supplement to the Memorial, ut supra, pp. 54 59. The passage has been 
 slightly compressed in transcription. 
 
234 SEDGWICK*S VARIED INTERESTS. 
 
 1822. "The Museum has also received a very valuable accession in a 
 
 Mi. 37. collection presented by Mr Henslow, which consists of nearly 1000 
 specimens carefully selected during a geological survey of the Isle of 
 Anglesea, and illustrated by a memoir and sections which will be 
 published in the next number of the Cambridge Transactions 1 . Mr 
 Henslow has undertaken the arrangement of this collection, which 
 occupies twenty-four drawers. 
 
 " The Woodwardian professor begs finally to add that he has this 
 year read twenty-eight public lectures to the University, and that he 
 is endeavouring to comply with a clause in the Founder's Will in 
 preparing for the Press the substance of two of the lectures 2 ." 
 
 Most men in the position which Sedgwick now held, with 
 an annual course of lectures to deliver, the value of which had 
 received a substantial acknowledgment from the University 
 a Museum to maintain and the almost boundless field of 
 geology before him a terra incognita of which he had just 
 commenced the exploration would have devoted themselves 
 to their new duties with a singleness of purpose which would 
 have excluded most other interests. But this was what 
 Sedgwick never could bring himself to do. He had no 
 intellectual self-control ; he could never shut his eyes and ears 
 to what was going on around him ; and we shall continually 
 find his geological work laid aside for long intervals, because 
 he had allowed himself to be carried away by something 
 foreign to what ought to have been the real purpose of his life 
 something which others less occupied than himself would 
 have done as well, or better, than he did. At one time he 
 appears as a member of a Syndicate appointed to provide 
 temporary accommodation for Viscount Fitzwilliam's collec- 
 tions, and to consult and report to the Senate on the erection 
 of a permanent Museum, pieces of business which led those 
 who took them in hand into long and tedious negotiations ; 
 at another we find his name on The University Branch Com- 
 mittee for promoting a subscription in Aid of the Greeks*, 
 
 1 Mr Henslow's Geological Description of Anglesea was read to the Cambridge 
 Philosophical Society 26 November, 1821, and is published in their Transactions, 
 Vol. i., pp. 359452. 
 
 2 These lectures were never published. 
 
 3 Address of the Committee, 20 Nov., 1823. The Rev. G. A. Browne, Fellow 
 of Trinity College, was specially active in this matter, and it was probably through 
 
PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY. 235 
 
 whose 'holy cause,' as it is termed, was no doubt specially 1822. 
 dear to so true an Abolitionist as Sedgwick, and occupied a -** 37- 
 proportionate space in his time and thoughts. The conse- 
 quences of these distant excursions may be easily imagined. 
 Geological memoranda which ought to have been arranged 
 when the subject was fresh in his mind were laid aside; 
 specimens remained for months sometimes for years un- 
 determined, or even not unpacked ; promised papers were 
 not finished perhaps not begun. These remarks, which 
 apply to his whole life, have been suggested by what took 
 place in 1822. Hardly had his report been laid before the 
 Woodwardian auditors when he felt it his duty to plunge 
 into a University controversy, which, between discussions with 
 friends, and pamphlets against opponents, must have occupied 
 a considerable portion of his time for nearly two years. The 
 matter especially Sedgwick's share in it is of sufficient im- 
 portance to demand a brief notice in this place. 
 
 On the death of Dr Edward Daniel Clarke, Professor of 
 Mineralogy, 9 March, 1822, there was some difference of 
 opinion as to the expediency of continuing a Professorship of 
 Mineralogy in the University. The title of Professor, it should 
 be remembered, had been conferred on Dr Clarke in 1808, 
 but no Professorship had ever been formally established. 
 Meanwhile Sedgwick's intimate friend, Mr Henslow, had 
 announced his intention of becoming a candidate, should the 
 Professorship be continued ; and it soon became apparent 
 that, if he had a chance of coming forward, he need have no 
 fear of the result. At last, 15 May, a Grace passed the 
 Senate which may be thus translated : 
 
 " Whereas by the death of Edward D. Clarke, late Professor of 
 Mineralogy, that office is now vacant: may it please you that another 
 
 his influence that Sedgwick, together with his friends Pryme, Romilly, Whewell, 
 and Lodge were all induced to join the Committee. In 1824 Pryme invited two 
 of the Greek deputies, who had come to England to negotiate a loan, to stay with 
 him at Cambridge for the Commencement, and Sedgwick met them at his house. 
 Recollections, p. 143. , 
 
236 PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY. 
 
 1822. Professor be elected by you to discharge the duties of the said 
 jEt.37. office 1 ." 
 
 As this Grace was copied, verbatim, the name only being 
 altered, from a Grace passed 23 January, 1732, for continuing 
 the Professorship of Botany (which, like that of Mineralogy, 
 had become vacant by the death of the first Professor), 
 Members of the Senate assumed that the election of a Profes- 
 sor to succeed Dr Clarke would be conducted in the same 
 manner as the election of the Professor of Botany had been, 
 namely, by open poll. It was with great surprise, therefore, 
 that they learnt, a few days after the Grace had passed, 
 that the Heads of Houses, at the instigation, as it was 
 believed, of Dr Webb, Master of Clare Hall, and Dr Chafy, 
 Master of Sidney Sussex College 2 intended to conduct 
 the election in the mode observed at the election of Vice- 
 Chancellor in other words, to nominate two persons, one 
 of whom the Senate would obviously be constrained to 
 elect. Alarmed at what was certainly an innovation, and 
 apprehensive that, if it were acquiesced in, a similar claim 
 would be made respecting all Professorships founded by the 
 University, a large number of members of the Senate met 
 at the Red Lion Inn, and 'organised a very pretty rebellion' 3 . 
 The sense of the University was evidently with them, for 
 seventy-four signatures were immediately affixed to a dignified 
 Representation to the Vice-Chancel lor and Heads of Colleges 
 (24 May), praying them to abandon a position which, as the 
 memorialists clearly shewed, was contrary to all precedent. 
 To this Representation, though those who signed it were 
 among the most distinguished men in the University, and 
 represented, in numbers alone, at least three-fourths of the 
 resident academic body 3 no reply was vouchsafed, but, 
 
 1 As the subsequent controversy turned, in great measure, on the wording of 
 this Grace, it shall be cited in the original Latin : ' Cum per mortem Edwardi D. 
 Clarke nuper Professoris Mineralogiae munus istud iam vacans existit ; Placeat 
 vobis ut alius ad idem munus exequendum a vobis eligatur.' 
 
 2 Whewell's Life, p. 76. 
 
 3 Professor Christian, from whose Explanation of the Law of Elections in the 
 University of Cambridge, 8vo. Camb. 1822, many of the facts here recited have 
 
PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY. 237 
 
 three days afterwards (27 May), a notice was issued by the 1822. 
 Vice-Chancellor, Dr French, Master of Jesus College, to the ^ l - 37- 
 effect that at the congregation on the ensuing day, a Grace 
 would be offered to rescind the previous Grace or, in other 
 words, to discontinue the Professorship. It is strange that 
 the Heads, who are said to have been by no means unani- 
 mous in favour of the claim to nomination, should have taken 
 so high-handed a course when the Senate was so deeply 
 irritated. As might have been expected, the Grace was re- 
 jected by forty-three votes to seven. Thereupon the Heads 
 at once nominated Mr Henslow and Mr Lunn, both of St 
 John's College, and the Vice Chancellor announced that the 
 election would take place on the day following, at two o'clock. 
 In the interval the members of the Senate who had drawn up 
 the Representation met again to consider their position. It 
 was determined to select a candidate of their own ; and, 
 in the event of their votes for him being rejected, to take legal 
 measures for the vindication of their rights. 
 
 This conflict reveals a state of things so different from that 
 to which we are now accustomed to in the University, that 
 a few words of explanation are necessary. By the statutes of 
 the 1 2th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was provided, 
 that when certain offices were vacant, the Heads of Colleges 
 should nominate two persons, one of whom was subsequently 
 elected by the Senate. Among the officers so nominated was 
 the Vice-Chancellor. By statute the Heads might nominate 
 whom they pleased, but in practice they invariably chose one 
 of their own body, who was only too glad, on all occasions of 
 difficulty, to shelter himself behind the other members of his 
 own order. Gradually, therefore, the Heads had acquired the 
 position of assessors to the Vice-Chancellor, and were, practi- 
 cally, the rulers of the University. Whether they executed 
 these high functions moderately, or tyrannically, need not 
 
 been borrowed, has the following passage (p. 25): "The whole number of a 
 different opinion could not probably be 25, for the whole number who voted for 
 and against the petition against the late Catholic Bill were 66 to 33." 
 
238 PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY. 
 
 1822. here be discussed ; all that need be pointed out is that they 
 
 * 37- were regarded with jealousy by the Senate, as an oligarchy 
 
 anxious to retain privileges which depended on custom rather 
 
 than on statute, and eager to embrace every opportunity of 
 
 extending them. 
 
 Through the whole course of the dispute Sedgwick was a 
 prominent member of the opposition. Que diable allait-il 
 faire dans cette galere ? is naturally the first question of every 
 one interested in his more important pursuits. The answer is 
 not far to seek. In the first place, before the controversy 
 began he had had an interview with Dr French, on Henslow's 
 behalf, which seemed friendly enough at the time, but which, 
 as events proved, brought him into the very front of the con- 
 troversy. Secondly, as has been already stated more than 
 once, Sedgwick had a horror of wrong, or even the semblance 
 of wrong, and he had succeeded in persuading himself that 
 the Heads were making an unjustifiable attempt to deprive 
 the Senate of one of its privileges. It is impossible to 
 approve the whole of his subsequent conduct especially his 
 personal controversy with Dr French; but in the initial stages 
 of the affair he showed an independence of spirit combined 
 with a courteous demeanour towards those who differed from 
 him, which cannot be too highly praised, and which is the 
 more striking when contrasted with the uncompromising de- 
 fiance of his opponents. 
 
 Every effort was made by the opposition to avoid a con- 
 flict. After their last meeting, a deputation waited on the 
 Vice-Chancellor, urging him to assemble the Heads, and 
 devise some plan of conciliation. He replied that it was now 
 too late to get them together before the election, but that 
 on the following day he would consult those who might be 
 present in the Senate House. Six Heads only came to the 
 Congregation, and after a long discussion, the Vice-Chancellor 
 decided to proceed with the election, with the proviso, it is 
 said, that if no member of the Senate voted for either of the 
 candidates nominated, the election should be adjourned to 
 
PROFESSORSHIP OF MINERALOGY. 239 
 
 that day fortnight. The Senior Proctor having read out the 1822. 
 names of the persons nominated by the Heads, Sedgwick and ^..3 
 Mr Carrighan of St John's College handed in a written pro- 
 test against the form of the election about to take place. A 
 single vote was then recorded for Henslow, and a considerable 
 number for a third person. These were disallowed. At the 
 close of the election the Vice-Chancellor declared Henslow 
 duly elected, and admitted him with the usual formalities. 
 
 The Heads, as well as their opponents, must have known 
 that the matter could not end in this unsatisfactory fashion. 
 Two days afterwards (30 May) a committee of their oppo- 
 nents met, and decided that any legal measures which they 
 might resort to against the Heads should be conducted 'in the 
 spirit of the utmost amity and courtesy '. Sedgwick does not 
 state explicitly that this proposal emanated from himself, but 
 the tone of his Letter to the Cambridge Chronicle, and some 
 expressions in his first pamphlet against Dr French, warrant 
 us in assuming that such was the case. At a subsequent 
 meeting, held 15 June, Sedgwick, Mr Carrighan, and Mr 
 Lodge were deputed to wait on the Vice-Chancellor, in order 
 to propose that the question should be tried by a joint appli- 
 cation to the Court of King's Bench. The answer, however, 
 was not conciliatory, and therefore the Court was moved by 
 the committee alone, who obtained a Rule (21 June) calling 
 on the Vice-Chancellor to show cause why a Mandamus 
 should not issue for the admission of their nominee to the 
 Professorship. In these proceedings Sedgwick took a pro- 
 minent part, with some unwillingness, as would appear from 
 what he himself says : 
 
 " In the commencement of the legal proceedings, I expected to 
 be called upon to make an affidavit on the intention of the party 
 which proposed the Grace (of May 15, 1822), and on the construction 
 put upon it, at the time, by the Senate. But the affidavit connected 
 with the general merits was prepared for another Member of the 
 Senate. In consequence of an unlooked-for delay in his arrival in 
 London, it was re-modelled and sworn by myself. Thus, by mere 
 accident, I was placed in the position of plaintiff; and in all the 
 future proceedings I have watched the progress of the cause with 
 
240 DR FRENCHES ADDRESS TO THE SENATE. 
 
 1823. deep interest, but with no feelings of ill-will towards those who were 
 \.. 38. PP ose d to the Senate 1 ." 
 
 The hearing of the case was not concluded until the end of 
 April, 1823; and, for reasons into which it is needless to enter, 
 judgment was neither given, nor applied for. At the moment, 
 however, when the University seemed on the point of hearing 
 the last of a painful controversy, a personal conflict broke out 
 between Sedgwick and Dr French, which, though it extended 
 through 1823 and into 1824, had better be disposed of in this 
 place. In May 1823, shortly after the conclusion of the case 
 in the Court of King's Bench, Sedgwick unfortunately thought 
 proper to address a long letter to the Cambridge Chronicle, 
 with the view, as he said, of supplying some omissions in his 
 affidavit. In this letter, which had better have been never 
 written, he gave his own version of his conversation with 
 Dr French at Jesus College Lodge ; urging particularly that 
 no hint of doubt as to the mode of election had then been 
 dropped, that the Senate had accepted the Grace of 15 May, 
 1822, under the belief that it would be followed by an open poll, 
 and, this being the case, that Dr French ought not to have 
 joined those * who endeavoured to force upon the University a 
 construction of his Grace which was at variance with his own 
 meaning when he proposed it, and with the understanding of 
 the Senate when they accepted and ratified it'. In reply to 
 this letter Dr French issued (18 June) An Address to the 
 Senate. This curious composition is written in the third 
 person, as though the author was in so exalted a position 
 that he could not even use the same pronouns as the rest of 
 the University an assumption of dignity which becomes 
 ridiculous when it is remembered that he was Sedgwick's 
 junior by three years. At the same time the pamphlet is not 
 deficient in ability. But, clever as the author certainly showed 
 himself in handling a bad case, he made one very damaging 
 admission : 
 
 1 A Reply to an Address to the Senate, published by the Master of Jesus College, 
 8vo. Camb. 1823, p. 78. 
 
DR FRENCH'S ADDRESS TO THE SENATE. 241 
 
 " Dr French neither intended that his Grace should give the 1823. 
 right of Election more burgensium, nor did he intend the contrary, ^t. 38. 
 Aware that a difference of opinion existed as to the proper mode of 
 Election in such cases as this of the Professorship of Mineralogy, he 
 intended simply to ascertain, without prejudice to the claims of any 
 party, whether the Senate were desirous of continuing the office. 
 When a Grace to this effect had passed, he determined, under these 
 circumstances, not to proceed further without the sanction of the 
 Heads. And, accordingly, as soon as there was a majority of the 
 Heads of Colleges in the University, Dr French, as Vice-Chancellor, 
 called a meeting, for the express purpose of asking their deliberate 
 judgment upon the proper method of proceeding 1 ." 
 
 This paragraph granted all that Sedgwick was contending 
 for, namely, that he had been allowed to carry away the 
 impression that the Grace to continue the Professorship of 
 Mineralogy, being in the same form as that used on a similar 
 occasion for Botany, would be followed, as that was, by an 
 open poll. Had Dr French been more cautious, or more 
 candid, he would have taken good care to avoid a mis- 
 understanding on so important a question ; and, above all, 
 he would not have selected a form of words for his Grace 
 with which the very meaning he did not wish to convey 
 would infallibly be associated. 
 
 Sedgwick's feelings on reading Dr French's pamphlet will 
 be best understood from the following letter, addressed to Dr 
 Monk, then Dean of Peterborough, one of those who had 
 signed the Representation. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., October 23, 1823. 
 Dear Mr Dean, 
 
 I am just returned to the University after an absence 
 of more than five months. You will, I doubt not, have seen 
 Dr French's reply to the letter which I addressed to the 
 Senate. I am about to commence my reply to it this morning. 
 My opponent has come out with a bold tone, and has taken 
 a lofty flight. Unless I am most egregiously mistaken I can 
 easily bring him down from his perch not by swaggering 
 invectives and solemn asseverations, but by a plain unvarnished 
 
 1 An Address to the Senate, p. 10. 
 
 s. i. 16 
 
242 SEDGWICK'S ANSWER TO DR FRENCH. 
 
 1823. tale which he will have reason to remember to the last day of 
 his life. I now formally accuse him of mental reservation 
 towards myself, and of unfair and disingenuous dealing 
 towards Henslow and the Senate. I am, however, resolved 
 not to let the strength of my phrase go " beyond the staple of 
 my argument", and to conduct the controversy with proper 
 forbearance. On the abstract merits of the question in liti- 
 gation I shall riot be able to speak at length, but I shall 
 endeavour to notice them some way or other. Have you any 
 information to communicate on the subject ? Would you 
 have the goodness to give me a synoptical view of the proofs 
 by which the rank of Professors is established, and their 
 distinction from the Lectores of the 4Oth Chapter of Elizabeth's 
 statutes is made out 1 ? I am now very anxious to get forward 
 with my pamphlet. You will therefore greatly add to the 
 obligation by sending your information as soon as you can 
 possibly make it convenient. Did I not know your zeal in a 
 good cause I should not have ventured to trouble you. 
 
 Present my best remembrances to Mrs Monk, and believe 
 me, Dear Mr Dean, 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick was as good as his word. Before the end of 
 term he had produced a pamphlet of eighty-six closely-printed 
 octavo pages, which may still be safely recommended to the 
 perusal of those who care for University history. It is a straight- 
 forward, dignified, composition, with here and there some nobly 
 eloquent passages ; contrasting very favourably, on the whole, 
 with the strut and swagger of Dr French's laboured periods. 
 There may be a few errors of detail, but the main arguments 
 against the claim of the Heads are learned and accurate. 
 
 1 This Statute directs that the election of lectores, bedelli, and other specified 
 officers shall be conducted in the same manner as that of the Vice-Chancellor i.e. 
 by open poll after nomination by the Heads. It was Sedgwick's object to prove 
 that these lectores were quite different from the Professores^ whose offices had not 
 been created when the Statute was framed. 
 
DR FRENCH'S REPLY. 243 
 
 The personal question is ably managed. No railing accusation 1824. 
 is brought against Dr French, but the ' plain unvarnished tale ' ^ fc> 39- 
 which Sedgwick tells leads irresistibly to a conclusion most 
 unfavourable to his reputation as a man of honour. But, on 
 the other hand, the whole pamphlet is far too long. This 
 defect is partly due to the fact that it was written in the 
 intervals of the author's lectures. As soon as the materials of 
 one sheet were brought together, he tells us, they were sent to 
 the printer ; and during their passage through the press, he 
 was employed in preparing matter for the next sheet 1 . But 
 this is a defect which detracted from all Sedgwick's writings, 
 except his scientific papers. He never knew when to stop. 
 
 Dr French promptly published Observations upon Professor 
 Sedgwick's Reply (21 January, 1824), but prudently refrained 
 from comment on the personal question. His pamphlet is 
 almost wholly devoted to the legal difficulty, which depended, 
 in great measure, on the interpretation of the fortieth chapter 
 of the Statutes of Elizabeth. Sedgwick replied (25 February, 
 1824), in another pamphlet of considerable length 2 , confining 
 himself, like his opponent, to law and precedent. Neither of 
 these works need be examined in detail, and our account of 
 the controversy shall be closed with a single quotation from 
 Sedgwick's first pamphlet partly as a specimen of his style, 
 partly from the intrinsic value of what he says. 
 
 "Some one may, perhaps, contend, that the bustle of public 
 elections but ill accords with the tranquil habits of this seat of 
 science ; and that the question ought to be conceded to the Heads, 
 out of regard to the peace of the University. Words of peace are 
 always to be suspected when they are accompanied with acts of 
 aggression. By conceding this question, we part with our own 
 privileges without finding any remedy for the evil complained of. 
 For it is notorious to the Members of the Senate, that no ordinary 
 academical elections have been contested with more warmth, than 
 those in which the Heads have nominated the two candidates. 
 
 " Had there existed any flagrant abuse had there been a con- 
 
 1 A Reply to an Address to the Senate, p. 79. 
 
 2 It is called : Remarks on the observations of Dr French : with an argument 
 on the Law of Elections to offices created by the Senate. 8vo. Camb. 1824. 
 
 1 6 2 
 
244 SEDGWICK'S SECOND PAMPHLET. 
 
 1824. spiracy on the part of certain colleges, to exclude others from their 
 JEt. 39. fair share of academical distinctions, there might have been some 
 plea for introducing new customs into the University. But in the 
 present case, no abuse was even pretended; we were on the point of 
 electing the very man, who was afterwards chosen by our opponents. 
 And the lists of those who have filled our Professorships undeniably 
 prove, that the Senate has, from time to time, selected out of its 
 ranks the man who, by his zeal and his talents, was best qualified to 
 promote the true interests of science, and to support the credit of our 
 establishment. 
 
 "It was on this principle that Martyn, Watson, Milner, Wollaston, 
 and Tennant, were elected ; and on the same principles their succes- 
 sors have been, and will continue to be elected, as long as the 
 privileges of the Senate are unextinguished. 
 
 "Had the Professorship of Mineralogy been the first office created 
 by a Grace of the Senate, I should not have hesitated to pronounce 
 an election by nomination, the worst form which was sanctioned by 
 the usage of the University. It has all the evils of an open poll, 
 with very little of the good. For it virtually gives the election to a 
 few individuals, and what is worse, it gives it to them indirectly. 
 
 " Were these individuals led by their known habits of life, and 
 their high official duties, to watch the progress and to examine the 
 refinements of modern science; we might, perhaps, be content to 
 surrender our privileges into their hands, and to repose with confi- 
 dence on their wisdom. Collectively, they are entitled to all respect, 
 as the Heads of our venerable establishments as the guardians of 
 our discipline and as the directors of the studies of our younger 
 members. Still more they are entitled to our veneration for their 
 virtues, and for their talents, by which alone many of them have 
 reached the greatest academical elevation. But this very elevation 
 removes them from direct sympathy with the Senate, and imposes on 
 them such high and important duties, that they have but little time 
 for the elaborate investigations of Physiology, of Botany, of Che- 
 mistry, and of Mineralogy. Nay, some of them may even think, that 
 these subjects are unfit for a course of public lectures and that the 
 Professors' chairs are nothing better than an academical incumbrance. 
 
 " Let the Senate look well to it, before, in any case, it surrenders 
 the power of election into the hands of those who, to say the least 
 of it, may be indifferent to the office, and therefore can have no 
 deep interest in selecting an active candidate. 
 
 " I am not now warning the Senate against an ideal danger. My 
 opponent has publicly told us, that he thought the continuance of the 
 Professorship of Mineralogy unnecessary. I may tell him in reply, 
 that the Senate thought differently that the republic of science 
 allows no such thing as official wisdom and that his own opinion 
 will be of little weight, unless it be founded on a deeper knowledge 
 of the subject, than that which is possessed by his opponents. As 
 for myself, I am well contented, on this question, to have acted with 
 the majority. 
 
SEDGWICK'S SECOND PAMPHLET. 245 
 
 "Individuals there are, at all times, who, not considering that 1824. 
 improvement is innovation, oppose themselves to every change, and ^Et. 39. 
 think every new appointment unnecessary. But the University of 
 Cambridge has not acted on such heartless suggestions during the 
 last century; and as long as her constitution remains unimpaired she 
 will never act upon them 1 ." 
 
 One word more is necessary before we dismiss this tedious 
 affair. Three years after the publication of Sedgwick's last 
 pamphlet in which a decision favourable to the views of 
 himself and his friends was confidently anticipated the con- 
 troversy was closed by an award of Sir John Richardson, 
 to whom the matter had been referred by the Senate. His 
 decision may be fairly described as a verdict for the defen- 
 dants the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads for he directed 
 that future elections to the Professorships of Anatomy, 
 Botany, and Mineralogy, should be conducted according to 
 the method prescribed in the 4Oth Chapter of the Statutes. 
 
 1 Reply, etc., pp. 75 78. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (18221827.) 
 
 GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF THE LAKE DISTRICT (1822 1824). 
 CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY (1822). DEATH OF 
 HIS SISTER ISABELLA (1823). GEOLOGICAL PAPERS. WORK 
 IN THE WOODWARDIAN MUSEUM (1823 1827). LECTURE 
 TO LADIES. VISIT TO EDINBURGH WITH WHEWELL (1824). 
 VISIT TO SUSSEX WITH DR FITTON (1825). CONTESTED 
 ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY. VlSIT TO PARIS WITH WHEWELL 
 (1826). ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY (1827). SOCIAL LIFE 
 AT CAMBRIDGE. HYDE HALL. REVIEW OF SEDGWICK'S 
 
 GEOLOGICAL WORK (l8l8 1827). 
 
 SEDGWICK'S first geological work in the north of England 1 , 
 briefly noticed in the last chapter, was succeeded by a 
 thorough examination of the Lake District. "I spent the 
 summers of 1822, 1823, and 1824," he says, "entirely among 
 the Lake Mountains, and I made a detailed Geological Map 
 of that rugged region including a considerable portion 
 of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and a small portion of 
 Lancashire 2 ." The scientific value of these explorations 
 may be estimated from the papers read to the Geological 
 Society between 1826 and 1828, and from the five letters 
 addressed long afterwards to Wordsworth, of which the first 
 three embody the results of the work done between 1822 
 
 1 In that year, 1821, he began the researches into the relations of the Magnesian 
 Limestone which were continued during 1822 and 1823. Trans. Geol. Soc, Land. 
 Ser. 2. iii. 37. 
 
 2 To Archdeacon Musgrave, 5 October, 1856. 
 
EXPLORATION OF LAKE DISTRICT. 247 
 
 and 1824*. But of personal details the record is almost a 182210 
 blank. A brief but pleasant glimpse of Sedgwick at his work l824 ' 
 is afforded to us in one of Whewell's letters, written from 39. 
 Kendal in 1824: 'I got here on Thursday last, and next day 
 saw Wordsworth at Rydal, and Southey at Keswick, by 
 whom I was informed where to look for Sedgwick. I found 
 him on Saturday at the base of Skiddaw, in company with 
 Gwatkin 2 , as I had expected 3 ,' but after this the writer passes 
 on to other subjects. This dearth of information is the more 
 provoking, as we know that many agreeable memories, both 
 of adventures and of friends, clustered round these months in 
 Lakeland. 
 
 It was then that Sedgwick formed an intimate friendship 
 with Wordsworth, at whose house he was always welcome, 
 and who, to a certain extent, directed and assisted his 
 explorations. Wordsworth has been credited with a cordial 
 dislike for men of science, who looked upon Nature with 
 other eyes than his ; and the first of Sedgwick's letters opens 
 with a sort of apology for writing on geology to one who had 
 uttered " a poetic ban against my brethren of the hammer " : 
 
 He who with pocket-hammer smites the edge 
 Of luckless rock or prominent stone, disguised 
 In weather-stains or crusted o'er by Nature 
 With her first growths, detaching by the stroke 
 A chip or splinter, to resolve his doubts; 
 And, with that ready answer satisfied, 
 The substance classes by some barbarous name. 
 And hurries on ; or from the fragments picks 
 His specimen, if but haply interveined 
 With sparkling mineral, or should crystal cube 
 Lurk in its cells and thinks himself enriched, 
 Wealthier, and doubtless wiser, than before ! 4 
 
 1 These three letters On the Geology of the Lake District, addressed by Sedgwick 
 to Wordsworth in May, 1842, were published in A complete Guide to the Lakes... 
 with Mr Wordsworth's description of the scenery of the country, etc., edited by the 
 publisher, John Hudson of Kendal. A fourth letter was added in 1846, and a 
 fifth in 1853. 
 
 2 The Rev. Richard Gwatkin, Fellow of St John's College, B.A. 1814. 
 
 3 Whewell's Life, p. 96. 
 
 4 The Excursion, Book the Third. 
 
248 WORDSWORTH AND S OUT HEY. 
 
 1822 to This denunciation of a class did not prevent the poet from 
 l824 ' taking an interest in the pursuits of individual geologists; 
 39. and the gratitude and admiration which Sedgwick felt for 
 him can fortunately be recorded in his own words. In the 
 third of the above letters he says: "Some of the happiest 
 summers of my life were passed among the Cumbrian moun- 
 tains, and some of the brightest days of those summers were 
 spent in your society and guidance. Since then, alas, twenty 
 years have rolled away ; but I trust that many years of intellec- 
 tual health may still be granted you ; and that you may continue 
 to throw your gleams of light through the mazes of human 
 thought to weave the brightest wreaths of poetic fancy and 
 to teach your fellow-men the pleasant ways of truth and 
 goodness, of nature, and pure feeling ; " and again, in the last 
 of the series, written in 1853, when Wordsworth was no more, 
 after some regretful musings on his own enfeebled powers, 
 should he ever revisit Lakeland, he is led to speak of the 
 friends of whom the district would remind him : " It was near 
 the summit of Helvellyn that I first met Dal ton 1 a truth- 
 loving man of rare simplicity of manners ; who, with humble 
 instruments and very humble means, ministered, without 
 flinching, in the service of high philosophy, and by the 
 strength of his own genius won for himself a name greatly 
 honoured among all the civilized nations of the earth. 
 
 " It was, also, during my geological rambles in Cumberland 
 that I first became acquainted with Southey, that I some- 
 times shared in the simple intellectual pleasures of his 
 household, and profited by his boundless stores of knowledge. 
 He was, to himself, a very hard task-master: but on rare 
 occasions (as I learnt by happy experience) he could relax 
 the labours of his study, and plan some joyful excursion 
 among his neighbouring mountains. 
 
 " Most of all, during another visit to the Lakes, should 
 I have to mourn the loss of Wordsworth ; for he was so far 
 a man of leisure as to make every natural object around him 
 1 See above, p. 66. 
 

 DETAILS OF LAKE DISTRICT. 249 
 
 subservient to the habitual workings of his own mind ; and he 1822 to 
 was ready for any good occasion that carried him among his 
 well-loved mountains. Hence it was that he joined me in 39. 
 many a lusty excursion, and delighted me (amidst the dry 
 and sometimes almost sterile details of my own study) with 
 the outpourings of his manly sense, and with the beauteous 
 and healthy images which were ever starting up within his 
 mind during his communion with nature, and were embodied, 
 at the moment, in his own majestic and glowing language." 
 
 Sedgwick frequently visited the Lakes again, sometimes 
 for geological study, sometimes for the pleasure of looking at 
 scenes in which he had taken so much delight, or of showing 
 them to others. Many opportunities of recording his im- 
 pressions of the district will therefore occur, and it might 
 seem unnecessary to remove letters referring to it from their 
 proper chronological position. On the whole, however, having 
 regard to the dearth of contemporary information respecting 
 the visits of 1822 1824, it seems best to print the two following 
 letters in this place, as they give, incidentally, so many details 
 respecting those years. Both were written for the instruction 
 of geologists who were anxious to explore the Lake district 
 for themselves. 
 
 To Rev. P. B. Brodie 1 . 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, September 10, 1854. 
 My dear Brodie, 
 
 First of all, find out my old good friend Jonathan Otley, 
 the author of the best guide to the Lakes that ever was written 3 . 
 Tell him you are my friend, and that I wished you to call on him ; 
 and you may read to him this letter. He will show you maps, &c. 
 He knows the physical geology of Cumberland, and all the Lake- 
 land, admirably well. He was the leader in all we know of the 
 country. I wish, with all my heart, that my letters to Mr Words- 
 worth on the Geology of Lakeland had been printed in Otley's 
 
 1 Rev. Peter Bellenger Brodie, Trinity College, B.A. 1838, M.A. 1842. 
 
 2 A descriptive guide to the English Lakes and adjacent Mountains: with 
 notices of the Botany, Mineralogy, and Geology of the district. By Jonathan 
 Otley. Eighth edition. Keswick, 1849. In earlier editions (the second was 
 published in 1825) it was called : A concise description of the English Lakes, etc. 
 
250 DETAILS OF LAKE DISTRICT. 
 
 1822 to Guide; but I promised Mr Wordsworth in 1822, before I knew Mr 
 1824. Jonathan Otley. Ask for a loan of my Letters to Mr Wordsworth ; 
 .. 37 but they are printed in Hudson's Guide see last edition, which 
 39- contains a 5th Letter. Secondly: find out Charles Wright a guide 
 formerly ; and now, I am told, a guide director. You must take what 
 he says cum grano salis, for he is a bouncer. All Otley tells you, you 
 may take for Gospel ; for he only tells what he knows. He is a very 
 clever truth-loving old man. Look at the mining operations at the 
 back of Skiddaw. About Hesket Newmarket you have good 
 Mountain Limestone, and a touch of the Old Red. N.B. Old Red 
 Sandstone above Kirkby Lonsdale bridge, at bottom of Ulswater, 
 near Shap Wells &c. &c. &c. If you visit it look for fish-scales. I 
 had good eyes when I worked Lakeland ; but at that time we knew 
 not of the Old Red fishes ; and I therefore never looked for them. 
 No fossils in the Skiddaw slate, except a few graptolites and fucoids. 
 Ruthven found them for me, and Otley will tell you the localities. 
 If you could give me a list of the minerals turned out at the mines 
 on both sides of Carrock Fell I should be obliged to you for it. It 
 might be of great use to me. Also I should greatly thank you for a 
 good account of the cleavage planes of the slates in Binsey, at the 
 bottom of Bassenthwaite Lake. Thirdly : my old heart-of-oak 
 friend John Ruthven lives at Kendal. See him by all means. He 
 has all Westmoreland at his fingers' ends, and will tell you of all the 
 fossil localities between the Coniston Limestone and the Old Red 
 and Mountain Limestone of Kirkby Lonsdale. No fossils have, as 
 yet, been seen in the slates &c. which alternate with the porphyries 
 between the Skiddaw slate and the Coniston limestone ; but if you 
 cross them keep your eyes open ; and possibly you may find some 
 rare fossil. For when I crossed them again and again (30 years 
 since) I was looking for sections rather than for fossils. And it is a 
 good rule to keep a good look-out, and never to take for granted 
 that no fossils are to be had. If Mr Gough 1 (the surgeon) be at 
 Kendal, you ought to see him, but I think he is now away in bad 
 health. You ought to see the Kendal Museum. I am President of 
 the Society ; and this letter will secure you an introduction and all 
 needful attention. 
 
 There ! I have done my best, in a rough way, to answer your 
 questions, and I must now complete my dress and prepare for 
 morning Chapel. 
 
 Ever truly yours 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To Professor Harkness. 
 
 SCALBY near Scarborough, August 29, 1856. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Your letter has been long in reaching me, so I fear the 
 information I can send you may come too late to be of any use. 
 
 1 Thomas Gough, of Kendal, an intimate friend of Sedgwick's. 
 
DETAILS OF LAKE DISTRICT. 251 
 
 (i) I advise you to go to Kendal and to call on John Ruthven the 1822 to 
 well-known collector of the northern palaeozoic fossils. He knows 1824. 
 the country well, and is the only person (so far as I know) who has ^Et. 37 
 found fossils in the Skiddaw slate. (2) You may procure Hudsorts 39- 
 Guide to the Lakes ; and in some letters published in an appendix to 
 it you may see a general account of the several formations, tho' I am 
 not sure that there is any notice of the Skiddaw slate fossils and 
 their localities. (3) If old Jonathan Otley, author of an excellent 
 little book, be still living (I saw him last year when he was turned 
 ninety) he can give you good advice as to localities, and so can 
 Charles Wright, one of the Keswick Guides, who went with me in 
 some of my excursions in 1824. Since that year I have hardly 
 looked at the Skiddaw slates. You should look at the new black- 
 lead works somewhere behind Saddle Back, and see the manufactory 
 at Keswick. I do not remember the name of the locality, though I 
 saw it (in 1823) along with Mr Otley. These works are, I suspect, 
 not in a vein, but in a variety of anthracitic slate. So they will give 
 you the term of comparison you are looking for. I found black 
 slates in the great Skiddaw Group, from which the dark carbonaceous 
 colours were discharged by heat. Hence I concluded that such 
 beds very probably would contain fossils ; so I set Ruthven to work, 
 and he found fossils graptolites and fucoids not far from the spots 
 I pointed out to him. But he found no shells or crustaceans. 
 Since then I have had some doubts about the age of the Skiddaw 
 Group. It is of enormous thickness, and may well contain one or 
 two groups of very distinct epochs both physically and palaeontologic- 
 ally. (4) When you are seeking Skiddaw slate fossils I recommend 
 you to take up your quarters at Scale Inn, at the foot of Crummock 
 Lake. Hammer well the gritty rocks which appear in the several 
 deep ravines which run up the mountains on the left side of the road 
 from Scale Inn to Buttermere ; they promise well for fossils. I 
 never examined them for fossils in 1823 and 1824, because I 
 foolishly thought that they were all below the region of animal life. 
 At that time I had not quite learned to shake off the Wernerian 
 nonsense^ I had been taught. (5) Visit Black Coomb in the S. W. 
 corner of Cumberland. It is of Skiddaw slate, brought up by 
 enormous dislocations, and its ravines are of good promise. To the 
 south it is overlaid by the green slate and porphyry zone well 
 marked, but of degenerate thickness ; and over the green slate you 
 have in the S. W. extremity of Cumberland the Coniston limestone, 
 &c., and some appearances, in the cleavage planes, which I think 
 defy the mere pressure theory. That there has been enormous 
 compression, along with cleavage planes, no one can doubt, when 
 the fossils are flattened and distorted. But they are not always 
 distorted and flattened. You have to account for unflattened con- 
 cretions, marking, though rarely, the average direction and dip of the 
 
 1 In a letter to Lyell, written in 1845, Sedgwick speaks of himself as having 
 been, in 1819, "eaten up with the Wernerian notions ready to sacrifice my senses 
 to that creed a Wernerian slave ". 
 
252 JOE AND THE GEOLOGIST. 
 
 1822 to cleavage planes. You have to account for the frequent change of 
 1824. cleavage dip when there is no change of conditions of pressure 
 t. 37 indicated in the sections ; and you have to account for a second 
 39- cleavage plane among beds that are by no means crystalline. 
 (6) Visit Coniston, and look at the enormous dislocations &c. You 
 have there (as also at Broughton in Furness, which you pass through 
 on your way from Black Coomb to Coniston) the Coniston lime- 
 stone, the Coniston flags, and the Coniston grits which form the 
 boundary between a lower and an upper system by whatever names 
 you choose to call them. If these hints be of use I shall rejoice. 
 
 Yours very truly 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 It will be readily conceived that a man so prominent as 
 Sedgwick, and one endowed with so keen a sense of humour, 
 became the subject of many jokes, both literary and artistic. 
 His early visits to Lakeland recall one of the former, a 
 humorous sketch, called Joe and the Geologist. The author 
 has preserved a strict incognito, and mentions no names ; 
 but Sedgwick's numerous friends in the north recognised the 
 accuracy of the portrait at once, and he himself laughed 
 heartily over it, though he denied the accuracy of certain 
 details, as, for instance, the white neckcloth and the " specks ". 
 " I never wore such things", he wrote, "while I was holding a 
 hammer in Cumberland 1 ." It should be mentioned that the 
 tale, like other legends, is sometimes told with a different 
 ending. This second, and probably later, version states that 
 the geologist, before he had travelled many miles, discovered 
 the fraud that had been perpetrated upon him, and travelled 
 back, in furious anger, to catch Joe and make him tell what 
 he had done with the contents of the leather bags. The boy 
 took good care not to be found, but the stones he had thrown 
 away were discovered in a heap by the wayside. 
 
 Ya het foorneun, when we war oa' gaily thrang at heam, an oald 
 gentleman mak' of a fellow com' in tul oor foald an' said, whyte 
 
 1 To Rev. G. H. Ainger, 2 September, 1866. Mr Ainger, son of his old 
 friend, had sent him a copy of the sketch. In writing to acknowledge it, Sedgwick 
 says: "Thanks for your very amusing specimen of the Cummerland tongue, and 
 the twit against the knights of the hammer." 
 
JOE AND THE GEOLOGIST. 253 
 
 nateral, 'at he wantit somebody to ga wid him on't fells. We oa' 1822 to 
 stopt an' teuk a gud leuk at him afoor anybody spak ; at last fadder l8 H- 
 said, middlin' sharp-like (he ola's speaks that way when we're owte ^t. 37 
 sae thrang, does fadder) " We've summat else to deii here nor to 39- 
 ga rakin ower t' fells iv a fine day like this, wid neabody kens whoa." 
 T'gentleman was a queerish like oald chap, wid a sharp leuk oot, grey 
 hair and a smo' feace drist i' black, wid a white neckcloth like a 
 parson, an' a par of specks on t'top of a gay lang nwose 'at wasn't 
 set varra fair atween his e'en, sooa 'at when he leuk't ebbem at yan 
 through his specks he rayder turn't his feace to t'ya side. He leuk't 
 that way at fadder, gev a lal chearful bit of a laugh an' said, iv his 
 oan mak' o' toke, 'at he dudn't want to hinder wark, but he wad 
 give anybody 'at ken't t' fells weel, a matter o' five shillin' to ga wid 
 him, an' carry two lal bags. " 'Howay wid tha, Joe," sez fadder to 
 me, "it's a croon mair nor iver thou was wurth at heain !" I mead 
 nea words about it, but gat me-sel' a gud lump of a stick, an' away 
 we set, t'oald lang nwos't man an' me, ebbem up t'deal. 
 
 As we war' climmin' t'fell breist, he geh me two empty bags to 
 carry, mead o' ledder. Thinks I to my me-sel', " I'se gan to eddle 
 me five shillin' middlin cannily." I niver thowte he wad finnd owte 
 on t' fells to full his lal bags wid, but I was mistean ! 
 
 He turn't oot to be a far lisher oald chap nor a body wad ha' 
 thowte, to leuk at his gray hair and his white hankecker an' his 
 specks. He went lowpin' ower wet spots an' gurt steans, an' 
 scrafnin across craggs an' screes, tul yan wad ha' sworn he was 
 summat a kin tul a Herdwick tip. 
 
 Efter a while he begon leukin' hard at oa't steans an' craggs we 
 com' at, an' than he teuk till breckan lumps off them wid a queer 
 lal hammer he hed wid him, an' stuffin t'bits intil t'bags 'at he geh 
 me to carry. He fairly cap't me noo. I dudn't ken what to mak' 
 o' sec a customer as t'is ! At last I cudn't help axin him what mead 
 him cum sea far up on t'fell to lait bits o' steans when he may'd 
 finnd sea many doon i't deals ? He laugh't a gay bit, an' than went 
 on knappin' away wid his lal hammer, an' said he was a jolly jist. 
 Thinks I to me-sel' thou's a jolly jackass, but it maks nea matter to 
 me if thou no'but pays me t' five shillin' thou promish't ma. 
 
 Varra weel, he keep't on at this feckless wark tul gaily leat at 
 on i't efter-neun, an' be that time o' day he'd pang't beath o't ledder 
 pwokes as full as they wad hod wid bits o' stean. 
 
 I've nit sea offen hed a harder darrak efter t' sheep, owther at 
 clippin time or soavin time, as I hed followin' that oald grey heidit 
 chap an carryin' his ledder bags. But hooiver, we gat back tul oor 
 house afoor neeght. Mudder gev t' oald jolly jist, as he co't 
 his-sel', some breed an' milk, an' efter he'd tean that an toak't a lal 
 bit wid fadder aboot sheep farming an' sec like, he pait me five 
 shillin' like a man, an' than tel't ma he wad gie ma udder five 
 shillin' if I wad bring his pwokes full o' steans doon to Skeal-hill be 
 nine o'clock i't' mwornin'. 
 
 He set off to walk to Skeal-hill just as it was growin dark ; an' 
 
254 JOE AND THE GEOLOGIST. 
 
 1822 to neist mwornin', as seun as I'd gitten me poddish, I teuk t' seam 
 1824. rwoad wid his ledder bags ower me shoolder, thinkin' tul me-sel' 'at 
 t. 37 yan may'd mak' a lal fortune oot o' thur jolly jists if a lock mair on 
 39- them wad no'but come oor way. 
 
 It was anudder het mwornin', an' I hedn't wok't far till I begon 
 to think that I was as gurt a feul as t'oald jolly jist to carry brocken 
 steans o't way to Skeal-hill, when I may'd finnd plenty iv any rwoad 
 side, clwose to t' spot I was tackin' them tul. Sooa I shack't them 
 oot o' t' pwokes, an' then step't on a gay bit leeter widout them. 
 
 When I com nar to Skeal-hill, I fund oald Aberram Atkisson 
 sittin on a steul breckan steans to mend rwoads wid, an' I ax't him 
 if I med full my ledder pwokes frae his heap. Aberram was varra 
 kaim't an' tell't ma to tak them 'at wasn't brocken if I wantit steans, 
 sooa I tell't him hoo it was an' oa' aboot it. T' oald maizlin was 
 like to toytle off his steul wid laughin', an' said me mudder sud tak 
 gud care on ma, for I was ower sharp a chap to leeve varra lang i' 
 this warld ; but I'd better full my pwokes as I liked, an' mak' on 
 wid them. 
 
 T' jolly jist hed just gitten his breakfast when I gat to Skeal-hill, 
 an' they teuk ma intil t' parlour tul him. He gurned oa't feace 
 ower when I went in wid his bags, an' tel't me to set them doon in 
 a neuk, an' than ax't ma if I wad hev some breakfast. I said I'd 
 gittan me poddish, but I dudn't mind ; sooa he tel't them to bring in 
 some mair coffee, an' eggs, an' ham, an' twoastit breed an' stuff, an' 
 I gat sec a breakfast as I niver seed i' my time, while t' oald 
 gentleman was gittan his-sel ruddy to gang oft in a carriage 'at was 
 waitin at t' dooar for him. 
 
 When he com doon stairs he geh me tudder five shillin' an' 
 paid for my breakfast, an' what he'd gittan his-sel. Than he tel't 
 ma to put t' ledder bags wid t' steans in them on beside t' driver's 
 feet, an' in he gat, an' laugh't an' noddit, an away he went. 
 
 I niver owder seed nor heard mair of t' oald jolly jist, but I've 
 offen thowte ther mun be parlish few steans i' his country, when he 
 was sooa pleas't at gittin two lal ledder bags full for ten shillin', an' 
 sec a breakfast as that an'. It wad be a faymish job if fadder 
 could sell o' t' steans iv oor fell at five shillin' a pwokeful 
 wadn't it? 
 
 Sedgwick capped this imaginary narrative with an equally 
 amusing experience of his own : 
 
 " Two or three times I went with Mr Hunter (a statesman 
 at Mosedale) to break the syenites of Carrock Fell. On my 
 second visit I found his old fashioned chimney-piece decorated 
 with specimens of syenite. ' Do you think these curiosities ', 
 I said. 'Not a bit', he replied, 'they are as common as 
 cow-muck. But I put 'em here, aboon the chimlay, to tell my 
 
DETAILS OF LAKE DISTRICT. 
 
 255 
 
 nebbers what mak o' things a Cambridge skoller will laed 
 his hors we.' But old Hunter played no tricks. He fed me 
 and my horse well ; and he went with me and carried a great 
 sledge-hammer to break the hard syenites. The last time I 
 drove to Mosedale, he spied me before I reached his house, 
 and roared out : ' fain to see ye again ; how do ye cum on wi 
 yer cobbles ? ' ' 
 
 A suitable pendant to these anecdotes is a pen-and-ink 
 sketch of 't'oald jolly jist', just as Joe might have seen him 
 sitting in his carriage, with the bag of fossils at his feet. It is 
 believed to have been drawn by Mr J. E. Davis, and, if so, 
 belongs to a period long subsequent to that we are now con- 
 
 Sedgwick on a geological excursion, reduced from a 
 pen-and-ink sketch. 
 
 sidering. Fashions, however, did not alter rapidly in those 
 days, and it may well represent Sedgwick, hat (generally a 
 white one), coat, and all, as he appeared when exploring 
 
 1822 to 
 
 1824. 
 
 Et. 37- 
 
 39- 
 
256 SEDGWICK AT WASTWATER. 
 
 182210 Lakeland in 1822. It was on one of these expeditions that 
 24 ' the following experience occurred, which shall be told, as 
 39. Sedgwick used to tell it, in a dramatic form : 
 
 SCENE. A room in a small wayside inn near Wastwater. Enter 
 Professor SEDGWICK, dressed as in the above sketch, very hungry, 
 calling for the landlady. 
 S. What have you got to eat ? 
 L. There's nothing in the house. 
 S. Nothing ! What did you have today for dinner ? 
 L. Potatoes and bacon. 
 
 S. Very well. You didn't eat it all, I suppose. Warm me up 
 what's left. 
 
 Exit Landlady, returning presently with the remains of the potatoes and 
 bacon, and a pot of ale. Sedgwick eats heartily. 
 S. (having finished his dinner.} What's to pay, missus? 
 L. Happen eight pence wouldn't hurt ye ? 
 S. Nay, here's a shilling for ye. 
 
 Landlady takes the shilling, and produces four greasy pennies from her 
 
 pocket, which she lays on the table. 
 
 S. (pushing them back.} Nay, nay, you may keep them. 
 L. (after a long and earnest look at him.} I'm thinking that you've 
 seen better days. 
 
 On returning to Cambridge after the first of the above- 
 mentioned tours Sedgwick was fully occupied for a time with 
 lectures and geological work generally. But before the end 
 of October a serious interruption occurred, in the shape of a 
 contested election for the University 1 . It was not natural for 
 him to keep long out of any political contest, and this par- 
 ticular occasion offered irresistible attractions. The burning 
 question of the day was Catholic Emancipation, in favour of 
 which, as related in the third chapter, he had already taken a 
 prominent and decided line in the University. The excitement 
 in the country was so great that a complete settlement of this 
 important matter could not be much longer delayed ; but the 
 conservatives had no intention of yielding without an obsti- 
 nate struggle, and a constituency such as that of Cambridge, 
 composed in the main of clergymen, was easily roused to 
 enthusiastic action by the cry that the Church and the Protest- 
 
 1 John Henry Smyth, M.A. of Trinity College, who had been M.P. for the 
 University since 1812, died 20 October, 1822. 
 
CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY. 257 
 
 ant ascendency were both in danger. Several candidates 1822. 
 presented themselves, but these were presently reduced to ^t- 37- 
 three : Mr Manners Sutton, Speaker of the House of Commons, 
 Lord Hervey, and Mr Robert Grant 1 . The success of the 
 Speaker, a conservative, was considered certain, when he felt 
 himself obliged to retire (2 November), in consequence of an 
 unexpected difficulty respecting his office. Two days after- 
 wards Mr Scarlett 2 came forward. At this juncture it seemed 
 probable that the University would find itself in an anomalous 
 position. The three candidates now in the field were all in 
 favour of Catholic Emancipation, as was the sitting member, 
 Viscount Palmerston. Unless therefore a conservative could 
 be found, and returned, a body which annually petitioned the 
 House of Commons against the Catholic claims would 
 be represented by two members voting against its own 
 petition. Before long, however, Mr William John Bankes 3 
 came forward, as determined an opponent of concession as 
 could be desired ; and, before the day of election Mr Grant 
 retired. The three candidates left after these various changes 
 were all of Trinity College. Mr Scarlett, whom the whigs 
 seem to have specially adopted, and for whom Sedgwick and 
 his friends exerted themselves to the utmost, was already 
 a distinguished advocate, and had had three years experience 
 of Parliament as member for Peterborough. But he was not 
 popular, and besides, he had not come forward until most 
 votes were already pledged. Lord Hervey, who had pro- 
 ceeded to his degree as a nobleman only a few months before 
 the election, was called a whig, but could have had no recom- 
 mendation whatever except his relationship to Lord Liverpool, 
 and this accident, it is whispered, caused several influential 
 whigs to support him ' for private and personal reasons.' As 
 one of the pasquinades of the day put it : 
 
 1 Fellow of Magdalene College, third wrangler and second Chancellor's 
 Medallist in 1801. After a distinguished career at the bar and in parliament 
 he was knighted and made Governor of Bombay, where he died in 1838. 
 
 2 James Scarlett, created Lord Abinger 1835, of Trinity College, B.A. 1790. 
 
 3 B.A. 1808, M.A. 1811. 
 
 S. I. 17 
 
258 WILLIAM JOHN BANKES . 
 
 1822. Hervey, pushed forth by Bury School 
 
 Mt. 37. And backed by noble Liverpool, 
 
 First made his bow to Heads of Houses 
 And canvassed all their lovely spouses ; 
 The Ladies smirked, the Doctors smiled : 
 "What? give a vote to a mere child?" 
 "A child" quoth Blomfield " mark me, Sir, 
 He's nephew to the Minister 1 ." 
 
 Mr Bankes, immortalised by Macaulay on a subsequent 
 occasion as "our glorious, our Protestant, Bankes" was a 
 well-known, witty, popular, man of the world, and at that 
 time specially interesting as a traveller in the little-known 
 regions of the East His personal canvass has been described 
 as irresistible. " What could I do, Sir ? He got me into the 
 centre of the great pyramid, and then turned round and asked 
 me for my vote," was an unwilling supporter's description 
 of the way in which a promise had been extorted from him. 
 These pleasantries might suit the study of a college dignitary; 
 but for the main body of the electors he provided more sub- 
 stantial fare. He had no particular claims to represent the 
 University, and therefore wisely presented himself as "an 
 appendage to the anti-catholic idea 2 ." His printed circular 
 announced "the most steady and decided opposition to any 
 measures tending to undermine or alter the established 
 Church " ; a well-selected phrase of no uncertain meaning, 
 the value of which became evident at the close of the poll 
 (27 November, 1822), when the numbers were: Bankes, 419; 
 Hervey, 281 ; Scarlett, 219. Sedgwick's views on the contest 
 and the result are summed up in the following passage from a 
 letter written two months afterwards : 
 
 "You wanted to know something about our election. 
 Bankes was principally brought in by the interest of the 
 country clergymen, who came up from all parts of England to 
 
 1 Lord Hervey was eldest son of the fifth Earl of Bristol, created first 
 Marquess of Bristol 1826. His aunt married the second Earl of Liverpool. The 
 family seat is at Ickworth, near Bury St Edmund's. 
 
 2 This phrase occurs in a long and ably- written article on the election in 
 The Times, 29 November, 1822. 
 
WILLIAM JOHN BANKES. 259 
 
 vote for the anticatholic candidate. Undoubtedly all this was 1822. 
 the operation of principle (though I think a mistaken one), &* 37- 
 because all the Government influence was exerted for Lord 
 Hervey, the nephew of the Premier. The highest of our 
 Cambridge high-church men (such as Rennell 1 , Tatham 2 , 
 Calvert 3 , Wood 4 , etc. etc.) all went for Hervey, and thereby, 
 in my humble opinion, did themselves no honor. If Lord 
 Liverpool supported a relation, though favourable to Catholic 
 concession, they ought not to have left their avowed principles 
 to follow him. The whig candidate was not a popular one, 
 and was not heartily supported by the staunch men of his own 
 party. Our representative Bankes is certainly a very extra- 
 ordinary man, and possesses a wonderful fund of enter- 
 taining anecdote. When an undergraduate he was half sus- 
 pected of being a Papist: and he almost frightened Dr 
 Ramsden 5 to death, by building in his rooms an altar at which 
 he daily burned incense, and frequently had the singing-boys 
 dressed in their surplices to chant services. For a long time, 
 while in the East, he wore a long beard, and passed as a 
 faithful follower of the law of Mahomet. I don't think we can 
 depend on him as a man of business, though as a literary 
 character, and a man of large fortune, he is a very proper 
 person to represent us in parliament. For several years he 
 had four artists in his pay in Asia Minor, and even now 
 he has men employed in his service in Upper Egypt, exca- 
 vating tombs and temples, etc 6 ." 
 
 The year 1823 opened gloomily for Sedgwick. He was 
 spending the Christmas vacation in Cambridge, arranging, 
 
 1 Thomas Rennell, Fellow of King's College ; B. A. 1810, Christian Advocate, 
 1816 21. 
 
 2 Ralph Tatham, Fellow of St John's College; B.A. 1800, Public Orator 
 1809 1836, and Master 1839 to ^ ls death 19 January, 1857. 
 
 3 Thomas Calvert, B.A. 1797, Fellow of St John's College, and Norrisian 
 Professor of Divinity 1815 24. 
 
 4 James Wood, B.A. 1782, Master of St John's College 181539. 
 
 5 Richard Ramsden, one of the Senior Fellows of Trinity College ; B.A. 1786, 
 D.D. 1807. 
 
 6 To Rev. W. Ainger, i February, 1823. 
 
 172 
 
26o DEATH OF HIS SISTER ISABELLA. 
 
 1823. with Henslow's assistance, the collection which the latter had 
 i. 38. formed in Anglesea, when he was hastily summoned to Dent. 
 His favourite sister Isabella had been for some time in a 
 declining state of health, but no immediate danger was 
 anticipated. Perhaps Sedgwick was not told the full truth. 
 At last, towards the middle of January, he learnt that she 
 was sinking fast. 
 
 " I left Cambridge without delay," he wrote to Ainger, 
 "but in consequence of the great quantity of drifted snow, 
 which detained us one day on the road, I did not reach home 
 till Friday afternoon. Nor could I even then have completed 
 my journey had I not left the coach behind, and pushed 
 through the snow, for the last three stages, on post-horses. I 
 did not reach home in time to see my poor sister, but I had 
 the mournful satisfaction of accompanying her remains to 
 the grave the day after my arrival. She was blessed with a 
 quiet and affectionate temper which greatly endeared her to 
 every one of us ; and during her painful illness she exhibited 
 a humble resignation to the will of God ; bearing with patience 
 her afflictions here, in the Christian hope of being received 
 with favour by her Maker in a place where there is neither 
 sorrow nor suffering. The shock produced by poor Bell's 
 death had such an effect on our sister Jane that she was 
 delivered of a daughter on the day following. She and the 
 child, I am happy to say, are both doing well. The young 
 one is to have the name of Margaret Isabella after my mother 
 and sister, and I hope to take upon me the duties of sponsor 
 before my return to Cambridge. My Father, who has now 
 almost completed his 8/th year, has borne his late affliction 
 with that patience we all expected from him. His mind is 
 better regulated than that of any man whom I have ever had 
 the happiness of knowing ; and, so far, he is enjoying, even 
 in this world, the fruits of a well-spent life 1 ". 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, i February, 1823. The dates given in the letter shew 
 that Sedgwick left Cambridge on Tuesday 21 January, and reached Dent on Friday 
 24 January. 
 
DEATH OF HIS SISTER ISABELLA. 261 
 
 Sedgwick says nothing about his own feelings in the above 1823. 
 letter ; but we know from other sources how bitterly he ^ 3 
 deplored the loss of a sister who had been the companion 
 of his childhood, and for thirty years in after-life the object of 
 the best affections of his heart 1 . To him with his tender 
 and affectionate nature her almost sudden death was one of 
 those calamities under which a strong man does not break 
 down, but which he can never forget. Sedgwick's affection for 
 his sister was transferred, so to speak, to the child-niece 
 whose birth coincided with her death, and who became, as she 
 grew up, his chosen friend and indispensable companion. 
 After the death of her own father and mother, she resided 
 with her uncle whenever it was possible to do so, and made 
 his declining years happy by her tenderness and care. She 
 might well have been, as he was fond of calling her, his own 
 child. 
 
 After this long digression, which the sequence of events 
 has rendered necessary, we must return to Sedgwick's geo- 
 logical work. In 1823 and 1824, as mentioned above, he 
 continued his exploration of "the most intricate portions of 
 Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire 2 /' but he did not 
 commit any of his conclusions to paper until 1831. In 1825 
 and 1826 he made no fresh geological explorations unless we 
 class under that head a very brief excursion in Sussex with 
 Dr Fitton. During these four years, moreover, he worked out 
 the information gathered in the period preceding his length- 
 ened exploration of Lakeland, and was continually employed 
 in writing papers 3 , either for the Cambridge Philosophical 
 Society, the Geological Society of London, or the Annals of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 Nor, while engaged upon these works in his study, did 
 he forget his Museum. His own reports, or those of the 
 
 1 These words are used with reference to his own sister in a letter (dated 
 5 November, 1855) to Mr Lyell, whose sister had just died. See above, p. 53. 
 
 2 Report to the Wood ward ian Auditors, I May, 1823. 
 
 3 A detailed list of Sedgwick's works, which we have tried to make complete, 
 is given at the conclusion of this Biography. 
 
262 ADDITIONS TO MUSEUM. 
 
 1822-1825. inspectors, chronicle in each year some important work done, 
 Mt. 37-40. or S ome valuable specimens added. Among these additions 
 should be specially mentioned Mr Henslow's Anglesea 
 collection, arranged by himself, as before mentioned, during 
 the Christmas Vacation of 1822 23 ; a palaeontological series 
 from the bone-caves of Yorkshire ; and a cast of " one of the 
 finest fossils preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des 
 Plantes, Paris," presented by Mr Chantrey 1 . Unfortunately 
 the University was, for the time, but little the better for these 
 treasures, on account of want of space in the miserable room 
 in which the Woodwardian collections were then stowed it 
 would be absurd to say displayed. This subject is dwelt 
 upon again and again in the reports of the Inspectors to 
 the Vice-Chancellor. We select, by way of illustration, a 
 single passage from their report for 1825 : 
 
 " While we request your notice of the valuable additions which 
 continue to be made to this Collection by the indefatigable labours 
 of your learned Professor, and regret that the Museum should be 
 incapable of containing them, we cannot forbear expressing our 
 hopes that the result of the Syndicate appointed to treat for the 
 purchase of the buildings adjoining the Public Library will be 
 favourable to that enlargement of the Museum which has been so 
 long desired. 
 
 " Of the disadvantage arising from the present crowded state of 
 this place it would be needless for us to remind you ; but we feel it 
 our duty to advert to an inconvenience which the Professor is 
 suffering from the necessity laid upon him of receiving in his private 
 rooms those specimens which have lately been received or collected 
 by himself." 
 
 Sedgwick's other occupations during these years are best 
 introduced by the following letters. Unfortunately none of 
 those written in 1824 have been preserved. His work in 
 Lakeland in the summer of 1823 prevented his presence at 
 the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone of The King's 
 Court of Trinity College better known as The New Court 
 which took place on Tuesday, 12 August, in that year. His 
 
 1 Sedgwick's Report to the Woodivardian Auditors, \ May, 1823. Un- 
 fortunately this is the only report by Sedgwick for those years that has been 
 preserved, but the series of those by the Inspectors is complete. 
 
LECTURE TO LADIES. 263 
 
 name, however, appears in the list of subscriptions as a 1825. 
 donor of twenty-five guineas ; and we learn, on the autho- &* 40- 
 rity of Professor Pryme, that he wished the name to be St 
 Michael's Court 1 , obviously in commemoration of Michael 
 House, which had owned the ground on which the new 
 buildings were to stand. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., February 19, 1825. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I am really for once ashamed of myself, and acknow- 
 ledge that I ought to have written to you some months since. 
 One who has so often offended in the same way must needs 
 be a merciful judge ; I therefore venture to anticipate your 
 forgiveness, and even to request that you will show your 
 Christian temper by sending me an immediate answer. Pray 
 tell me what you have all been about in the parsonage of 
 St Bees. The young ones are now, I hope, all well. Give 
 my very kindest remembrances to Mrs Ainger and every one 
 of them. 
 
 Now for my own adventures. In about ten days after we 
 parted I bent my way to Dent and spent a quiet week with 
 my father. I then proceeded direct for Cambridge, and only 
 reached my chambers about two days before I commenced 
 my course of lectures. I had a very large class, and as usual 
 was very busy during the term. Just when I thought my 
 labours were happily terminated I found that the whole 
 University was likely to be thrown into the greatest conster- 
 nation by the sudden appearance of a kind of philosophical 
 mania which broke out among the Cambridge Blues. Un- 
 fortunately for me their madness took a geological turn, so 
 that I was obliged, out of pure compassion, to administer 
 to them a sedative dose in the form of a three hours lecture. 
 Peacock tells me that you were greatly scandalised at the 
 news of this event; and that the electrical horror at this 
 academical innovation caused your hair to stand erect, and 
 your shovel to unfold itself. 
 
 1 Recollections, p. 143. 
 
264 VISITS EDINBURGH WITH W HE WELL. 
 
 1825. A day or two after this act of homage to the Blues, 
 
 JEt. 40. Whewell and I started by the mail for Edinburgh. No words 
 of mine can convey to you any notion of the pleasure which I 
 experienced when I first saw this magnificent capital. The 
 imposing flutter of the old town, which rises, in utter defiance 
 of all regularity, along the sides of a steep declivity terminating 
 in a perpendicular rock crowned by the battlements of the 
 Castle ; the beautiful symmetry and neatness of the new 
 town ; the happy grouping of great masses of building with 
 natural features of gigantic magnitude ; the beautiful glimpses 
 of the Firth of Forth which from every elevated point is seen, 
 like a great inland lake, winding between the shores of 
 MidLothian and Fifeshire ; these are the elements which go to 
 the composition of a picture, at least in its kind, unrivalled 
 in the whole world. I will say no more of dead things, but 
 I will speak of the living. We had excellent introductions, 
 and in two days after our arrival, were so completely in 
 society that we had not a moment to call our own. We often 
 went out to breakfast, and always found the tables covered 
 with beefsteaks, ham and eggs, divers varieties of salt fish, 
 marmalade, jellies &c. &c. In a corner of the table you might 
 indeed see a tea-urn and coffee-pot ; but these things are non- 
 essentials in a Caledonian fast-breaking. Having out of such 
 materials contrived to lay a good foundation, we sallied out, 
 and spent the morning in running about the different lectures, 
 examining the different institutions, making excursions &c. 
 &c. At six o'clock we returned to some of our new friends, 
 and had a second experience of Scotch hospitality, and a 
 most sumptuous report I must give of it. Our labours did 
 not always end here, as we not unfrequently went out to 
 evening parties, where we met Belles, Beaux, Advocates, 
 Savans, and Craniologists. In short we saw everybody and 
 everything. Of the Savans, Leslie 1 and Brewster 2 are the 
 
 1 Mr, afterwards Sir John, Leslie, then Professor of Natural Philosophy at 
 Edinburgh. He died 1832. 
 
 2 Mr, afterwards Sir David, Brewster: born 1781 ; died 1868. 
 
VISITS EDINBURGH WITH WHEWELL. 265 
 
 most distinguished. The former is a short fat butcher-like 1825. 
 figure with a red nose, and may be considered as a singular ^t. 40. 
 pachydermatous variety of the human species. He is, however, 
 a man of very original powers, and possesses a great mass of 
 curious information. Brewster is in many respects the converse 
 of this. He is a thin gentlemanlike figure, and is so sensitive 
 and thin-skinned that you cannot touch him without making 
 him wince. The two philosophers hate each other most 
 cordially. Jeffrey we met over and over again. He is on the 
 whole a very agreeable man ; but you may perceive, in most 
 things he says, the tartness and causticity of the Edinburgh 
 critic. Walter Scott was unfortunately away during the 
 greater part of our visit : what we saw of him made us long 
 for his better acquaintance. He talks exactly as he writes, 
 and before you have been two minutes in his company he 
 begins to tell good stories. Several of his portraits, and above 
 all the bust by Chantrey, convey a most correct notion of his 
 person. The advocates are a very agreeable set of men, not 
 half so much the slaves of their profession, and on that 
 account infinitely better informed on subjects of general 
 interest, than our lawyers. But of all the people we met, the 
 Craniologists afforded us the most amusement. They are 
 perfectly sincere in their faith, tho' I confess I could only 
 regard them as a set of crazy humourists. We met many of 
 the Edinburgh Belles, Blue, Red, and White. The Blues, 
 like the Blues of other countries, remind one of the Blue Boar. 
 But among the Reds and Whites are many delightful persons, 
 of whom I have no time to write. 
 
 On leaving Edinburgh we proceeded by the mail to Carlisle 
 and Kendal. From Kendal I posted to Dent, and only re- 
 mained a day or two, as I found by a letter that I was pre- 
 sented by the College to a small living near Cambridge 1 , which 
 I can hold with my Fellowship. A few hours after I reached 
 Cambridge I went up to London to be instituted. Tomorrow 
 
 1 Shudy Camps, a village in the S.E. corner of Cambridgeshire, 15 miles from 
 Cambridge. The population, in 1831, was 418 ; the value of the vicarage, ^146. 
 
266 WITH DR FITTON IN SUSSEX. 
 
 1825. I read in. Such is the history of my life and adventures for 
 JEt. 40. the last five months. Now, my good Doctor, I have sent 
 you a long letter which you must answer. Let me repeat my 
 kindest remembrances to Mrs Ainger and your family. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. I have accumulated so many materials that I must 
 remain at home the greater part of this year to digest and 
 write. I have no less than four memoirs on the stocks. One 
 of these will run out almost into a volume. I fear I shall not 
 have much time for sermons, but I have hired a curate. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., August 16, 1825. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 I reached College on Friday evening, and since that 
 time have been employed in settling my last quarter's bills, 
 reading Scott's last novels, and writing letters. It has long 
 been a custom with me to answer all my friends' letters 
 immediately on my return to College from my vagabondizing 
 expeditions. The task must be performed some time, and in 
 this way it fills up a day or two in which otherwise I might 
 not be employed in anything, for after rambling about in the 
 open air one always sets very reluctantly to work in a dull 
 college room. 
 
 A day or two after we parted I proceeded towards the 
 coast, and on my way passed thro' Canterbury, where we had 
 the good luck to fall in with Metcalfe, who looks charmingly, 
 and has a fine family about him. He conducted Dr Fitton 
 and myself over Becket's tomb, and the other ecclesiastical 
 buildings, which in general have more historical than archi- 
 tectural interest. On the whole I was rather disappointed 
 with them. From Shakespeare's cliff we worked our way 
 westward, examining the successive cliffs, hammer in hand, 
 and making short excursions up the country wherever it 
 seemed to promise anything good to our geological eyes. 
 
WITH JAMES SEDGWICK AT FRESHWATER. 267 
 
 The weather was beautiful, but so intolerably hot that Fitton 1825. 
 took fright, and ran home to take shelter under his wife's &* 4- 
 petticoats. I had no wife to spread out her nether garments 
 over me, so I was compelled, like my old namesake, by the 
 sweat of my brow to go thro' my daily work. An account of 
 my labours, would, I know, be devoid of interest to the 
 uninitiated. Suffice it therefore to say that I sweated my 
 weary way as far as Bognor in Sussex, where the rocky cliffs 
 have entirely disappeared, and are succeeded by nothing but 
 sand and shingles, which offer but little scope for the exercise 
 of the hammer. This induced me to hire a boat, and make a 
 run direct for the Isle of Wight. The weather was delightful, 
 and the wind so favourable that we did not shift the sails 
 during the whole day. I shall never forget the glowing 
 beauty of the shores of the Isle of Wight as we swept up 
 the channel. The ships of war at Spithead were firing the 
 evening gun just as we reached the pier head at Ryde. 
 
 Next morning I pounded forward to Freshwater, and took 
 up my quarters with my brother, where I remained a month. 
 Between dinner-parties, water-parties with the ladies, and 
 geological expeditions to every corner of the Isle, I contrived 
 to pass the month most deliciously, and I left the place with 
 infinite regret this day week. As it blew a stiff breeze from 
 the right quarter I was induced to hire a boat, in which James 
 accompanied me to Portsmouth. At first we bounced over 
 the waves right merrily, but a heavy swell from the west 
 turned our mirth into sadness, and produced such internal 
 qualms that our stomachs almost came out thro' our teeth. 
 We therefore made for Cowes harbour, and " spliced our 
 main braces " with a glass or two of brandy, which acted like 
 oil on the troubled waters, and produced a dead calm in the 
 peristaltic regions. The rest of our voyage was performed 
 pleasantly enough. 
 
 The following evening we spent in the dock-yard with Dr 
 Inman 1 , who kindly showed us everything in his power. I 
 1 One of Mr Dawson's senior wranglers. See above, p. 65 note. 
 
268 VISIT TO PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 1825. have seen this great naval arsenal two or three times before ; 
 JEt. 40. kyj- j re j i ce to say that I am as much alive to its interest as 
 ever. My bedroom windows looked over the harbour, and 
 the old Victory with an Admiral's flag at the main-top was at 
 anchor within 200 yards of the house. As I rose very early 
 to see my brother off, and the coach for London did not start 
 till ten, I had an opportunity of hiring a boat, and rowing 
 about the harbour for an hour or two, during which time I 
 flew off into a fit of heroics which it would be impossible to 
 describe in less than another sheet of paper. The state of the 
 elements kept up this fit for the rest of the day; for we 
 travelled to Town in the midst of claps of thunder and flashes 
 of lightning. Near Petersfield a house which had been set on 
 fire by lightning was blazing as we passed. 
 
 I only remained one day in Town, and here I am with 
 plenty of employment for the next month. If I can finish a 
 paper which I have on the stocks in a reasonable time I shall 
 try to be at the York Meeting 1 , and from thence I shall (D. V.) 
 proceed by Leeds to Dent. My kindest remembrances to 
 Mrs A. and my young friends. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 LORD PALMERSTON'S COMMITTEE ROOM. 
 
 December 29, [1825]. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 Strange things come to pass. I am now in the Com- 
 mittee room of a Johnian, a Tory, and a King's Minister; and 
 I am going to give him a plumper. My motives are that he 
 is our old Member, and a distinguished Member, and that I 
 hate the other candidates I mean with public and political 
 hate, without private malice. Bankes is a fool, and was 
 brought in last time by a set of old women, and whenever 
 he rises makes the body he represents truly ridiculous. 
 Copley is a clever fellow, but is not sincere, at least when 
 
 1 The Musical Festival which took place at York, September 13 16. 
 
SUPPORTS VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. 269 
 
 I pass him I am sure I smell a rat. Goulburn is the idol 1826. 
 of the Saints, a prime favourite of Simeon's, and a subscriber &* 41 
 to missionary societies. Moreover he squints. Now, my 
 good fellow, though I believe you have the liberality of a 
 great Inquisitor, yet I think you will hardly vote against 
 your own college, your own friends, and the cause of common 
 sense. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. If you don't give at least one vote to Lord Palmer- 
 ston, I shall think you have rusted in the country, and lost 
 your wits 1 . 
 
 DENT, February 18, 1826. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 When we last parted I had no thought of finding 
 my way so soon to Dent, but here I am at the corner of a 
 breakfast-table in the old Parsonage, and the Pastor and his 
 wife are making such a noise that my powers of attention 
 must, I fear, be suspended, and my language incoherent. I 
 will, however, do the best I can in making my way through 
 three pages of this sheet. After I returned to College my 
 whole time was taken up with a dull geological paper 2 which 
 I was endeavouring to bring to a close, in order that it might 
 appear in the A nnals of Philosophy for next month. But my 
 operations were interrupted by a letter from my sister, which 
 informed me that my Father was much debilitated, and that 
 he exhibited some symptoms of an incipient dropsy. I 
 showed the letter to Haviland, and he advised me to come 
 down, as a complaint of that kind would probably carry off a 
 man of my Father's very advanced age in a few weeks. In 
 consequence of this advice I met the Leeds coach at Alcon- 
 bury Hill on Saturday last ; spent the following day with my 
 
 1 The poll-book shows that notwithstanding Sedgwick's efforts Dr Ainger 
 voted for Sir J. S. Copley and Mr Bankes. 
 
 2 On the classification of the strata which appear on the Yorkshire coast. 
 
270 VISITS PARIS WITH WHEWELL. 
 
 1826. old pupil Charles Musgrave (who resides on his living near 
 Et. 41. Leeds^ anc | on Monday night reached my Father's house. 
 He is, I am happy to say, very much better than I expected, 
 and, on the whole, looks nearly as well as he did when I left 
 him in the autumn. His legs are a good deal enlarged, but 
 the disease makes very slow progress, and, thank God, he is 
 quite free from pain. He is, however, languid and drowsy, and 
 sometimes for a minute or two, even when awake, inattentive 
 to what is about him. On the whole, however, there is no 
 sign whatever of any sudden change, and if he should not get 
 worse in course of next week I shall return to Cambridge and 
 finish my lectures. Indeed I never expected that he would 
 live over the year, and the only wish which his dearest friends 
 have now any right to express is, that it may please God 
 to preserve the faculties of his mind, and release him from 
 a life, now only of labour and sorrow, without the additional 
 burden of much bodily suffering. 
 
 After the illumination your mind received at Cambridge, 
 not to mention a conversation one evening at your Father's 
 house, you will, I am sure, rejoice to hear that Lord Palmer- 
 ston's success at the next election is now quite certain. My 
 best regards and love to all your family. My sister says she 
 will cross the first page of my letter. She shall have her 
 mind : but it is a dangerous thing to drive fresh sentences 
 
 over my rugged text. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 [TRIN. COLL., February, 1827.] 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 Whewell and I left Cambridge the day after our 
 commemoration (the I7th December), and went as far as Hyde 
 Hall, where we spent the evening with Sir John Malcolm. Next 
 morning we posted to town with the old General in time for 
 breakfast ; procured our passports, and went by the night 
 coach to Dover. As soon as the tide served we embarked 
 
CUVIER, HUMBOLDT, LAPLACE. 271 
 
 in a steamer, and in two hours and a half were at the pier 1827. 
 head of Calais. In two more days the diligence conveyed us ^ 4 2 - 
 to the place of our destination. I intended to have written to 
 you, and I thought about it every day I was at Paris, but 
 I never had time. With the exception of two short letters to 
 my Father which I regarded as a matter of positive duty, I 
 did not write a line to any one. 
 
 My time was spent in the French capital delightfully, and 
 I hope profitably. I attended public lectures, examined 
 public institutions, and became in some measure acquainted 
 with several men whom I before knew only by reputation. 
 Many of the leading literary and scientific men give soirees, 
 that is evening parties, once a week, at which any one may 
 attend who has been introduced. Three of these I regularly 
 attended : on Wednesday evenings at the old Marquis de 
 Laplace's, on Thursday evenings at Professor Arago's at the 
 Observatory, and on Saturday evenings at Baron Cuvier's. 
 These parties were delightful. They assemble about nine, 
 and break up about twelve. You meet there the first literary 
 men of France, and you may talk or not as you like, for there 
 is no restraint or ceremony whatsoever. Baron Humboldt is 
 perhaps the most interesting character I have met, and I 
 rejoice to think that I have in some measure formed his 
 acquaintance. We have exchanged one or two letters, and I 
 will endeavour to keep the ball up. He gave me up two 
 mornings, which I considered a great compliment from one 
 who is so much engaged. The day before I left Paris I 
 called on old Laplace and had a long talk with him. He 
 is thin and emaciated ; but posessses great mental vigour 
 for a man of 78 years. He asked a great many questions 
 about Cambridge, and then began to talk of the Catholic 
 Question. 'A Roman Catholic priest/ said he, 'cannot be 
 a good man, for he is cut off from the rights of manhood, 
 has no sympathy with other men, and only plots for the 
 aggrandizement of his own order. He cannot be a good 
 subject, for he acknowledges an authority which is external 
 
272 LAPLACE, BISHOP LUSCOMBE. 
 
 1827. and superior to the executive of his own country. You have 
 Mt. 42. these fellows down keep them down if you admit them 
 to power they will only endeavour to destroy those who lifted 
 them up ' ! ! What do you think of this from a French Peer, 
 and a nominal Roman Catholic ? I talked to him in French, 
 but I have translated what he said as literally as possible. 
 I found many more men in Paris in the same mind. I also 
 saw some good English society, and received very great 
 civilities from Bishop Luscombe 1 . Pray what is the exact 
 history of his consecration, and of his objects ? I did not 
 exactly make them out. I have many other things to tell 
 you, if I had time and paper-room, but I must leave some- 
 thing till we meet. When must that be ? 
 
 On my return from Paris to London I was three successive 
 nights on the road without being able to rest myself for a 
 single hour. The cold in France was horrible 2 . 
 
 Give my affectionate remembrances to your family. Take 
 care of yourself 3 . I don't however think that writing a short 
 letter would do you much harm. 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 It is provoking that this letter should be the only detailed 
 account of the six or seven weeks which Sedgwick spent in 
 Paris. He always spoke of the visit as having been not only 
 agreeable, but also extremely profitable. He learnt, at least 
 to some extent, what continental men of science were doing 
 and thinking for at that time Paris was unquestionably the 
 scientific centre of Europe and so paved the way for the 
 
 1 An English clergyman consecrated (20 March, 1825) by the Primus of 
 Scotland, as ' a missionary Bishop for the superintendence of such of the English 
 clergy and congregations in France, Belgium, and Holland as were willing to 
 acknowledge his episcopate.' He also acted as chaplain to the British Embassy 
 at Paris. 
 
 2 The Rev. Joseph Romilly, Fellow of Trinity College, whose diary will be 
 frequently quoted in subsequent years, notes under 5 February, 1827 : ' Sedgwick 
 came alone in the malle-poste from Paris, with hay twisted round his legs.' 
 
 3 Dr Ainger had just recovered from a severe illness. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF LAPLACE. 273 
 
 researches into continental geology which he undertook soon 1827. 
 afterwards. Moreover he added to the Woodwardian Museum ^ Et - 4 
 " a considerable geological series from the neighbourhood of 
 Paris, collected partly by his own hands, partly by the 
 kindness of his friends, and partly by purchase. 1 " 
 
 The above letter may be supplemented by a few details 
 derived from conversation : 
 
 " Laplace was a rather small man, with a white neck-tie, 
 looking very like a parson, though he was reputed to be 
 almost an atheist, as indeed was the case. He was then very 
 old, and used an old man's privilege, retiring to bed at about 
 nine o'clock. Arago was a fine-looking man, with a very fine 
 wife, and a staunch republican. Laplace on the contrary 
 was weak, and always shifting his politics according to the 
 time. This led at last to such a quarrel between him and 
 Arago that it was not usual for persons to attend the soirees 
 of both. When Laplace was near his end Arago saw a man 
 at his own soiree who usually went to his rival, and re- 
 marked ' Ah ! he sees old Laplace is going, and so he has 
 come to me.' It was usual for a visitor, when once introduced, 
 to go regularly, and it was considered rude to cut many 
 soirees consecutively. Laplace gave only tea and coffee, 
 but Cuvier, after his soire'e was over, would sit down with a 
 few friends to tea and apple-pie. 
 
 " I believe that I was the last person (not of his own 
 family) who ever saw Laplace 2 . I called on him before my 
 departure, and sent in my card, as a formal leave-taking. To 
 my surprise he received me, and I saw that he was in the 
 humour for a good talk. He looked very ill, his voice was 
 broken, sounding shrill, like a whistle, and his chin rested on 
 his breast. He said he had desired above all things to visit 
 Cambridge, the scene of Newton's discoveries, but that first 
 want of means, and then the Revolution, had prevented him. 
 
 1 Report to the Woodwardian Auditors, May, 1827. 
 
 2 Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, was born 23 March 1749, and died 
 5 March, 1827, aged 78. 
 
 s.i. 18 
 
274 RECOLLECTIONS OF LAPLACE. 
 
 1827. ( Are you a clergyman ? ' he inquired. ' Yes. 5 ' A Protestant 
 Mi. 42. clergyman?' 'Yes.' 'Is there any objection to clergymen 
 marrying ? ' ' On the contrary, a clergyman who does not 
 do so is thought rather unwise.' Then, after some remarks 
 about priests who could not marry, and therefore could 
 not be good men in relation to humanity, and who obeyed 
 a foreign despot and therefore could not be good citizens, 
 he proceeded : ' I wish I could see your education at Cam- 
 bridge. I am convinced that you are right in entrusting it 
 to protestant clergymen. English clergymen can be good 
 members of society and good citizens, and I have found out 
 late in life that it is impossible to govern without the help 
 of some religion.' He referred to Catholic Emancipation, 
 then occupying the attention of Parliament, and said it would 
 be an unwise measure : ' You have your foot on the Catholic 
 priests, and you should keep it there ! ' This was called 
 being ' liberal ' in those days. After a long and earnest talk 
 he said 'Good bye/ and that night or the next day I left Paris. 
 On arriving in London I heard that he was dangerously ill. 
 The news had probably travelled in the same coach as I had. 
 He died soon afterwards 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick used to tell several other stories about Cuvier 
 and his daughter Clementine Humboldt and other scientific 
 men whose acquaintance he had the good fortune to make, 
 and very amusing and characteristic they were ; but un- 
 fortunately no one took the trouble to write them down. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., March 3, 1827. 
 Dear Ainger, 
 
 Your letter reached me this morning, and I do 
 most heartily congratulate you on your new elevation in the 
 Church 2 . When I mentioned the circumstance in Hall, every 
 
 1 This account is derived from notes of a conversation held in Sedgwick's rooms 
 on the evening of Sunday, 6 November, 1870, written down immediately after- 
 wards by Dr Glaisher, Fellow of Trinity College, through whose kindness it 
 is printed here. 
 
 2 Dr Ainger had just been made Canon of Chester. 
 
GENERAL ELECTION. 275 
 
 one who remembered you was quite delighted : and all agreed 1827. 
 that the manner of the appointment did the Bishop 1 the &*-. 42. 
 highest honour. May you long live to enjoy this and still 
 higher dignities. A thousand times greater than these things 
 is, however, the blessing of health, and I rejoice to hear that 
 now it is no longer withheld from you. Give my affectionate 
 remembrances to your sister and all your children. I hope 
 they do not forget me. I must try to come down in course of 
 the year to rub up their memories. 
 
 On Saturday I finished my lectures and immediately came 
 to Sir John Malcolm's to spend a day or two. I only returned 
 yesterday, and am now looking forward to a good spell of 
 hard work. By the way, I was made Vice-President of the 
 London Geological Society at the last annual meeting 2 . But 
 this honour brings no grist. There is no manger in my stall, 
 so that notwithstanding my V.P.G.S. at the tail of my 
 signature, I may die of hunger. You plainly see I have 
 nothing to write about so, my dear fellow, let me once more 
 congratulate you and wish you a very good night. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The General Election of 1826, when Sedgwick was a 
 member of Lord Palmerston's committee, was fought on the 
 same general lines as the bye-election of 1825. The con- 
 servative victory on that occasion had inspired hopes that the 
 second seat might be won for the anti-catholics, and every 
 nerve was strained to effect not only the return of Mr Bankes, 
 but the defeat of Lord Palmerston. " This once liberal Uni- 
 versity," said a writer in The Times, " is seized at this moment 
 with such a violent horror of the Pope that in its panic 
 it forgets the services of an old and tried member, and would 
 
 1 Charles James Blomfield, D.D., a former Fellow of Trinity College, was 
 Bishop of Chester 1824 1828. He and Sedgwick were godfathers to Dr Ainger's 
 son. 2 7 February, 1827. 
 
 1 8 2 
 
276 BANKES AND GOULBURN. 
 
 1826. fling him away with as much unconcern as an old glove 1 ." In 
 t. 41. addition to the sitting members, Mr Bankes and Lord Palmer- 
 ston, two new candidates presented themselves : Sir John 
 Singleton Copley, then Attorney-General, and Mr Goulburn. 
 It soon became evident that Copley, from his brilliant legal 
 reputation, added to an explicit declaration that he was, and 
 always had been, " decidedly adverse " to the claims of the 
 Catholics 2 , was certain to be returned, and it became a 
 question whether Bankes or Goulburn would do well to retire. 
 As the former wrote : " by our both standing it is obvious to 
 everybody that we are weakening the Anti-Catholic Interest, 
 and frittering away the strength of our great cause 3 ." There- 
 upon he authorised his Committee to institute "a fair com- 
 parison of strength, upon the understanding that whichever of 
 the two should prove to be the weakest, should give way to 
 the other," but the suggestion was declined, as Goulburn had 
 pledged himself under any circumstances to go to the poll. 
 This episode inspired a clever ballad 4 , a few stanzas of which 
 are still worth reading : 
 
 Bankes is weak, and Goulburn too, 
 
 No one e'er the fact denied; 
 Which is weakest of the two, 
 
 Cambridge can alone decide. 
 Choose between them, Cambridge, pray, 
 Which is weakest, Cambridge, say. 
 
 Goulburn of the Pope afraid is, 
 
 Bankes as much afraid as he; 
 Never yet did two old ladies 
 
 On this point so well agree. 
 Choose between them, Cambridge, pray, 
 Which is weakest, Cambridge, say. 
 
 Each a different mode pursues, 
 
 Each the same conclusion reaches ; 
 
 Bankes is foolish in Reviews, 
 Goulburn foolish in his speeches. 
 
 Choose between them, Cambridge, pray, 
 
 Which is weakest, Cambridge, say. 
 
 1 The Times, 13 June, 1826. 2 Sir John Copley's address, 19 Decembei, 1825. 
 
 3 Mr Bankes to Mr Goulburn, 10 June, 1826. 
 
 4 It is printed at length in The Times, 16 June, 1826. 
 
PAYMENT OF OUT-VOTERS. 277 
 
 Bankes, accustomed much to roam, 1826. 
 
 Plays with truth a traveller's pranks ; ^E t . 41, 
 
 Goulburn, though he stays at home, 
 
 Travels thus as much as Bankes. 
 Choose between them, Cambridge, pray, 
 Which is weakest, Cambridge, say. 
 
 Sedgwick never did anything by halves, and the few letters 
 from friends which he thought worth preserving show that he 
 left them no peace till they came round to his views. The most 
 liberal were evidently not a little scandalised complained 
 of being obliged to " pick the best out of a bad pack " and 
 the like ; but in the end they voted as he had suggested. 
 The result showed the unwisdom of divided counsels, for, 
 though Copley headed the poll with 772 votes, Palmerston 
 was second with 631, while Bankes and Goulburn had re- 
 spectively 508 and 437 \ The poll-book shows that Sedgwick 
 ultimately voted for Copley as well as for Palmerston, as did 
 a large proportion of the members of Trinity College. 
 
 Another matter connected with this election must be 
 briefly noticed, as it made a great stir in the University, 
 and Sedgwick's name appears in connection with it. For 
 some years the expenses of non-resident electors had been 
 defrayed by the candidate for whom they voted. It was 
 notorious that the last election had cost a vast sum, and 
 several stories were current of the way in which the liberality 
 of the candidates had been abused. It soon became apparent 
 that the practice would not be discontinued on the present 
 occasion; indeed some leading members of one of the com- 
 mittees had been heard to say, with cynical frankness, that 
 " whatever might have been the expenses of the last election, 
 they were nothing compared with those which would probably 
 be incurred at this." It was manifest that if such usage were 
 not stopped, not only would grave scandals arise, but the 
 choice of University representatives would be limited to men 
 of large fortune. Under these circumstances an attempt was 
 made to induce the four committees to agree in refusing to 
 
 1 The poll was taken 13 16 June, 1826. 
 
278 PAYMENT OF OUT-VOTERS, 
 
 1826. pay any expenses. The committees of Sir John Copley, Lord 
 JEt. 41. Palmerston, and Mr Goulburn agreed to do this, but that 
 of Mr Bankes declined even to discuss the subject Some 
 further negotiations were entered into, but without effect, and 
 the subject would probably have dropped, had not Mr Lamb, 
 Master of Corpus Christi College, and Mr Henslow, drawn up 
 a " recommendation " to the following effect : 
 
 "A very general expression of regret having manifested itself 
 among the Members of the University at the practice of out-voters 
 receiving their expenses from the respective Candidates for whom 
 they voted ; the undersigned resident Members of the Senate 
 earnestly recommend that this practice should not be renewed at the 
 ensuing election." 
 
 This document was signed by 102 members of the Senate, 
 among whom were seven Heads of Colleges, the Proctors, ten 
 Professors (including Sedgwick), several Tutors, and generally 
 most men of consideration in the University. It was therefore 
 easy to see on which side the opinion of residents, without 
 distinction of party, had been enlisted : but with non-residents 
 the case was far different, to judge by the literature which the 
 movement called forth. Nor was their wrath appeased by 
 the extraordinary conduct of two members of the Senate, who 
 on the day of election insisted that the oath against bribery 
 should be administered to each voter as he came to the Vice- 
 Chancellor's table 1 . 
 
 It was not long before Sedgwick had another opportunity 
 of voting against Mr Bankes. The elevation of Sir J. S. 
 Copley to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst, in April, 1827, 
 rendered one seat once more vacant. The candidates were 
 Mr Bankes, Mr Goulburn, and Sir N. C. Tindal, but Goulburn 
 
 1 The history of this question will be found in : Remarks upon the payment of 
 the expenses of out-voters at an University election : in a letter to the Vice- 
 Chan cellar of Cambridge. By the Rev. John Lamb, Master of Corpus Christi 
 College, and the Rev. J. S. Henslow, Professor of Botany. 8vo. Camb. 1826: 
 Observations upon the payment of the expences of out-voters at an University 
 election, occasioned by remarks tipon the same siibject, by the Rev. the Master of 
 Corpus, and the Rev. Professor Henslow. By a non-resident Master of Arts. 
 8vo. Camb. 1826; and several letters in The Cambridge Chronicle, 28 April 
 1 6 June, in the same year. 
 
DEFEAT OF BANKES. 279 
 
 retired before the day of election. Both the remaining candi- 1827. 
 dates professed the same principles on the question in which ^ 4 
 the electors were most interested, and therefore all they had 
 to do was to choose the best man. Tindal, a former Fellow of 
 Trinity College, was personally popular, and had a brilliant 
 forensic reputation ; Bankes, now that the interest in his 
 travels had worn off, had lost the favour of residents, and in 
 his own college polled only 78 votes against 191 recorded for 
 his opponent. The country clergy, however, were still faithful 
 to him, and it was on this occasion that Macaulay wrote The 
 Country Clergyman s Trip to Cambridge. An Election Ballad^. 
 
 As I sate down to breakfast in state, 
 
 At my living of Tithing-cum-Boring, 
 With Betty beside me to wait, 
 
 Came a rap that almost beat the door in. 
 I laid down my basin of tea, 
 
 And Betty ceased spreading the toast, 
 "As sure as a gun, Sir," said she, 
 
 "That must be the knock of the post." 
 
 A letter and free bring it here 
 
 I have no correspondent who franks. 
 No ! Yes ! Can it be ? Why, my dear, 
 
 Tis our glorious, our Protestant, Bankes. 
 " Dear Sir, as I know you desire 
 
 That the Church shall receive due protection 
 I humbly presume to require 
 
 Your aid at the Cambridge election. 
 
 It has lately been brought to my knowledge, 
 
 That the Ministers fully design 
 To suppress each Cathedral and College 
 
 And eject every learned divine. 
 To assist this detestable scheme 
 
 Three nuncios from Rome are come over, 
 They left Calais on Monday by steam 
 
 And landed to dinner at Dover. 
 
 But, amusing as the whole poem is, we have no space for 
 further quotation. The result of the election was decisive: 
 Mr Bankes polled only 378 votes against 479 recorded for his 
 opponent, and, as The Times anticipated, he did not again 
 offer to represent the University. 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, 8vo. Lond. 1860, ii. 413. It appeared 
 originally in The Times, 14 May, 1827. The Poll was taken 9 n May, 1827. 
 
280 COLLEGE FRIENDS. 
 
 1827. Amidst the bustle and excitement of the election Sedg- 
 
 JEt. 42. w ick did not neglect his Museum. His next report (dated 
 I May, 1827) records the acquisition of "a large collection 
 of very magnificent fossils, (chiefly the property of the late 
 Mr Parkinson, author of a work on the organic remains of a 
 former world 1 ) which were purchased during last month at a 
 public auction ;" and a a collection consisting of more than a 
 thousand specimens of fossil shells, collected in the Isle of 
 Wight by the Woodwardian Professor, and arranged by Mr 
 Sowerby of London." 
 
 It will be remembered that when Sedgwick first became a 
 Master of Arts he found the society of the Fellows somewhat 
 uncongenial. There is happily no evidence that such feelings 
 were of long duration, nor do his subsequent letters betray 
 any hint that he was otherwise than happy in his college 
 surroundings. Besides, in no place does society change so 
 rapidly as in a University ; and in the years which intervened 
 between 1812 and 1827 the Fellowships at Trinity College 
 had been filled by a succession of very remarkable men. Most 
 of them, when their worth became known, attained to high 
 distinction in the University, in the Church, or in the world ; 
 but, while they remained in Cambridge, they formed a society 
 whose social charm and intellectual brilliancy has never been 
 surpassed. They differed widely in tastes, in politics, and 
 in intellectual pursuits ; but they were united by common 
 interests, by a common devotion to their College and their 
 University, and not only lived together harmoniously, but in 
 many instances formed intimate friendships. Some, like 
 Sheepshanks, Thirlwall, Macaulay, Airy, stayed for only a 
 short time ; others, like Robert Wilson Evans, Peacock, Hare, 
 Thorp, gave many of their best years to College and Uni- 
 versity work ; while Romilly and Whewell devoted their 
 whole lives to the same objects. 
 
 1 Organic Remains of a former World: an examination of the mineralized 
 remains of Vegetables and Animals of the antediluvian World, generally termed 
 extraneoiis Fossils. By James Parkinson. 3 vols. 410. Lond. 1804 n. 
 
COLLEGE FRIENDS. 281 
 
 Among the Fellows here named Sedgwick's dearest friend 1827. 
 was undoubtedly Romilly, whose diary is nearly as full of &^ 4 2 - 
 Sedgwick as it is of himself 1 . Next to him we would place 
 Whewell, whose insatiable love of knowledge, especially scien- 
 tific knowledge, led him to add geology to the other depart- 
 ments of his omniscience. He therefore entered heartily 
 into Sedgwick's pursuits, and for many years they were 
 inseparable friends not only seeing a great deal of each 
 other during term, but travelling together in vacation. After- 
 wards, when Whewell became Master, they drifted apart, and 
 their friendship was interrupted by more than one misunder- 
 standing ; but it is pleasant to be able to record that their 
 quarrels were not of long duration, and that in any serious 
 difficulty, or grave sorrow, Whewell always turned to the 
 ready sympathy of his old friend. But Sedgwick could be 
 approached from many other sides than geology ; he was no 
 specialist, in the modern sense of the word, and those we 
 have mentioned had no difficulty in finding a large space of 
 common ground on which to build their friendship. He was 
 probably the most popular man in the college, and his rooms 
 the chief centre of attraction. Intimate friends were glad, 
 when their own work was over, to enjoy his original conver- 
 sation, and not seldom his extravagant fun : while strangers 
 delighted to make the acquaintance of a learned Professor 
 who could talk on general subjects as well as they could 
 themselves, and who was always ready to lay aside his own 
 occupations for a while for the sake of their profit and 
 amusement. It is not too much to say that of the leading 
 men in Cambridge sixty years ago, no one made so lasting or 
 so favourable an impression on all who were brought into 
 contact with him as Sedgwick. 
 
 Genial as he was to all-comers, his special pleasure was to 
 entertain ladies and children, whom he amused in all manner 
 of quaint ways, and sent home with a store of memories that 
 
 1 An account of the diary kept by the Rev. Joseph Romilly has been given in 
 the Preface. 
 
282 FONDNESS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 1827. never faded from their minds. One of the first of these 
 i. 42. incidents which has been recorded befell in 1825. Mr 
 Leonard Horner, the geologist, had come with his family 
 to Cambridge, and the whole party, including the children, 
 breakfasted with Sedgwick. It was his first meeting with 
 Miss Frances Horner, afterwards Lady Bunbury, then a 
 pretty child of ten. When breakfast was over, he declared 
 that she should be made a Master of Arts. So she was 
 decorated with a cap and gown, which of course trailed 
 far behind her on the ground, and thus attired, ran across 
 the college grass-plots. Forty years afterwards Lady Bun- 
 bury reminded him of the incident, and quoted a passage 
 from her childish journal : " We got a most delicious break- 
 fast muffins, tarts, all sorts of nice things. Mr Sedgwick 
 was so kind as to give us some minerals." Another wel- 
 come, in which Sedgwick took part, equally warm-hearted, 
 though less boisterous, has been commemorated by Lord 
 Macaulay's sister, Lady Trevelyan. She went to Cambridge 
 in 1831 with her sister and brother: "On the evening that we 
 arrived we met at dinner Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and 
 Thirlwall : and how pleasant they were, and how much they 
 made of us happy girls, who were never tired of seeing, and 
 hearing, and admiring ! We breakfasted, lunched, and dined 
 with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked 
 about the colleges all day with the whole train 1 ." 
 
 What has been said of Sedgwick's college friends leads us 
 naturally to Hyde Hall, and its hospitable tenant, Sir John 
 Malcolm, who has been already alluded to in a letter. Sir 
 John, after a distinguished career as a soldier in India, and 
 a diplomatist in Persia, had returned to England in 1822, 
 and for a time fixed his abode at Hyde Hall, a large and 
 commodious mansion near Sawbridgeworth. During the five 
 years that he inhabited it it was the favourite resort of Hare, 
 Whewell, and Sedgwick, who have all, in different language, 
 sung the praises of the master and mistress, and of the society 
 
 1 Life of Lord Macaulay, ed. 1881, p. 129. 
 
S7A JOHN MALCOLM. 283 
 
 they gathered round them. Hare, speaking of what conversa- 1827. 
 tion ought to be, described Hyde Hall as " a house in which I ^ l - 42- 
 hardly ever heard an evil word uttered against anyone. The 
 genial heart of cordial sympathy with which its illustrious 
 master sought out the good side in every person and thing, 
 seemed to communicate itself to all the members of his 
 family, and operated as a charm even upon his visitors 1 ;" 
 Whewell spoke of his acquaintance with the Malcolms as 
 one of the bright passages of his life' 2 ; and Sedgwick, as 
 might be expected, was even more enthusiastic and out- 
 spoken. After one of his early visits he wrote : 
 
 " Sir John has more of the elements of a great character 
 than any other man I have had the happiness of knowing. 
 As a mere author his rank is high, but with all this he is a 
 great oriental scholar, has been three times ambassador at the 
 Persian Court, has ruled empires with wisdom, and com- 
 manded victorious armies ; and, what is of more consequence 
 in his own house, he is one of the most rationally convivial 
 men that ever sat at a table, or romped with a family of 
 smiling children 3 ." 
 
 It is not improbable that in Sedgwick's eyes the smiling 
 children were not the least attraction that Hyde Hall had 
 to offer. He at once established an intimacy with all of 
 them ; but his particular friend was the third daughter 
 Kate. He won her affection in the first instance by carrying 
 her on his back, and as she grew up he established a cor- 
 respondence with her, which was carried on regularly until 
 his death. His letters were all carefully preserved, and it is 
 from this series that some of the gravest, as well as some 
 of the most amusing that he ever wrote will be selected. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall describe the geological work 
 which Sedgwick undertook in conjunction with Murchison, 
 first in Scotland, and then in Germany ; but, before entering 
 
 1 Gttesses at Truth, ed. 1871, p. 528. 
 
 2 Life, p. 239. 
 
 3 To Rev. W. Ainger, 27 October, 1826. 
 
284 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 upon this new field, it will be well to review what he had 
 accomplished alone in the nine years which had elapsed since 
 he was elected Woodwardian Professor. 
 
 When Sedgwick began to work, geology was still in its 
 infancy. Until recently, theory, rather than induction based 
 upon the observation of facts, had held undisputed sway ; 
 and, after the publication of such works as Woodward's 
 Theory of the Earth, the rival opinions of the Wernerians and 
 Huttonians had divided so-called geologists into opposing 
 camps. While these profitless battles were proceeding, 
 William Smith, whom Sedgwick rightly termed " the Father 
 of English geology 1 /' had shown that the proper sequence 
 of the strata might be readily ascertained by observation of 
 the fossils characteristic of each, and that by this means the 
 composition of the crust of the earth might be arrived at a 
 pursuit likely to lead to more valuable results than theories of 
 the forces by which that composition had been moulded. This 
 discovery the importance of which it is difficult to realise at 
 the present day worked a revolution. Theory was aban- 
 doned the mineral composition of rocks, together with the 
 whole science of mineralogy, ceased to be studied by geo- 
 logists pure and simple but, instead, a number of accurate 
 and painstaking observers set to work in different parts of 
 England to note the sequence of the strata, their relations 
 to each other, and above all their characteristic fossils. 
 Sedgwick became an ardent member of this band of ex- 
 plorers. His earlier papers, and some of his admissions 
 in conversation or at lecture, show that, like many of his 
 predecessors, he had once been a mineralogist, and a staunch 
 Wernerian. In his first paper, for instance, several pages are 
 devoted to an enumeration of the mineral constituents of the 
 Cornish rocks ; but this does not reappear in any subsequent 
 treatise, and as for Werner, we find him dismissed with a 
 jest: "For a long while I was troubled with water on the 
 
 1 In his eloquent Address on handing him the first Wollaston Medal, 18 Feb- 
 ruary, 1831. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 285 
 
 brain, but light and heat have completely dissipated it ;" and 
 on another occasion he spoke of " the Wernerian nonsense I 
 learnt in my youth." The first of these utterances might be 
 understood to imply an allegiance to the rival views of 
 Hutton ; but such was by no means the case. Throughout 
 his geological life Sedgwick thanks no doubt to his mathe- 
 matical training was no theorist. He held firmly to induc- 
 tive observation, and, if he did advance a view, he took care 
 to avoid the dangerous position of those who "view all things 
 through the distorting medium of an hypothesis 1 ." 
 
 It must not be thought, from what has been here advanced 
 respecting the changes in geological methods, that geology 
 had been made an easy study. The right road had been 
 pointed out, but there remained many a tangled forest to 
 pass through, many a steep mountain-side to scale. And, as 
 we review Sedgwick's share in geological progress, it will be 
 found that he always aimed at that which was most difficult, 
 and that he did not often stop until he had reached a point 
 beyond which, even at the present time, our data do not 
 warrant us to advance. 
 
 Sedgwick's first paper, On the Physical Structure of those 
 Formations which are intimately associated with the Primitive 
 Ridge of Devonshire and Cornwall, recording the observations 
 made during the summer of 1819, was read to the Cambridge 
 Philosophical Society 20 March, 1820, and published before 
 the end of that year. 
 
 He begins with a short notice of the New Red Sandstone, 
 a deposit with which he was no doubt already familiar in the 
 Eden Valley. He points out that these New Red conglomerates 
 and sandstones are distinct from those which underlie the 
 Mountain Limestone on the Banks of the Avon ; but he does 
 not deny that sandstones of this earlier age occur among the 
 schistose rocks of Devonshire ; thus, seventy years ago, sug- 
 gesting, contrary to the opinion of all previous writers, the 
 equivalence of some of the Devonian Rocks with the Upper 
 
 1 Letter to Ed. Annals of Philosophy, n March, 1825. Vol. ix. p. 250. 
 
286 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 Old Red. He collected fossils from the Devonian limestones, 
 and from their character, and from a consideration of the 
 stratigraphical position of the beds in which they occurred, he 
 arrived at the conclusion that they might be referred to a 
 formation distinct from the Mountain Limestone, and be- 
 longing to an earlier epoch. 
 
 It would be hard to find a better description of the physical 
 geography and general structure of the part of Cornwall 
 examined than that given by Sedgwick. He points out that 
 the surface of the moors where the granite rocks predominate 
 is covered " by granite boulders, the remains of larger masses 
 of the same kind which have gradually disappeared, through 
 the corrosive action of the elements," and explains the 
 Loggan-stone as one of such spheroidally-weathered masses. 
 Then, after describing the granite as a crystalline aggregate 
 of quartz, felspar, and mica, he points out with reference to 
 some of the elvans which often resemble outwardly a fine 
 sandstone that " varieties, arising from the loss of one of 
 these ingredients, or from the addition of some other mineral, 
 are by no means uncommon;" notices and comments on the 
 microliths in the felspar crystals, and the doubly-terminated 
 crystals of quartz from other similar rocks ; and, lastly, 
 contests the opinion of De Luc that the great divisional 
 planes of the granite represent lines of bedding. Having 
 enumerated the different varieties of granite, he concludes 
 in general that the granite of Cornwall "is a true granite, 
 the oldest primitive rock of the Wernerian series" an ex- 
 pression that does not convey any very clear idea to a modern 
 geologist. 
 
 When he comes to the question of the relation of the 
 granite to the overlying rocks, he is hampered by the then 
 prevalent views of both Wernerians and Huttonians. The 
 position Sedgwick takes up is this. The granite is the most 
 ancient rock, because the killas, and other rocks, rest on it. 
 The granite-mass and its veins cannot have been thrust into 
 the killas because there is no displacement along the junction, 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 287 
 
 such as would necessarily result from protrusion of the granite. 
 The killas seems to have been deposited on the granite mass, 
 and the dykes must be contemporaneous with the killas 
 that is, must represent some portion of it. If he had ex- 
 plained that the only way in which this was possible was 
 by the dykes, or some of them, being portions of the killas 
 assimilated to the granite by alteration along the more open 
 divisional planes, he might have gained much support for his 
 views at the present day. But he has left this not very clear, 
 for it is impossible to imagine that he could have supposed 
 that the killas was laid down among a number of preexisting 
 protruding dykes. 
 
 His description of the mode of occurrence of the granite, 
 the elvans, the killas, and all the associated phenomena, can 
 hardly be improved as far as it goes. 
 
 The relations of the rocks known as the Old Red were not 
 clearly understood seventy years ago it can hardly be said 
 that they are beyond controversy at the present time and 
 sufficient data had not yet been collected for establishing or 
 refuting the various explanations suggested by Sedgwick. But, 
 whatever may be thought of the results of the paper, everyone 
 who reads it must be struck by the author's familiarity with 
 the methods of field geology, with mineralogy, and with 
 the general literature of the subject. It was written too with 
 no external help, so far as we know, except what he might 
 have obtained from Mr Gilby and his cousin, and before 
 he had had the benefit of Mr Conybeare's experience. We 
 are fully prepared to admit that, taken by itself, this paper 
 throws considerable doubt on the truth of the story that 
 Sedgwick knew no geology when he was appointed to the 
 Woodwardian Chair in 1818; but, when we consider it by the 
 light of the evidence which we have collected in favour of 
 that view, it proves that by steady application a man of 
 talent may be able to make observations of the first order 
 in the field two years after commencing the study of the 
 subject. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 The memoranda which Sedgwick made on this expedition 
 supplied him with materials for a second paper, On the 
 Physical Structure of the Lizard District, read to the Cam- 
 bridge Philosophical Society 2 April and 7 May, 1821. It 
 discusses the relation of serpentine to the adjoining rocks, 
 and, it should be noted, suggests that its origin may be meta- 
 morphic, but without expressing any definite opinion on the 
 subject a position he would have been justified in taking 
 up even after much fuller investigation than he was able 
 to bring to bear upon it as may be inferred from the 
 fact that the origin of serpentine is still considered a matter 
 of such doubt and difficulty that at the International Geo- 
 logical Congress held at Bologna in 1881 it was the subject 
 set apart for special consideration. 
 
 In 1821 Sedgwick published a Syllabus of a Course of 
 Lectures on Geology, for the use of his pupils. The older 
 palaeozoic rocks had not been yet worked out he was 
 himself the first to put them in order some ten years later 
 but he gives a classification of the sedimentary rocks which 
 holds good in all essential points at the present day. It is 
 very interesting to compare the syllabus of 1821 with the 
 second edition of 1832. 
 
 Both commence with an introductory chapter, dealing 
 with the history and progress of Geology the distinction 
 between Natural Philosophy and Natural History ancient 
 speculations on the Theory of the Earth and the connection 
 between Geology and other branches of Natural History. In 
 the first syllabus it struck him as more important to empha- 
 size the connection of Geology with Mineralogy, in the second 
 their separation. In 1821 the views of Werner and Hutton 
 were still subjects for difference of opinion, and consequently 
 in the first syllabus prominence is given to the old cata- 
 clysmic theories, but in the second they are very briefly 
 noticed under the heading " Ancient Theories," and the first 
 chapter ends with " True mode of conducting geological 
 speculations." This is succeeded by seven pages of notes 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 289 
 
 which might form a rough index to Lyell's Principles. A 
 section headed : " The great inequalities presented by the 
 surface of the earth," is succeeded by another : " On the great 
 agents by which the earth's surface is modified, and on the 
 effects which have been produced by them during known 
 periods." Among the examples of such agents it is interesting 
 to find "Coral Reefs" enumerated, when it is remembered that 
 in this very year Darwin began to work in South America, 
 where, as he tells us 1 , he first thought out his theory of their 
 formation. The last division of this introductory portion is 
 headed : " Ancient alluvion (" Diluvial detritus ") including 
 all superficial transported aqueous deposits which are un- 
 connected with the present mechanical action of the waters." 
 It is obvious that alluvium could not be considered without 
 some notice of the organic remains contained in it; and, 
 having regard to the very decided attitude taken up by 
 Sedgwick afterwards in the discussions relating to the An- 
 tiquity of Man, the following headings are worth transcription, 
 as shewing that even at this period of his scientific life he had 
 begun to pay attention to this question. 
 
 Organic remains. (i) In rolled masses derived from older 
 formations. (2) Land and marine shells. (3) Bones of mammalia 
 of extinct and living species, &c., &c. No human bones (?). 
 
 Description of some remarkable species. 
 
 Great local deposits of bones, formed before or during the period 
 of the ancient detritus. Examples. 
 
 Ossiferous caverns, osseous breccias, etc. 
 
 Sedgwick always paid great attention to palaeontology, and 
 we find him recurring to the subject of organic remains in the 
 same syllabus, Part II. (p. 13), concluding with "Importance 
 of organic remains in the identification of contemporaneous 
 deposits in determining the successive conditions of the 
 earth." He fully recognised the value of palaeontological 
 evidence. As early as 1822 he insisted upon the importance 
 of an intimate acquaintance with certain branches of natural 
 history. "Without such knowledge it must be impossible to 
 
 1 Life of Charles Darwin, i. 70. The theory was communicated to the 
 Geological Society 31 May, 1837. Proceedings, ii. 552. 
 
 S. I. IQ 
 
290 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 ascertain the physical circumstances under which our newer 
 strata have been deposited. To complete the zoological 
 history of any one of these formations, many details are yet 
 wanting 1 ." He always carefully collected fossils, and referred 
 them to the best authorities he could find on each special group 
 for determination ; but, while he appealed to palaeontological 
 evidence whenever he could, he always maintained that the 
 first thing was to get the rocks into the right order in the field. 
 Sedgwick's arrangement of stratified rocks in the two 
 syllabuses shews his gradual emancipation from the theories 
 of Werner. In the first the term "transition rocks" stands as 
 the heading to a chapter ; in the second he discusses, at the 
 end of a chapter: "Origin of the term Transition with what 
 limitations it is applicable to the upper series no clear line 
 of separation between the two." Again : in the first he 
 worked up from the transition rocks through the stratified 
 series in ascending order. It is true that while treating them 
 he pointed out the "great variety of fossil species", and taught 
 the " principles of classification of organic remains founded on 
 the classes of recent species", and dwelt upon the "connection 
 of fossil species with particular strata 2 ;" but it is a very 
 suggestive fact that in the second syllabus he reversed the 
 order, and worked down from the better known to the more 
 obscure, shewing that he now more fully realised the truth 
 that the history of the earth must be deduced from a study 
 of the operations of nature which we see going on around us 
 at the present time. A sketch pasted into his own copy of 
 the second syllabus shews that among other illustrations he 
 cited in his lectures the floating island of Derwentwater, and 
 the sources of springs in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. 
 The execution is better than that of the sketches which 
 ornament some of his letters in later life, the rudeness of 
 which he used playfully to deplore. 
 
 1 Letter On the geology of the Isle of Wight, 17 March, 1822. Annals of 
 Philosophy, N. S. iii. 329. 
 
 2 Syllabus, ed. 1821, Chapter IV. Transition Rocks, 2. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 291 
 
 It is pleasant to read a good practical paper founded on 
 original observation in which the character of dykes is so well 
 discussed as in the paper on the Association of Trap Rocks 
 with the Mountain Limestone Formation in High Teesdale 
 which Sedgwick read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society 
 in 1823 24. He points out that dykes are of all ages, 
 and refers them to an igneous origin in the following passage : 
 
 " It is a matter of fact, which is independent of all theory, that 
 an enormous mass of strata has been rent asunder ; and it is 
 probable that the rent has been prolonged to the extent of fifty or 
 sixty miles. If we exclude volcanic agency, what power in nature is 
 there capable of producing such an effect? By supposing such 
 phenomena the effects of volcanic action, we bring into operation no 
 causes but those which are known to exist, and are adequate to 
 effects even more extensive than those which have been described." 
 
 In describing the columnar structure it did not escape his 
 notice that the prisms were arranged at right angles to the 
 cooling surfaces. He mentions also the common mode of 
 weathering into great balls by the exfoliation of successive 
 layers from the joint faces. 
 
 Sedgwick contributed a paper to the A nnals of Philosophy 
 for April and July, 1825, on the Origin of Alluvial and 
 Diluvial Formations, in which he distinguishes the older 
 formations, which we should now call " drift ", from the 
 generally newer alluvial deposits. He points out the anoma- 
 lous position and irregular distribution of the boulders which 
 occur in the drift; but that glacial conditions had once been 
 prevalent in our island, and over extensive tracts throughout 
 the northern part of our hemisphere, had not at that time been 
 recognised. There is still much difference of opinion as to 
 whether the "drift" of certain districts is due to land-ice, or to 
 icebergs ; and, if we translate the views of those who hold the 
 iceberg theory into the language of Sedgwick's time, we shall 
 find that the observations which he records are not far wrong 
 as to the direction of the currents which distributed the "drift". 
 That he did not recognise the exact mode of transport is only 
 to say that he had not that familiarity with glaciated districts 
 
 192 
 
292 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 which enabled Agassiz to suggest the agency of ice. He 
 referred the accumulation of the diluvial detritus to the 
 action of water ; he concluded that the floods which produced 
 it " swept over every part of England that they were put in 
 motion by no powers of nature with which we are acquainted 
 and that they took place during an epoch which was pos- 
 terior to the deposition of all the regular strata of the earth." 
 
 As this question has acquired fresh importance from the 
 recent invocation of a flood of waters as the sole agent in the 
 deposition of the drift, the following passage, written it will 
 be remembered sixty-three years ago, will be read with 
 interest. Sedgwick maintained that while the evidence for the 
 truths of revealed religion was of a totally different character 
 from that by which physical laws are established, still the con- 
 clusions at which we arrive in the two cases should not be con- 
 tradictory ; and his statements on these questions are always 
 fair and liberal, and far in advance of the age in which he lived. 
 
 " As we are unacquainted with the forces which put the diluvian 
 waters in motion, we are also, with very limited exceptions, unable to 
 determine the direction in which the currents have moved over the 
 earth's surface. Many parts of the north of Europe seem to have 
 been swept over by a great current which set in from the north. In 
 some parts of Scotland there has been a great rush of water from the 
 north-west. The details given above, show that the currents which 
 have swept over different parts of England have not been confined to 
 any given direction. It may, perhaps, be laid down as a general rule, 
 that the diluvial gravel has been drifted down all the great inclined 
 planes which the earth's surface presented to the retiring waters. 
 #.#.'*'##*'# 
 
 "The facts brought to light by the combined labours of the 
 modern school of geologists, seem, as far as I comprehend them, 
 completely to demonstrate the reality of a great diluvian catastrophe 
 during a comparatively recent period in the natural history of the 
 earth. In the preceding speculations I have carefully abstained from 
 any allusion to the sacred records of the history of mankind ; and I 
 deny that Professor Buckland, or any other practical geologist of our 
 time has rashly attempted to unite the speculations of his favourite 
 science with the truths of revelation 1 . 
 
 1 Professor Buckland 's Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, Observations on the Organic 
 Remains contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on other Geological 
 Phenomena, attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge, had been published 
 in 1823. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 293 
 
 " The authority of the sacred records has been established by a 
 great mass of evidence at once conclusive and appropriate; but 
 differing altogether in kind from the evidence of observation and 
 experiment, by which alone physical truth can ever be established. 
 It must, therefore, at once be rash and unphilosophical to look to 
 the language of revelation for any direct proof of the truths of 
 physical science. But truth must at all times be consistent with 
 itself. The conclusions established on the authority of the sacred 
 records may, therefore, consistently with the soundest philosophy, be 
 compared with the conclusions established on the evidence of 
 observation and experiment; and such conclusions, if fairly deduced, 
 must necessarily be in accordance with each other. This principle 
 has been acted on by Cuvier, and appears to be recognized in every 
 part of the "Reliquicz Diluviance". The application is obvious. 
 The sacred records tell us that a few thousand years ago "the 
 fountains of the great deep were broken up " and that the earth's 
 surface was submerged by the waters of a general deluge ; and the 
 investigations of geology tend to prove that the accumulations of 
 alluvial matter have not been going on many thousand years ; and 
 that they were preceded by a great catastrophe which has left traces 
 of its operation in the diluvial detritus which is spread out over all 
 the strata of the earth. 
 
 " Between these conclusions, derived from sources entirely in- 
 dependent of each other, there is, therefore, a general coincidence 
 which it is impossible to overlook, and the importance of which it 
 would be most unreasonable to deny. The coincidence has not 
 been assumed hypothetically, but has been proved legitimately, by an 
 immense number of direct observations conducted with indefatigable 
 labour, and all tending to the establishment of the same general 
 truth 1 ." 
 
 At the end of the paper is an appendix, giving an account 
 of some changes in the channels which drain the fen-land : an 
 account full of interest to those familiar with the Humber 
 and its tributaries, and all the phenomena of silting-up and 
 warping. Sedgwick concludes as follows : 
 
 " If such extraordinary effects as those described in this note be 
 produced by the accumulation of alluvial matter in course of a few 
 hundred years, we may be well assured that the whole form of the 
 neighbouring coast must have been greatly modified by the same 
 causes acting without interruption, and without any modification 
 from works of art, for 3000 or 4000 years." 
 
 The letter On the Classification of the Strata which appear 
 on the Yorkshire Coast, which, like the last, was addressed to 
 the editors of the Annals of Philosophy, 20 February, 1826, 
 
 1 Annals of Philosophy, N. S. 1825, x. pp. 33 35. 
 
294 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 must not be wholly passed over in silence. It is based on 
 observations made in 1821, but which, after Sedgwick's 
 fashion, were not worked out for five years. His object in 
 writing it was to connect the phenomena observed in York- 
 shire with those observed in other parts of England ; and it 
 contains, parenthetically, a good deal of information on the 
 geology of Weymouth and its neighbourhood. 
 
 The value of the work done in Yorkshire appears again 
 in the splendid monograph On the Magnesian Limestone and 
 lower Portions of the Neiv Red Sandstone Series, which was 
 read to the Geological Society at various intervals between 
 November, 1826, and March, 1828. Whatever turn geolo- 
 gical research may take, this, with some other papers which 
 followed it in quick succession, must always be referred to as 
 standard works, which settled some of the disputed questions 
 of English geology. It is at once broad and minute : broad 
 in its generalisations for it places in order a complex group of 
 rocks which, until it was written, were in complete confusion ; 
 and minute in working out, through the whole of the district 
 selected, from Nottingham to the southern extremity of North- 
 umberland, the boundaries of the different formations, and their 
 relations to each other. The labour which this research implies 
 is almost incredible ; the whole district appears to have been 
 gone over, probably on foot, and compass in hand. Every 
 quarry, cliff, and scar is made to bear its part in the general 
 result. In carrying out these researches it must be remem- 
 bered that hardly any help was at that time available. Mr 
 Smith's geological map of Yorkshire had been published and 
 is constantly referred to, but Sedgwick notes that " geological 
 maps of the other counties through which the magnesian 
 limestone passes were not published at the time the observa- 
 tions were made on which the greatest part of this paper is 
 founded 1 ." Moreover, the Ordnance Survey was not yet in 
 existence. On this account it will be interesting, we think, to 
 
 1 On the Geological Relations and Internal Structure of the Magnesian Lime- 
 stone, etc., p. 43, note. 
 
SECTION IN THE DIRKUTIOX OF THE LINK, AB.< MAT* x-i 
 
 MAP OF PART OF YORKSHIRE. 
 
 To illustrate Seclgwick's paper on the Geological Relations and Structure 
 
 .of the Magncsian Limestone. 
 (Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. Ser. II. Vol. Hi. Plate 4.) 
 
 To face page 295, Vol. I. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 295 
 
 reproduce one of the maps which Sedgwick drew and mea- 
 sured for himself. Difficult as his task must have been for 
 he could hardly have known much about practical surveying 
 it will be found that in accuracy of detail his unaided 
 efforts have only been superseded by the elaborate work of 
 the Geological Survey. 
 
 The paper opens with the following prefatory sentences : 
 
 "After the production of the rocks of the carboniferous order, the 
 earth's surface appears to have been acted on by powerful disturb- 
 ing forces, which, not only in the British Isles, but through the 
 greater part of the European basin, produced a series of formations 
 of very great extent and complexity of structure. These deposits, 
 known in our own country by the name of new red sandstone and 
 red marl, and, when considered on an extended scale, comprising all 
 the formations between the coal-measures and the lias, notwithstand- 
 ing their violent mechanical origin, have several characters in 
 common, which enable us to connect them together, and, for general 
 purposes of comparison, to regard them as one group. Great beds 
 of conglomerate, coarse sand, and sandstone, frequently tinged with 
 red oxyde of iron ; and of red marl, associated with innumerable beds 
 and masses of earthy salts, constitute, in many countries, the principal 
 portion of the group we are considering. Many of these salts, 
 though of almost constant occurrence among the rocks of this epoch, 
 have been developed with so much irregularity, that the attempts to 
 arrange them in distinct formations (when used for any purpose 
 beyond local description) have sometimes, perhaps, served to retard 
 rather than to advance our knowledge of the earth's history. The 
 great calcareous beds which were produced during this period form, 
 however, an exception to the last observation. They appear to have 
 been chiefly developed in the upper and lower portions of the system 
 we have been considering; and, though possessing some characters 
 in common, are sufficiently distinguished by their position and their 
 fossils to be separated into two distinct formations. The higher of 
 these (the muschel-kalk stein of the continental geologists) has no 
 representative in the series of rocks which have hitherto been 
 observed in our island ; the lower is represented by the great terrace 
 of magnesian limestone which ranges from Nottingham to the mouth 
 of the Tyne." 
 
 In the next place, after noticing the "general want of 
 conformity to all the inferior formations " observable in the 
 magnesian limestone series, he cautions his readers against 
 pushing this kind of evidence too far : 
 
 "We have no right to assume, nor is there any reason to believe, 
 that such disturbing forces acted either uniformly or simultaneously 
 
296 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18181827. 
 
 throughout the world. Formations which in one country are uncon- 
 formable, may in another be parallel to each other, and so intimately 
 connected as to appear the production of one epoch." 
 
 Throughout the paper we find great care bestowed upon 
 the determination of the fossils found in the different deposits, 
 and a good many of the most characteristic are figured. 
 Sedgwick was of course very much excited by the discovery 
 of fossil fish in the marl-slate ; and he hunted up the speci- 
 mens and fragments of specimens which had found their way 
 into private collections all over the country. When sub- 
 mitted to De Blainville it was decided that they were almost 
 identical with the celebrated fish from the copper-slate of 
 Germany. At the end of the paper we find a short descrip- 
 tive notice of three species, Palceothrissum magnum, P. macro- 
 cephalum, and P. elegans, illustrated by some excellent figures, 
 one of which is here reproduced, to shew the care with which 
 he elaborated his papers. Sedgwick followed up the study of 
 fossil fish in subsequent researches, and succeeded in getting 
 Alexander Agassiz, the Cuvier of ichthyology, to come to 
 Cambridge and examine his collection. 
 
 The following classification of the rocks investigated, in 
 descending order, is given at the end of the paper : 
 
 1. Upper red marl and gypsum. 
 
 2. Upper red sandstone. 
 
 3. Upper thin-bedded limestone. 
 
 4. Lower red marl and gypsum. 
 
 5. Yellow magnesian limestone. 
 
 6. Marl and thin beds of magnesian limestone. 
 
 7. Lower red sandstone. 
 
 Sedgwick's account of the lowest beds of the group, as 
 thus arranged, is not always clear, but it may be explained, 
 we think, in the following manner. 
 
 The Lower Magnesian Limestone passes down into red 
 or yellow sandy beds at Pontefract. So, in the Eden Valley, 
 the brockram or basement conglomerate of the Poikilitic 
 series rests on red and yellow sandstones. But these are of 
 
^**^ 
 
 PAL/EOTHRISSUM M ACROCEPH ALU M . 
 
 (Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. Ser. II. Vol. iii. Plate 9.) 
 To face page 296, Vol. I. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 1818-1827. 297 
 
 totally different age. In the sandy beds of the roadside cliff 
 near the great quarries just outside Pontefract Schizodzis 
 obscurus has been found. These beds undoubtedly belong 
 to the Magnesian Limestone series. In the Eden Valley, on 
 the other hand, it was found by boring near Appleby that the 
 red colour did not extend farther into the rock than a little 
 over one hundred feet. The colour was obviously a stain 
 produced by infiltration from above. Again, there is, in the 
 Woodwardian Museum, a collection of fossil plants from the 
 north-west margin of the same area, obtained from red beds 
 formerly referred to the Poikilitic series, but which contain 
 nothing but carboniferous species. These facts obviously 
 account for the difficulties which have arisen from some 
 observers recording that the base of the Poikilitic series 
 graduated into the carboniferous, while others saw a strong 
 discordancy between the two. The confusion has been 
 increased by an attempt to force the English classification 
 into harmony with the as yet unestablished sequence of 
 Germany, or the still less known deposits of Russia. On 
 this point Sedgwick makes the following admirable remarks : 
 
 " Each country ought to be described without any accommodating 
 hypothesis, according to the type after which it has been moulded. 
 But, in comparing the unconnected deposits of remote countries, we 
 must act on an opposite principle; learning to suppress all local 
 phenomena, and to seize on those only which are coextensive with 
 the objects we attempt to classify." 
 
 Whatever therefore may be convenient in respect of the 
 Dyas of Germany, or the Permian of Russia, all attempts to 
 bracket the Magnesian Limestone of England and its asso- 
 ciated red marls with the carboniferous rocks, instead of 
 making them the beginning of a new series, forming the base 
 of the Secondary rocks, have been founded on stratigraphical 
 mistakes, and tend to perpetuate an unnatural classification. 
 Sedgwick's grouping of the New Red rocks of Britain, which 
 brackets the whole Poikilitic series together, will undoubtedly 
 stand the test of time. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 (1827-1831.) 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MUR- 
 CHISON. TOUR WITH HIM IN SCOTLAND. OFFICE OF SENIOR 
 PROCTOR (1827). JOINT PAPERS WITH MURCHISON. SUMMER 
 IN CORNWALL. DOLCOATH MINE. VISITS CONYBEARE IN 
 SOUTH WALES (1828). SEDGWICK PRESIDENT OF GEOLOGICAL 
 SOCIETY. DIVINITY ACT. MR CAVENDISH ELECTED UNI- 
 VERSITY REPRESENTATIVE. SUMMER IN GERMANY AND THE 
 
 TYROL WITH MURCHISON. JOINT PAPER ON THE EASTERN 
 ALPS (1829). ADDRESS TO GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. SUMMER 
 IN NORTHUMBERLAND. CONTESTED ELECTION OF PRESIDENT 
 OF ROYAL SOCIETY (1830). ADDRESSES TO GEOLOGICAL 
 SOCIETY (1831). 
 
 SEDGWICK had been elected a Fellow of the Geological 
 Society of London in November, 1818. He could not have 
 attended the meetings regularly at any rate at first but 
 when he did go he thoroughly enjoyed them. In those early 
 days of the Society's existence it was but eleven years old 
 in 1818 it was composed, as he has himself recorded, "of 
 robust, joyous, and independent spirits, who toiled well in the 
 field, and who did battle and cuffed opinions with much spirit 
 and great good will. For they had one great object before 
 them, the promotion of true knowledge ; and not one of them 
 was deeply committed to any system of opinions V In such 
 
 1 A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palczozoic Rocks, p. xc. 
 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 299 
 
 an assemblage Sedgwick was sure to take a foremost place, 
 and we are not surprised to learn that some of his " most 
 honoured and cherished 1 " friendships originated in the Society. 
 Before long the value of his cooperation, from a scientific 
 point of view, came to be recognised; in 1824 he became a 
 member of the Council; and in 1827 a Vice-President. His 
 friend Dr Fitton, then President, in announcing his election to 
 the latter office, assures him that he feels " no small gratifica- 
 tion in the prospect " of having him as a colleague ; and that 
 he will be most happy "to receive any suggestions for the 
 advancement of the subject or the welfare of the Society 2 ." 
 This language affords conclusive evidence of the favourable 
 judgment which capable men of science had by this time 
 passed on Sedgwick ; before long the Society accepted him 
 as a leader, and much of " the generous, unselfish, and truth- 
 loving spirit that glowed throughout the whole body" was 
 probably due to his influence. 
 
 Sedgwick soon became on excellent terms with the 
 fathers of the Society ; but it was with Roderick Impey 
 Murchison, then one of the junior members, that he con- 
 tracted the closest alliance. The origin of this alliance, like 
 the origin of many great things, is shrouded in obscurity ; 
 but before we proceed much farther we shall find them 
 taking long geological expeditions together, and collaborating 
 in the Transactions of the Society. Murchison says that 
 " from his buoyant and cheerful nature, as well as from his 
 flow of soul and eloquence, Sedgwick at once won my heart, 
 and a year only was destined to elapse before we became 
 coadjutors in a survey of the Highlands, and afterwards of 
 various parts of the Continent 3 ." Mr Geikie, on the other 
 hand, while fully admitting that his hero admired and 
 respected Sedgwick, gives a more practical reason for the 
 selection of him as a travelling-companion. Murchison was 
 
 1 Ibid. p. xcii. 
 
 2 From W. H. Fitton, M.D., 8 February, 1827. 
 
 3 Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 124. 
 
300 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MURCHISON. 
 
 1827. then a beginner in geology, and in 1826 had found himself 
 Mt. 42. thoroughly puzzled by the problems presented to him in 
 Arran and other parts of Scotland. He therefore "deter- 
 mined to return to the attack, bringing with him a geologist 
 of ampler knowledge, and specially experienced in the 
 complicated structure of the older rocks 1 ." The geologist 
 selected was Sedgwick, to whom he must have suggested a 
 joint expedition to Scotland soon after his own return from 
 it, for early in 1827 he writes: " Dinna forget the land of 
 cakes, whiskey, and hospitality, where I hope to act as your 
 aide-de-camp ; which having been my old trade before I 
 took to the road, enables me to say without presumption that 
 I am not a bad caterer;" and Sedgwick replies (20 May): 
 
 " I am most anxious to accompany you to Scotland, and if 
 possible will be ready by the time you mention. I think I told 
 you that I am out at elboivs, and that this sorry condition of 
 my garments prevents me from going to Germany. You, it 
 seems, have lately been breech-less. So on the whole we shall 
 exhibit good specimens of denudation. I hope the country 
 we pass through will be induced to sympathize with us." 
 
 Nothing happened to interfere with the proposed col- 
 laboration, and at the beginning of July, 1827, they started. 
 The expedition was thoroughly successful. If Murchison 
 gained an instructor, Sedgwick gained an agreeable com- 
 panion, whom, before they got home, he called his intimate 
 friend, though it may be doubted whether this friendship 
 was based on a surer foundation than mutual convenience. 
 They wrote affectionately to each other ; Murchison signs 
 himself " Rodericus," and Sedgwick replies with " Yours to 
 the earth's centre," and so forth ; but, with the exception of 
 one remarkable letter in which Murchison confesses his reli- 
 gious belief, or rather disbelief, to " the man of my heart 2 ," 
 they wrote on geological subjects exclusively. Nor have we 
 any evidence, either from personal recollection or from tradi- 
 tion, that Sedgwick ever spoke or wrote of Murchison in 
 
 1 Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 137. 2 Ibid. i. 261. 
 
TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 301 
 
 the warm enthusiastic language he was in the habit of using 1827. 
 towards those whom he really loved. Murchison, on the other ^t. 42. 
 hand, sat for a time at Sedgwick's feet, and got twitted for his 
 hero-worship by those who adored less fervently. " Perhaps 
 you know/' writes Lyell to Scrope, " that he idolises even 
 more than the Cantabs ' the first of men/ as Adam is usually 
 styled there V It need not surprise us that such a friendship 
 came to an end as suddenly as it had begun ; and that the 
 closing years of both were saddened by an estrangement 
 which each regarded as due to the vindictiveness of the other. 
 The special object of this first journey "was to ascertain, 
 if possible, the true relations of the red sandstones of Scotland 2 ." 
 For this purpose it was agreed to commence with Arran, to 
 pass through Mull, Skye, Sutherlandshire, and Caithness, and 
 thence southwards by Elgin, Aberdeen, Forfarshire, Edin- 
 burgh, Dumfriesshire, Carlisle, and Newcastle, to York. The 
 progress of the travellers as far as Rosshire is agreeably 
 related in the two following letters to Whewell, who seems to 
 have had, at one time, some intention of joining them. 
 
 BRODICK, ARRAN, July 15, 1827. 
 Dear Whewell, 
 
 Men who work fifteen hours a day cannot easily 
 find time to write long letters. I am stealing a minute at the 
 breakfast table in a pretty Highland village under Goatfell, 
 or Gengevane. We arrived at Edinburgh without any 
 accident; not even the adventure of a bout of sickness. I 
 slept like a top within three feet of the engine during the 
 three nights we were out, and during the day we were 
 geologising the coast from the deck of the steamer. I only 
 remained one day in Edinburgh, and heard many tender 
 inquiries after yourself. 
 
 We coached to Glasgow, where we remained all night, 
 and next morning we steamed to Lock Ranza on the 
 north point of Arran. Here we have been nine days, with un- 
 
 1 Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 310. 2 Geikie's Life of Mttrchison> i. 139. 
 
3 02 ISLE OF ARRAN. 
 
 1827. interrupted fine weather. We have fairly done the island, and 
 JEt. 42. have found a complete series of the Old Red, coal measures, 
 and Young Red. The details have cost us some hard labour. 
 I hoped to have run across to the coast of Ayr, but it was 
 quite impossible. Tomorrow we are off for Bute thence to 
 Oban and Mull, where we shall remain about a week. Then 
 we shall start for Portree in Skye. On this island we shall 
 remain a week or ten days. If you have a notion of joining 
 us, you may find your way by steamers from Glasgow to any 
 of these places with as much ease as you travel from London 
 to Liverpool ; and indeed with much greater ease. All the 
 lochs and arms of the sea are covered with steamers plying 
 in all directions. 
 
 I am delighted with what I have seen of the Highlanders. 
 They are good-humoured, high-minded, well-informed, racy, 
 and dirty. The day before yesterday at Loch Ranza I 
 asked a fine dark-eyed lass for a pair of slippers. She 
 immediately pulled off her own shoes and offered them to me, 
 saying : " I dinna want 'em. You may wear 'em yoursel 
 while I clean your ain." On returning yesterday over the 
 mountains we passed two fine lasses ; one had a green veil, 
 and the other a velvet reticule. Yet both were walking 
 without shoes and stockings. Our guide is a fine old man 
 whose mind is stored with traditions respecting all the 
 families in the Highlands. He told Murchison many 
 circumstances respecting his family history which quite 
 astonished him. He (Mr M.) said that he did not believe 
 any man in the world had known them except himself, and 
 he had only learned them from an old manuscript of his 
 grandfather's. My best regards to every body. Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 ULLAPOOL, August n, 1827. 
 Dear Whewell, 
 
 We are waiting at a small inn on the north-west 
 coast of Ross, in hopes of better weather. Should it clear 
 
ISLE OF MULL. 303 
 
 up, in a quarter of an hour we are off. I have only time for 1827. 
 a few lines which may give you some notion of our intended ^t- 4*- 
 motions. Tomorrow and the next day we shall probably be 
 at Assynt ; Wednesday or Thursday we shall, if possible, 
 spend at Tongue (the seat of Lord Reay), from whose house 
 we mean to make an excursion to Cape Wrath. Afterwards 
 we turn to the north-east, and shall probably be at Thurso in 
 ten days from this time (on the 2ist). From Thurso we 
 propose to coast by John o' Groat's, and to walk along the 
 shores of Caithness, Sutherland, and Rosshire, to Inverness. 
 This place we hope to reach in the second week of September. 
 If you have any disposition to join us we shall rejoice to see 
 you, and I can promise you a most hospitable reception from 
 the Highland Lairds. I will also promise you fair weather; 
 for I am quite sure that all the rain must fall on the west 
 coast. We have so much here that the clouds can have none 
 to spare for the east coast. 
 
 I have neither time nor space for any description of what 
 we have been about ; but I will give you our track, and it may 
 serve as a text for some talk when we meet. We spent nine 
 active days at Arran, and from thence found our way through 
 the Kyles of Bute to Loch Fyne. We then crossed the Mull 
 of Cantyre, and coasted up to Oban and Ballachulish ; and 
 from the latter place we made an attack upon the primitive 
 chain, but were driven back by bad weather, and obliged to 
 take shelter in a steam-boat, which took us down Loch Linnhe 
 to Oban. From Oban we proceeded by the same conveyance 
 to Tobermory, on the north point of Mull. The weather then 
 cleared, and we had three or four glorious days at Staffa, 
 lona, and the south coast of Mull. If ever you come among 
 the western Isles be sure to see the south coast of Mull. 
 The basaltic cliffs are most gorgeous. They are more than 
 equal to Staffa piled ten times upon itself. From Carsaig 
 Bay we crossed through the centre of Mull in a most dirty 
 condition ; the two shirts I had with me would have fetched 
 a good price from a tallow-chandler : but at Torliusk we 
 
304 ISLE OF SKYE. 
 
 1827. again embraced our portmanteaus, and found a stock of soap. 
 JEt. 42. After spending two days with Lord Compton we started by 
 the Maid of Islay up the magnificent Sound of Skye, waiting 
 for a few minutes by the way under the lofty Scuir of Eig. 
 We landed at Portree, and proceeded forwards along the north 
 coast of Skye to the utmost limit of the great basaltic chain. 
 The character of the coast is this : a base of lias and oolite, 
 sometimes forming a cliff five or six hundred feet high ; over 
 them great stacks of basalt rising several hundred feet above 
 the horizontal beds. The tops of these form a kind of table- 
 land, at the back of which is a great basaltic chain rising 
 about a thousand feet above the plateau. From some points 
 you take in at a single view from a boat, the stratified rocks, 
 the superincumbent columns, and the bristling top of the 
 chain, and the effect is glorious. This is a dreadful country 
 for storms ; you have such howling blasts along the coast 
 that you might fancy that the gigantic columns of basalt 
 were organ-pipes, and that the devil was blowing a tune 
 through them. We examined the islands of Raasay, Scalpa, 
 etc., and made some excursions to the south-west coast of 
 Skye. Our attempt to cross the Cuchullins almost ended 
 fatally. Lord Macdonald's forester was our guide ; but in a 
 dreadful storm of wind and rain, accompanied with the usual 
 mists, he lost his way. After wandering many hours in a 
 state of great misery we at length escaped from a labyrinth of 
 precipices by the help of my needle, and found our way to a 
 farm-house. Since leaving Skye we have been working our 
 way, hammer in hand, up the west coast of Ross. The 
 country is magnificent, and the weather, till this morning, 
 has been highly favourable. Fish is so abundant that we 
 have nothing to do but light a fire and put on a frying pan, 
 and the salmon find their way into it without help. My 
 paper is out. My best regards to all Trinitarians. Yours 
 
 ever ' A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. Dear Hare, I will direct to you in case Whewell is 
 
COAST OF ROSS. 305 
 
 off. How goes on the Translation 1 ? Murchison is walking 1827. 
 about with a cigar. He sends you his regards between the &* 4 
 puffs. Yours, A. S. 
 
 A third letter, written to Ainger three days later from 
 Assynt, where they were detained by bad weather, gives a few 
 additional particulars. Sedgwick was evidently thoroughly 
 happy. Everything was new, and strange, and delightful. 
 He enjoyed the geology, he enjoyed the scenery, we might 
 almost say that he enjoyed the bad weather and the rough 
 travelling. " Arran," he says, " is a geological epitome of 
 the whole world, and is, moreover, eminently picturesque. I 
 was greatly delighted with it as the first place in which I saw 
 the Highlanders in their native habitations. These indeed 
 are none of the best. Those of the lower orders have often 
 neither chimney nor window, and from the distance of two 
 hundred yards might be mistaken for peat-stacks." In Mull 
 they experienced some striking contrasts. One night they 
 " slept at a whiskey-shop, and breakfasted in the same room 
 with the pigs"; the next they dined with a laird, who gave 
 them venison and claret. Rosshire they found " very wild, no 
 roads, and what to us is of much greater moment, no bridges. 
 The mountain-streams have become torrents, and some of the 
 rivers impassable, so that we have been exposed to much 
 fatigue, delay, and vexation ; and, what is worse than all, we 
 have in one or two instances, after walking twenty or thirty 
 miles, returned without effecting the purpose for which we 
 started. One day we crossed upwards of forty streams, some 
 of which took us up to the middle ; and several times 
 yesterday our horses were nearly off their legs." Such were 
 some of the difficulties which a geologist had to encounter in 
 the Highlands sixty years since. 
 
 Mr Geikie, in his account of this journey, points out, as 
 indicative of Sedgwick's power of acute observation, that 
 
 1 In 1828 Mr J. C. Hare and Mr Thirlwall published the first volume of their 
 translation of Niebuhr's Geschichle Rom's. 
 
 S. I. 20 
 
306 CLEA VA GE. 
 
 1827. he had already recognized the peculiar structure of rocks 
 t. 42. ca ll e( i cleavage ", as distinct from stratification. When the 
 travellers were examining the slate-quarries of Ballachulish 
 they fell in with two German geologists, K. von Oeynhausen, 
 and H. von Decken, whom Sedgwick tried in vain to convince 
 on this point. The argument was long, and the rain heavy, 
 but the Germans could not be made to see that there 
 was any difference between the two classes of phenomena. 
 This accidental meeting was the beginning of much agree- 
 able intercourse, which was continued in Germany two 
 years later. 
 
 Having seen as much of the west and north-west of Scotland 
 as the weather would allow, the geologists explored the coast 
 of Caithness, and thence made their way down the east coast, 
 according to their original plan. On their way home Sedgwick 
 at least paid a visit to Lyell at Kinnordy 1 , and then went for 
 three days to Dent, before returning to Cambridge for the 
 Michaelmas Term. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. October 28, 1827. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 I received your letter on Monday last, and was 
 greatly delighted with the account you have given of your 
 proceedings. In return I have no news to tell you. My 
 father I found in a state of extreme debility, and worn to a 
 perfect anatomie vivante, but still without pain, and I might 
 perhaps say in good health. 
 
 After remaining with him three days I posted up to Cam- 
 bridge with all the expedition I could command, and only 
 arrived just in time to be enthralled in my new office. Behold 
 me now in a new character, strutting about and looking 
 dignified, with a cap, gown, cassock, and a huge pair of 
 bands ; the terror of all academic evil-doers in short a 
 finished moral scavenger. My time has been much taken 
 up with the petty details of my office, and in showing the 
 
 1 Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 199. 
 
OFFICE OF SENIOR PROCTOR. 307 
 
 lions to divers Papas and Mammas who at this time of the 1827. 
 year come up to the University with the rising hopes of their ^ 4 
 family. Dr Greville and Co. 1 spent two days in Cambridge 
 on their way to the south coast, where the Doctor means to 
 settle for the winter. Oeyenhausen and Decken have also 
 been here for two days, and seemed much pleased with their 
 visit. I wish I had been more perfectly disengaged for them ; 
 but Henslow helped me out. This week I have to make a 
 Latin speech to the Senate, not one word of which is yet 
 written ; I mean to write a new syllabus of my lectures, which 
 commence in about a week in short my hands are as full as 
 they well can be. I will, however, do the best I can for our 
 joint-stock work, and indeed I should not be afraid of what is 
 before me were it not for the weakness of my eyes. They 
 have been much worse since we parted, and have almost 
 entirely prevented me from doing anything by candle-light. 
 For some days I have abstained from wine, and have dined in 
 my own rooms in order to avoid the temptations of a College 
 Hall. In consequence of strict regimen, and cooling medicines, 
 I am now much better, but I am obliged to read and write as 
 little as I can help. Fitton wishes me to write a kind of 
 notice (I suppose in form of a letter) of what we have seen. 
 What do you think of this ? It might be put in, in our joint 
 names, as the harbinger of our joint-stock papers. In the 
 present state of my eyes, and with my 1001 engagements, I 
 fear you will find me a bad helper. I can only promise to do 
 my best, and this promise I make quite honestly. 
 
 I fear you will have a long bill against me, but I must 
 cash up out of the profits of my new office. It was sheer 
 poverty which drove me into harness. My eyes ache with 
 what I have been writing ; and from the way in which I have 
 written I fear your eyes will be as bad as mine, before you 
 make out my hieroglyphics. Give my kindest regards to Mrs 
 
 1 Robert Kaye Greville, LL.D., of Edinburgh, author of The Scottish Crypto- 
 gamic Flora, and other works. 
 
 20 2 
 
3 o8 OFFICE OF SENIOR PROCTOR. 
 
 1827. Murchison, and my congratulations on the good work she 
 t - 4 2 - has done during the summer 1 . 
 
 Dear Murchison, 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The laborious office of Senior Proctor, to which Sedg- 
 wick refers in the above letter, had been offered to him by 
 Trinity College ; and moreover he had been specially solicited 
 by the Master, Dr Wordsworth, to accept it 2 . A certain 
 amount of unruliness, not to say dissipation, had made itself 
 apparent among the undergraduates, which could only be put 
 an end to by severe measures carried out with discretion and 
 strict impartiality. It was felt that Sedgwick, with his peculiar 
 geniality, and known sympathy with the younger members of 
 the University, had special qualifications for such a task. 
 Proctorial stories have a strong family resemblance, and there- 
 fore we need not repeat any of those which still survive 
 respecting his administration. We will only say that he 
 fully justified the hopes that had been formed of him. He 
 detected several evildoers, flagrante delicto, and had them re- 
 moved from the University, without either losing his personal 
 popularity, or imperilling the dignity of his office. With 
 Sedgwick, however, even serious duties had their comic side, 
 and many were his jokes at his own expense. Let us quote, 
 as a specimen, the following description of his personal appear- 
 ance, which he sent to Murchison at the end of a string of 
 reasons for not attending a particular meeting of the Geo- 
 logical Society: "You and Mrs Murchison would have laughed 
 had you seen me enter the Senate House this morning at 
 eight. I had a cap, bands, gown, and cassock so far all was 
 regular but under my silk petticoats appeared an enormous 
 
 1 Mrs Murchison took a keen interest in her husband's pursuits, and frequently 
 gave him considerable help by collecting fossils, and making drawings. 
 
 2 This statement is made on the authority of W. H. Thompson, D.D., late 
 Master of Trinity College. 
 
JOINT PAPERS WITH MURCHISON. 309 
 
 pair of mud boots, and I had a great woollen ruff about my 1827. 
 neck as big as the starched cravat of my Lord Bacon. At nine ^ 4 
 the Examiners adjourn to breakfast, and I provided a large 
 pitcher of true old man's milk 1 , which operated delightfully, and 
 took the frost out of all our noses. We had kippered salmon, 
 and many other good things, which will make my Proctorate 
 quite celebrated ; and the remembrance of it will, for ages 
 unborn, continue to rise like a sweet odour in the nostrils of 
 our Alma Mater. I am sitting at the top of the Senate House 
 in an elevated arm chair, looking like an Inquisitor General, 
 and scowling down on two hundred and fifty poor devils who 
 are squeezing their brains to get out a few drops of mathe- 
 matics 2 ." 
 
 Would that one of the two hundred and fifty victims had 
 occupied a few spare moments in executing a pen-and-ink 
 sketch of the Grand Inquisitor, that posterity might have 
 realised more vividly the truth of the above description ! As 
 it is, we must be content with a siltiouette of Sedgvvick taken 
 during his year of office 3 . It gives a good general notion of 
 his dress and figure, as he may have stood, watch in hand, to 
 announce to those who were being examined, that the clock 
 was about to strike, and that they must fold up their papers. 
 
 The joint labour of Sedgwick and Murchison in the field 
 was to be succeeded by a joint labour at the desk, the "joint- 
 stock" work alluded to in the letter of October 28th by which 
 they were to put the results of their tour into shape for presen- 
 tation to the Geological Society at as early a date as possible. 
 It was decided to write two papers : the one on the structure of 
 the Isle of Arran ; the other on the Old Red Sandstone of the 
 
 1 Sedgwick's name for the then popular combination of port wine, spice, etc., 
 commonly known as "Bishop". 
 
 2 To R. I. Murchison, 15 January, 1828. At that time the Senate House was 
 not warmed. 
 
 3 The Cambridge Chronicle for 29 February, 1828, records: "Monsieur 
 Edouart, whose arrival we announced last week, has already met with a con- 
 siderable patronage from the gentlemen of the University." The silhouette from 
 which our copy was reduced was given to the Registry of the University by the 
 Rev. J. Romilly. 
 
1827. 
 * 42- 
 
 310 
 
 JOINT PAPERS WITH MURCHISON. 
 
 north of Scotland. This proved a tedious and difficult matter. 
 If the two writers could have retired together to some lonely 
 spot, at a distance from all interruptions, their work might 
 have proceeded smoothly and rapidly to its conclusion. This, 
 however, they could not do, and therefore it had to be got 
 
 Sedgwick in 1828; reduced from a silhouette by Monsieur Auguste Edouart. 
 
 through by snatches, with the result that the summer of 1828 
 was far advanced before the second paper could be read to the 
 Society. This long delay was quite unavoidable, partly from 
 causes personal to the two writers, partly from the complexity 
 of the subject with which they had to deal. Murchison, as 
 will be seen presently, was not a little annoyed at it. He had 
 no distractions to take him away from geology. He was ten 
 years younger than Sedgwick ; he was the fortunate possessor 
 of a strong constitution ; he was ambitious, and eager for 
 
JOINT PAPERS WITH MURCHISON. 311 
 
 distinction in his new pursuit. Had he been left to himself 1827. 
 he would probably have written both papers in a very short ^ t 4 
 space of time. But it must be recollected that he had not 
 Sedgwick's experience ; he had as yet published only one 
 paper and that not a long one ; and he could have had but 
 little idea of the labour of reducing extensive field-observa- 
 tions. It is perhaps fortunate for his reputation as a geologist 
 that he had to submit to an enforced delay in coming before 
 the public. 
 
 Sedgwick as our readers know already worked under 
 very different conditions ; and it was only when he was away 
 from Cambridge that he could give undivided attention to 
 geology. In this year too he was more than usually occupied. 
 His duties as Proctor ; his lectures ; his museum ; his parish ; 
 his ailments ; were all so many barriers to a speedy completion 
 of his share in the joint task. Moreover, his own paper on 
 the Magnesian Limestone, begun (as we have seen) in 1826, 
 had yet to be finished. This, however, he generously laid 
 aside, and proceeded as fast as he could with the paper on 
 Arran. The series of letters he wrote to Murchison while it 
 was proceeding is tolerably complete, and affords a more 
 graphic illustration than will again occur of the way in which 
 Sedgwick's work used to be hampered and impeded by in- 
 cessant demands upon his time. The letters are valuable too 
 for another reason. They show how cordial the relations 
 between him and Murchison were at that period ; and how 
 anxious he was to give full credit to his friend for his share in 
 the field-work. The first extract refers to what Murchison 
 calls "a tiff I had with our warm-hearted but hot-headed 
 President Fitton, who had suspected that I was not doing 
 justice to Sedgwick 1 ." 
 
 TRIN. COLL. November 3, 1827. 
 
 "Your letter both vexed and surprised me... In one 
 respect I am almost certain that you are labouring under a 
 
 1 Note by Murchison on the back of the letter. 
 
3 i2 MURCHISOWS SHARE OF THE WORK. 
 
 1827. false impression. I have again looked at Dr Fitton's letter, 
 t. 42. and I cannot persuade myself that anything unfair was in- 
 tended towards yourself. He merely wished to give me a 
 nudge on the elbow, knowing my habits of delay. At all 
 events you may depend upon me, that nothing shall be done 
 by myself without consulting you. Indeed, were I so disposed, 
 you have me on the hip ; as all notes, sections, and indeed 
 everything from which our future papers must be compiled, 
 are in your possession. You worked harder in many respects 
 than I did myself; and, till we reached the east coast, and 
 indeed there also, you were my geological guide. I should 
 therefore be an ass indeed if I thought of anything beyond 
 what we meditated. On the whole, perhaps it is better to put 
 in our papers one by one, and leave the results to the end, 
 which may be exhibited in the form of a resume generate. I 
 shall rejoice to see you here ; perhaps I may be in town next 
 week to consult the cunning eye-man you mentioned. My 
 eye is however much better. I have been water-drinking, 
 and dephlogisticating, and certainly have reduced the inflam- 
 mation. My kindest regards to Mrs Murchison." 
 
 SENATE HOUSE, Tuesday morning. 
 
 [13 November, 1827]. 
 
 " Last week my eyes were in such a state that it was 
 quite impossible for me to look over your penmanship 1 . Our 
 Professor of Physic ordered me to abstain from strong drink, 
 which I most religiously avoid, like a true Rechabite. He 
 also recommended me to use animal food very sparingly ; and 
 not content with this he put twelve leeches on my left temple. 
 This treatment has produced a good effect, and if properly 
 followed up will, I hope, put out the fire of my eye. I think I 
 
 1 A sentence in the earlier part of the letter shows that Sedgwick here refers to 
 the MS of Murchison's Supplementary remarks on the Strata of the Oolitic Series, 
 and the Rocks associated with them, in the Counties of Sutherland and Ross, and in 
 the Hebrides, read to the Geological Society 16 November, 1827. It is a con- 
 tinuation of the paper On the Coal-field of Brora, read 5 January and 2 February, 
 1827. 
 
ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENTS. 313 
 
 told you in my last that I don't look in a book by candle- 1828. 
 light, and as my mornings are sufficiently taken up with lee- ^ 4 
 tures, and various other academic employments, I have truly 
 very little time for many things about which I wish to employ 
 myself. The whole of yesterday I was employed in attending 
 certain formal academic meetings. Today I had just com- 
 menced, under the genial influence of the tea-pot, to read over 
 your notes, when, to my great horror, I was summoned to the 
 cold marble pavement of our Senate House, to administer the 
 matriculation oaths to the freshmen of this year. The men 
 are brought up, about twenty at a time, and swear in volleys. 
 While a fresh set are signing our books, paying fees, and 
 priming for the next broadside, I dip my pen in the inkstand, 
 and try to write a word or two ; in this way I have got so far 
 over the sheet at a rather hobbling pace ; but still I make 
 way. 
 
 As soon as these swearing manoeuvres are over I will get 
 one of my friends to read over your paper to me, for I fear 
 my eye-sight will not bear the work, if I am obliged to put 
 it off till the evening. I will add tomorrow morning a few 
 notes if necessary, and forward it by " The Telegraph 1 " at 
 10 o'clock." 
 
 SENATE HOUSE, Monday morning. 
 [13 January, 1828.] 
 
 " It is not from want of inclination that I keep away from 
 town ; but of all the days of the year 1828, Friday is the one 
 on which I shall be most completely nailed down by engage- 
 ments. Our annual examination is going on, and does not 
 end till Friday night, when the Moderators, and other exami- 
 ners, will meet at my rooms to give in the final result which I 
 shall have to publish in my capacity of Senior Proctor. On 
 Saturday the degrees are taken, and I shall again have to 
 officiate. I am truly sorry that I was not at the last meeting 
 from the account you give of it ; besides, I was doing no good 
 
 1 One of the coaches which then ran between Cambridge and London. 
 
3 i4 PAPER ON ARRAN FINISHED. 
 
 1828. here. My cold is better, or rather I am now going on with a 
 * 43- second edition, which is not so voluminous as the first. My 
 eyes, I am sorry to say, are no better, and plague me sadly. 
 I set to work the evening of the day I last wrote to you and 
 finished the peroration of our Arran Paper. It is cram-full of 
 hypotheses, and truly may want defending; but you must 
 stand up for me. I really think we shall between us set the 
 coast-section at rest. I was, however, severely punished for 
 my exertions ; for my eyes were so enraged at this treatment, 
 that they gave me no rest for nearly a week after. Since I 
 recovered I have written a few pages of the concluding part 
 of my Magnesian Limestone paper ; and I can have some- 
 thing ready against next Friday fortnight, when I will, if 
 possible, attend in proprid persona. Can you contrive to find 
 a corner that evening for my gab ? I truly hope Mr Pentland 
 will not have left London, as I want very much to talk with 
 him about the fish 1 . Don't prepare any map, as I have a 
 beautiful one by Decken, which he made at my rooms ex- 
 pressly for our Arran paper. 
 
 I wish I had been at your soiree to have had a fight with 
 Buckland ; at the same time I can't help saying that the fight 
 against the footsteps is almost to destroy the evidence of our 
 senses ; and this is going a long way. In plain truth I don't 
 in this case know any better argument than that clencher of 
 my uncle Toby, viz. " By G they are not footsteps 2 ." 
 
 SENATE HOUSE, Tuesday evening. 
 
 [14 January -, 1828]. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 I am greatly obliged to you for your kind invitation, 
 and truly mortified that I have it not in my power to avail 
 
 1 Mr J. B. Pentland was a travelled gentleman of scientific and antiquarian 
 tastes, who made himself useful to geologists by helping them to determine their 
 collections. He knew Cuvier, and took the fish in question to France for his 
 examination. 
 
 2 Endorsed by Murchison : " Alludes to an experiment I made at a soiree with 
 live tortoises on paste." 
 
SECOND PAPER BEGUN. 315 
 
 myself of it. But my letter of yesterday will have informed 1828. 
 you how I am circumstanced. It is literally impossible for me ^ t- 43- 
 at this time to leave Cambridge. I fear you will think me a 
 sorry coadjutor ; for all the work is left to yourself. This is 
 not as it ought to be ; but I am at present almost a lame 
 soldier ; at least, till my eyes are better, I shall only be fit for 
 invalid duty. You see I am trying to revenge myself for the 
 unlucky blow you gave me in Carsaig Bay 1 . It must be rather 
 a queer spot this weather. I wish I could transport myself 
 there for half an hour, and then come back again. The rust 
 of a spear is said to have healed the wounds inflicted by it. 
 Perhaps the sight of the Carsaig pitchstone would set my eyes 
 right. If you don't write sooner pray let me know how all 
 goes off on Friday night. I only ask this on the supposition 
 that you have five minutes to spare, and that you don't think 
 writing a bore. 
 
 The next thing for us to do is to give the structure of 
 Caithness, and the coast of the Murray Firth, and then to add 
 some general details on the conglomerates of the west coast. 
 The paper need not be very long ; at the same time it cannot 
 be very short, for it will be a sort of omnium gatherum, in which 
 it will be necessary to speculate de omnibus rebus et quibusdam 
 aliis. And surely on such a text we may fairly be allowed to 
 preach our sand out. I started with a good pen, and through 
 the first page contrived to make a fair fist ; but I am getting 
 worse and worse. My ink is thick, my brains are frozen, and 
 my time is up. So no more at present from yours till death 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The first part of the Arran paper was read 18 January, 
 1828, and concluded I February. Sedgwick then set to work 
 to finish his own paper on the Magnesian Limestone, but here 
 again ill-health stepped in, and March came before it could 
 be read, and even then it could hardly be called finished. But 
 
 1 On the south coast of Mull. 
 
3i6 PAPER ON MAGNESIAN LIMESTONE. 
 
 1828. for this, and his delay in beginning work on the second Scotch 
 * 43- paper, he shall make his own excuses to Murchison. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. Monday morning. 
 
 {February, 1828.] 
 
 " Many thanks for your last parcel. I will use it as soon 
 as I can, but I am out of sorts, and really dare not work at 
 present. Since we parted I have had a short visit from an old 
 and very unwelcome acquaintance, which has affected my 
 arterial system, and produced a throbbing in my head which 
 I must get rid of before I can fairly set to. Yesterday I did 
 duty about sixteen miles from hence ; and on my return I was 
 frequently obliged to pull up, because my head would not bear 
 the motion. The only radical cure for such feelings is exer- 
 cise and abstinence, which I must practice forthwith. Your 
 account of Mull delights me above measure. Mrs Murchison's 
 picture is now framed, and looks magnificent. When will she 
 do me the honour of coming to see it ? My lectures begin on 
 Wednesday next. Of course they will take up a considerable 
 portion of my time." 
 
 March, 1828. 
 
 " I send you the end of the paper : and those parts which 
 you may omit in reading I have marked at the side with a 
 pencil line. You will probably on looking it over see other 
 matter which may be left out. When you have finished, just 
 say to the Society that the sections, and one or two small 
 maps, are not finished ; but that a description of them, together 
 with a list of minerals and fossils in the formation, will be 
 given in an appendix, not of course of a nature to be read. 
 If I can get a drawing out of the hands of the man who was 
 .to do it for me I will send it up by the mail tonight directed 
 to the Society's rooms, Bedford Street. If I send the abstract 
 in a day or two I hope it will be in time 1 ." 
 
 1 The paper was read 7 March, 1828. The Proceedings of the Geological 
 Society record under that date: "A sketch of the subjects contained in this paper 
 was laid before the Society in 1826 (Nov. 17). They were resumed in a more 
 systematic and detailed form during two meetings in 1827; and are now terminated 
 by the observations read at the present meeting." 
 
ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENTS. 317 
 
 This work off Sedgwick's hands, his friend naturally 1828. 
 expected that he would find leisure to attack their second &* 43- 
 paper. But by this time he was immersed in the work of 
 the Lent term, and moreover the President of the Geological 
 Society had set apart the i6th May for the joint production 
 an unfortunate step when he had one so dilatory as Sedgwick 
 to deal with, for it doubtless gave him a further excuse for 
 delay. 
 
 [TRINITY COLLEGE, 12 March, 1828]. 
 
 " I have received a letter from the President, who sends 
 me the following programme of the order of papers to the 
 end of the session. March 21. Dr Richardson. April 4. 
 Blank. May 2. Buckland and Clift. May 1 6 and June 6. 
 Murchison and Sedgwick. June 20. Tag, rag, and bobtail &c., 
 &c. I am not sorry for this delay, except on your account. 
 It will give us time enough, and I shall be much more dis- 
 engaged. My Proctorial duties and lectures have pressed 
 rather hard upon me, and left me for the last three weeks 
 hardly a spare hour. This week I hoped to have made some 
 progress with our joint papers, when to my dismay I found 
 that I had, in right of my present dignity, to dance attendance 
 upon my Lord Judge. I am off to church with him this 
 morning, and then I go in the tail of his robe to hear him 
 address the Grand Jury, &c. &c. ; and as for my poor lectures 
 they are for the time sent right about. But I hope to resume 
 on Friday morning. By the way I gave our men a platoon 
 fire about Scotland after one of the meetings of our Philo- 
 sophical Society. I don't care one farthing how my paper 
 went off when it was read, provided it read well when it is 
 printed. It is necessarily dry, being so much in detail ; but I 
 think that the facts are important, and at least some of them 
 are new. Pray did you get your friend Pentland to look at 
 Mr Witham's big fish 1 ? Does he consider it a Palceothrissum? 
 
 1 A fossil fish from the Magnesian Limestone, sent by Henry Witham, Esq., of 
 Edinburgh. He had already supplied Sedgwick with other specimens from this 
 same locality. Trans. Geol. Soc. Land. Ser. 2, iii. 116. 
 
3 i8 MURCHISONS IMPATIENCE. 
 
 1828. It seems to me to be a distinct species, but of the same genus 
 Et. 43. with the P alceothrissum magnum of De Blainville. 
 
 My abstract is as short as possible, at least so I think. It 
 will serve to convey a general notion of the whole paper, and 
 that is what it ought to do. No abstracts were made of the 
 parts read last year, because it was thought better that the 
 whole of it should appear together. I have scribbled it in a 
 hurry ; pray make any verbal correction you see fit. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. 15 March, 1828. 
 
 " I have not been lazy, but I have really had no time for 
 our joint work. As soon as I get quit of the engagements of 
 the term I can set to work in good earnest ; for my health, I 
 am happy to say, is just now very good, and I think that 
 my eyes are getting quite well. I will very carefully look 
 over all the papers, and make a string of notes ; we can then 
 divide our labours, and, though separate from each other, 
 shall, I doubt not, get our separate columns into position, so 
 that they may, at word of command, be made to deploy into 
 line, and be ready for action. By the way, I am to blame to 
 think of using military tropes to a soldier, as I shall thereby 
 only show my own ignorance." 
 
 The term came to an end, but still Sedgwick was not 
 ready. Murchison was then planning a journey to France 
 his first attempt at continental geology and not unnatu- 
 rally wished to see the paper completed before he set out. A 
 stronger appeal than usual to Sedgwick elicited the following 
 answer; a gentle rebuke which may be profitably laid to 
 heart by anybody who advocates speed without making 
 proper allowance for difficulties. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. April 7, 1828. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 You call upon me " for my own reputation, and your 
 peace of mind, to make ready." I promise, if God spare my 
 
PROCTORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 319 
 
 health, and preserve me of sane mind, to have all in good 1828. 
 state before the reading ; but to expect that our documents ^ l - 43- 
 should exactly tally, so that we have only to stitch them 
 together, is to expect impossibilities. One is making a key, 
 and the other a lock, which never can fit till the wards are 
 well rasped and filed. To rasp and file will be a part of my 
 office, as well as to fit on a head and tail. All the specimens 
 we mean to exhibit must be arranged before any good 
 description can be given of the several sections. The general 
 facts may be stated, but the skeletons must be clothed with 
 flesh by the help of the specimens. I have tried my hand at 
 the description of the Tarbet Ness 1 coast-section, but I cannot 
 satisfy myself without the specimens the subject seems to 
 elude the grasp. I find the introduction, or discours pre- 
 liminaire, excessively difficult not from want of matter, 
 but from having too much. If I could make up my mind 
 what ought to be said I could take it at a canter. 
 
 My mind, ever since we parted, has been in a muddy 
 state, for I have been living in a troubled atmosphere. A 
 most painful case of ungentlemanlike profligacy has come 
 under my official notice, and worried me almost out of my 
 senses. For the soul of me I cannot take matters of this 
 kind calmly. Till last Saturday night I had for a week 
 hardly an hour of refreshing sleep. Three men have been 
 expelled from Trin. Coll. Two or three of other colleges will 
 be sent away from the University. These are the bitter fruits 
 I have been gathering during the week. Thank God this 
 harvest is over ! and I hope we shall have no second crop of 
 this kind during the season of my Proctorate. My head is, 
 however, beginning to cool, and my sight to become more 
 clear, so that I in some measure see my way through my 
 work, and hope to lick it into form before we meet. Be 
 therefore, my good fellow, in good cheer, and rejoice with me 
 
 1 A promontory in Ross-shire, forming the north side of the Moray Firth. 
 The section in question is described by Sedgwick and Murchison, Trans. Geol. Soc. 
 Ser. 2, iii. 150. Plate 14, fig. 4. 
 
320 BABBAGE ELECTED LUC ASIAN PROFESSOR. 
 
 1828. that my wits have not been scared away for ever from their 
 
 * 43- domicile. 
 
 During the few hours we spend together in Town we 
 must devote one or two to the final arrangement of the 
 specimens both with a view to the Society and also to the 
 systematic descriptions of the paper. As for the tail, it ought, 
 like a spider's web, to be spun out of the body ; it therefore 
 can have no real existence before your work has assumed a 
 substantial form. At present I can hardly form a guess 
 about its length, curvature, or joints. When we have once 
 determined what the head and body are to be there can then 
 be no difficulty about it. This morning I have made a few 
 notes upon the sandstones of the western coast ; but I cannot 
 make up my mind where to introduce them. At present I am 
 disposed to throw them into the latter portion of the paper. 
 I have no more time to tell you what I am doing, or what I 
 am not doing, for in a minute or two the post closes. It is 
 quite impossible for me to think of France for the present. 
 My kindest regards to Mrs M. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Another matter, more agreeable than proctorial duties, 
 had occupied Sedgwick during part of the Lent Term. The 
 Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics had become vacant, 
 and some of the friends of Mr Charles Babbage considered 
 that he was the most proper person to fill it. The matter 
 required very delicate handling ; for Babbage was on the 
 continent, and could not be communicated with. It was 
 obviously impossible to announce him as a candidate unless 
 it could be ascertained privately that his election would be 
 certain. The electors were the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of 
 Colleges a body whose opinions it was not easy to discover. 
 Babbage however was elected, and it appears that Sedgwick 
 had had no small share in bringing about this result. Dr 
 Fitton writes, 8 March, 1828 : 
 
SECOND PAPER READ. 321 
 
 I congratulate you very cordially on Babbage's election ; which 1828. 
 is not less creditable to the University than to him. And you j^x, 43 . 
 certainly must have great satisfaction in feeling that your own efforts 
 have so much contributed to the spirit that has produced this event. 
 
 The next letter describes the favourable reception of the 
 long-expected paper, the first part of which Sedgwick read 
 to the Geological Society on the i6th May. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 25 June, 1828. 
 My dear Murchison, 
 
 If you have thought me worth thinking about, I will 
 venture to say that you will have accused me of breaking my 
 promise. In this instance, however, I have not to plead 
 guilty to any great offence ; as I have been much harassed in 
 mind, and somewhat also in body, by circumstances over 
 which I have had no control. Our paper on the conglomerates 
 increased to such a size that it was obviously too large to be 
 taken in at one meeting. When all the details were left out, 
 and almost every portion of the two coast-sections of Caithness, 
 there was enough remaining to produce that peculiar oscilla- 
 tory motion in Fitton's lower extremities which you have 
 often marked on like occasions. All went off well, and ended 
 with the dish of Caithness fish, which were beautifully cooked 
 by Pentland, and much relished by the meeting. Greenough, 
 Buckland, Conybeare, and all the first performers were upon 
 the boards. The account of the conglomerates of the Murray 
 Firth and the Old Red of the north-west coast, together with 
 certain speculations and corollaries, were put off till the 
 following meeting. 
 
 A most delightful party was next day organized at 
 Greenough's. Pentland was about the middle of the week 
 following to come from Oxford with Buckland, and Greenough 
 at the same time was to start with Conybeare from London, 
 and the party was then to bear down upon Cambridge, and 
 spend three or four days with me. Our plans were, however, 
 defeated by a melancholy event which we have long been 
 S. I. 21 
 
322 DEATH OF HIS FATHER. 
 
 1828. looking forward to. Before my return to College I received 
 Et. 43- the news of my Father's death, and in consequence hurried 
 down to the North with all the expedition I could command. 
 I felt a great pang at being separated from so old and dear a 
 friend ; but the blow fell upon us as lightly as it could fall. 
 For he was in his 93rd year, and died without any pain 
 or illness whatsoever, of pure exhaustion ; and retained his 
 intellects till within a few minutes of his dissolution. I never 
 knew a man of purer principles and warmer heart ; and since 
 the time I was a boy I never have heard a word pass his lips 
 which implied a want of confidence, or was addressed to me 
 in anger. But enough of this I have no right to obtrude my 
 own feelings on a subject like the one of which I have been 
 speaking. 
 
 I remained about a fortnight in the North, and returned 
 to London in time to attend the next meeting of June 6th. 
 Our paper was concluded, and Buckland had a short paper 
 on the fossils of the Isle of Portland. I had theory enough 
 for a long discussion, and fairly threw down the gauntlet to 
 old Mac 1 . No one, however, thought of taking it up for him. 
 In short, the meeting was thin, and the discussion meagre. 
 Greenough, however, spoke very handsomely of our labours.... 
 I shall be extremely busy till the 4th of July, after which 
 I shall start for Cornwall, and join Whewell and Airy, who 
 are going to repeat their pendulum experiments. After they 
 are over we shall visit the granite veins, and make one or two 
 transverse sections. On my return I shall cross to South 
 Wales, and visit Conybeare, make arrangements for our joint 
 work (I think I told you we were going to scribble in com- 
 pany), and try to have a run through a part of North Wales. 
 I must be in Cambridge by the beginning of October to resign 
 the keys of my office, and I shall hail that day with rapture. 
 During the Commencement festivities the Duke of Gloucester 
 
 1 John Macculloch, M.D. author of A Description of the Western Islands of 
 Scotland, including the Isle of Man. 8vo. Lond. 1819. 
 
DEATH OF HIS FATHER. 323 
 
 is coming down, so I fear I shall be half killed with hard-work 1828. 
 and hard-eating. I wrote the other day for three bucks. ^ 43- 
 
 Believe me, Dear Murchison, 
 
 Yours to the earth's centre, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 In writing to Ainger, who knew well what the home-life at 
 Dent had been, Sedgwick was naturally less reticent about his 
 own feelings : 
 
 "In that humble but useful station in which God placed 
 him, he has enjoyed an unusual share of health and happi- 
 ness. If I could feel as I ought to do, I should rejoice and 
 not mourn at this event, for surely no man could be better 
 prepared for this great change. His mind was spared, and 
 his kindly affections remained warm to the last ; and by the 
 operation of pure Christian principle he seems for years past 
 to have triumphed over all the moral infirmities of his nature ; 
 so that he became an admirable example, and an endearing 
 motive for virtuous life, to all those who were nearly con- 
 nected with him. In this respect I feel as if I had sustained 
 an irreparable loss. For years past I have never visited the 
 old man without feeling better for it 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick has sketched, in a letter to one of his nieces, his 
 father's personal appearance on that momentous evening when 
 he himself came into the world : " He was then about fifty 
 years of age, of robust frame, and of a rosy and cheerful 
 countenance. He sat on the right side of the fire, wore his 
 large well-powdered wig, his white cravat fixed behind with a 
 large silver buckle, and he had a pair of large bright silver 
 buckles to his shoes. The chair in which he sat was the very 
 chair represented in the lithographic drawing taken about 
 forty years after, which I dare say you have seen, so I need 
 not describe it 2 ." Mr Sedgwick had been blind for many 
 years before his death, and his frame had shrunk a little as he 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 4 June, 1828. 
 
 2 To Miss F. Hicks, 28 March, 1841. 
 
 212 
 
324 INTENDED WORK WITH CONYBEARE. 
 
 [828. grew older ; but in other respects (save the wig), Mr WestalFs 
 * 43- drawing a copy of which, slightly reduced, is here given 
 coincides exactly with the above description. In the year 
 after his death a monument was erected to his memory on 
 the south side of the chancel of Dent Church. The inscrip- 
 tion, written by his son Adam, recounts the leading points of 
 that character which has already been so graphically set 
 before us by the same hand 1 . One sentence will fitly close 
 this portion of our narrative : " He lived among his flock for 
 fifty-four years, revered as their pastor and loved as their 
 brother." 
 
 Sedgwick's allusion to a project for writing a geological 
 work in conjunction with Mr W. D. Conybeare deserves more 
 attention than such projects usually do ; for though it was 
 never really begun, yet for some years Sedgwick was always 
 intending to begin it, and we believe that the needful pre- 
 paration determined the direction of several of his geological 
 tours. The scope of the proposed volume a continuation of 
 the Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, published 
 by Mr Conybeare in conjunction with Mr William Phillips in 
 1822 will be best explained by the following letter 2 : 
 
 BATH, April 24, 1828. 
 Dear Sedgwick, 
 
 Your letter gave me sincere pleasure. Nothing would be 
 more agreeable to me than embarking in a joint voyage with you ; 
 and indeed nothing but some proposal of this kind would have held 
 out to me the prospect of accomplishing a second volume. 
 
 The materials, as sketched out in my own mind, comprised these 
 divisions. I. A description of the older rocks, throwing the transition 
 and primitive classes together. The arrangement to be similar to 
 that of the former books : first, a general account of the formations ; 
 secondly, the topographical detail of their distribution. All this 
 part must principally devolve on you, and if more assistance could 
 be had, more would be desirable especially De la Beche, if he 
 would undertake any portion of the unexamined districts, would be 
 a very useful ally. We ought also to make a push to urge Aikin 3 to 
 
 1 Chapter i. pp. 3844. 
 
 2 The letter has been slightly compressed in transcription. 
 
 3 Mr Arthur Aikin, a distinguished mineralogist, and one of the founders of 
 the Geological Society. 
 
THE REV? R. SEDGWICK1.K.A. 
 
 Drawn W Westall AHA. 
 
 taeie 11 , Vol. 7. 
 
INTENDED WORK WITH CONYBEARE. 325 
 
 publish his Shropshire materials, which would be very important. 1828. 
 He means to do so in our Transactions^ but wants stirring up. ^g tt 4 
 
 I consider our materials at present as standing thus. The 
 Cumbrian district you have done, the Cheviot you will do; of the 
 insulated Midland districts enough has been said of Malvern ; 
 Charnwood requires doing, but might be accomplished in a fortnight; 
 of Cornwall there exists a great quantity of scattered information, 
 and your next visit may easily put it all together. Wales is the most 
 unknown, and from all its local circumstances the most difficult. 
 One ought, like Chalmers, to adopt the district plan. If Henslow 
 would take the Caernarvonshire range, and indeed the whole ground 
 north of Aikin's observations in Shropshire, you and I and De la 
 Beche might easily accomplish the southern part; but I shall not be 
 very efficient in the field, for I have not, from the demands of a 
 large family, either time or funds for much touring. 
 
 II. The second division of my volume respects the collection of 
 those phenomena which are perhaps more important as to the 
 foundation of geological theory, comprising all the heads of my 
 Introduction from 6 to 1 2. This would be more closet work than 
 any other part of the subject, and I should sit down to it con amore, 
 because I feel it easy to assemble such a mass of facts mutually 
 illustrative of each other as I conceive must materially tend to 
 establish on more positive bases the theory of our science. 
 
 III. The third division would be the corrections and additions 
 to the former volume. Here I should principally depend on you. 
 
 You see therefore, from this general outline, that you would have 
 a large half of the labour, and of course ought to have of the credit, 
 such as it might be, which would result. But I fear that the work 
 would hardly hold out a commensurate prospect of repayment in 
 this way; for while you would deserve most, I should probably, from 
 the earlier connection of my name with the work, get most. I do 
 not know, however, that either of us can be more usefully employed 
 for the advancement of our science, and I don't think we are either 
 of us likely to quarrel for our slices of praise. Very sincerely yours, 
 
 W. D. CONYBEARE. 
 
 We have now reached a point at which it will be well to 
 pause for a moment and examine the first joint work of 
 Sedgwick and Murchison more closely. 
 
 The paper on Arran is a good example of the old strati- 
 graphical methods a well-kept diary of excursions made in 
 a very interesting district ; and, as an examination of the 
 island from a new point of view by observers trained in other 
 fields, it is a useful contribution to Scotch geology. The 
 authors begin with a description of the sequence of the 
 
326 VALUE OF THE SCOTCH PAPERS. 
 
 rocks observed ; this is followed by a determination of the 
 fossils by the best authorities on the subject ; and from these 
 data they attempt a correlation of the deposits with those of 
 other areas already examined. It would be out of place here 
 to go into details and criticise the succession inferred in each 
 case, or to point out the corrections shown by later work to be 
 necessary in the determination of their fossils. Such modifi- 
 cations are necessary from time time in the progress of all 
 such descriptive work. This paper is a fine example of the 
 way to set about the examination of a district, and is full 
 of wise observations. The Islands of Scotland did not, 
 however, offer new ground. That shrewd observer Macculloch 1 
 had been over it, and had clearly recorded the results of his 
 work, though his credit was damaged by his too blind ad- 
 herence to the tenets of the Wernerian school. He did not 
 take in quite good part the work and criticism of Sedgwick 
 and Murchison, for he was a man whose health and tempera- 
 ment made him impatient of contradiction, and inclined to 
 resent as a personal injury any attempt to trespass upon 
 ground which he had come to regard as his peculiar province. 
 Sedgwick and Murchison recognised that in this outlying 
 fragment of a continental area, which once extended further 
 west, they might find a key to the phenomena observed on 
 the mainland, and rightly thought that their work would " not 
 only assist in completing the natural history of Arran," but 
 would help "to fix the true epoch of all those interrupted 
 fragments of secondary formations" 2 which are found along 
 the West and North of Scotland. 
 
 The reader of these early papers must be cautioned that 
 he will meet with some old-fashioned phrases, now changed, 
 though not perhaps in all cases for the better. According 
 to the old nomenclature the Primary Rocks included the 
 Archaean, and, speaking generally, the great masses of crys- 
 
 1 See above, p. 322, note. 
 
 2 Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. Ser. 2, iii. 22. 
 
VALUE OF THE SCOTCH PAPERS. 327 
 
 talline schist of unknown age 1 . Flanking these "Primitive 
 ridges " were the rocks of intermediate character, in those 
 days called " Transition Rocks," including the series which 
 Sedgwick and Murchison afterwards made so well known 
 under the names Cambrian and Silurian. Resting upon the 
 upturned edges of these older rocks comes the Old Red 
 Sandstone, which forms the base of what were then called the 
 Secondary Rocks, and to this their attention was chiefly 
 directed. 
 
 The local importance (for purposes of classification) of such 
 an unconformity, as indicating lapse of time, is of course 
 recognised, but the authors insist upon the fact that such phe- 
 nomena are of limited geographical extent, and clearly state 
 that they "do not think that a want of conformity is one of 
 the elements which will much assist us in grouping together 
 or in separating contemporaneous deposits in distant parts of 
 the earth." 2 
 
 The second paper is a continuation of the first, and, like 
 it, refers chiefly to the Lower Secondary Rocks; that is, in 
 the nomenclature of the day, to the Old Red Sandstone and 
 overlying deposits. 
 
 They noticed among the older rocks the fan-shaped 
 arrangement of which we have heard so much lately. They 
 also distinguished the Old Red Sandstone from the Red Sand- 
 stone of Cambrian age, and drew attention to the fragments 
 of older deposits which were found imbedded in the intrusive 
 rocks. They considered that the Old Red beds had been 
 accumulated between ancient ridges of crystalline schist, 
 and pointed out that the basement beds were made up of 
 fragments of the nearest Primary rocks. Above this lower 
 conglomeratic stage they placed a middle flaggy stage, with 
 fish remains. When wandering along the shore among these 
 flags with their fish scales and bituminous patches, they 
 
 1 It is worthy of note that the age and genesis of these rocks formed the 
 principal subject of discussion at the International Geological Congress held this 
 year in London. 2 Ibid. p. 33. 
 
328 VALUE OF THE SCOTCH PAPERS. 
 
 thought at first that some one had dropped tar here and 
 there on the rocks. The occurrence of fish remains in these 
 Caithness flags had been already recorded from one locality, 
 but they found that they were far less uncommon than had been 
 supposed, and traced the fish-bearing strata right across the 
 country, and even into the Orkneys. Some of the specimens 
 were referred to Cuvier, and his description is given verbatim. 
 Some good figures, with a restoration by Cuvier, are published 
 with the paper. Sedgwick's old work among the fish-bearing 
 beds of the Magnesian Limestone must have made him 
 take a special interest in this successful search for fossil fish 
 of another and older type. In the middle flaggy stage they 
 saw a connection with the Carboniferous System a view not 
 now accepted in the sense in which they understood it, namely 
 that these rocks were the equivalents of rocks known as car- 
 boniferous further south. Their view has, however, an element 
 of truth, in that the beds they were examining undoubtedly 
 form a basement to the carboniferous rocks of Scotland, and 
 exhibit the incoming of the characters by which they are 
 distinguished. It was an interesting observation of theirs that 
 the pholas-borings followed the calcareous bands everywhere 
 along the shore. 
 
 They did not attempt to map the district in detail, but only 
 proposed to indicate the distribution of the beds described. 
 When we recollect this the map they give will compare riot 
 unfavourably with others published half a century later, after 
 the country had been well worked out. They did not attempt 
 to trace the " faults," but realised the probability of the 
 occurrence of many lines of disturbance which had escaped 
 detection in the rapid survey which they were making. 
 They suspected their existence, among other reasons, 
 because the thickness of the series would be so enormous 
 were the beds in true geological sequence all along the sec- 
 tions examined. 
 
 Sedgwick's employments during the summer of 1828 are 
 described in the following letter : 
 
DOLCOATH MINE. 329 
 
 LONDON, October 8, 1828. l828 ' 
 
 ^Et. 43. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 Your letter of August i8th reached me in South 
 Wales about ten days since. No one knew how to forward 
 it from Cambridge before Whewell's return. He started it on 
 a venture ; and when I received it, it had been doubling in so 
 many directions that it was blackened from one side to the 
 other with addresses. When it did come it was most welcome, 
 and made me almost envy you for the delightful work which 
 you have gone through. Give my best regards and con- 
 gratulations to Mrs M. and to Lyell, on the discoveries they 
 have made, and on the dangers they have escaped. God 
 preserve you all from the fury both of fire and water till you 
 are by your own fire-sides in this murky capital ; and I will 
 contrive to join you as soon as I can find a moment's leisure, 
 in order that I may have a viva voce narrative of the news 
 you bring from the lower world. But what account have I to 
 give of myself? Not I fear a very satisfactory one. 
 
 Immediately after the business of the Cambridge Com- 
 mencement was over (during which festival I was figuring in 
 processions, creating Doctors of Divinity, and going through 
 many ancient monastic evolutions) I started pell-mell for 
 Cornwall, and about the 8th of July contrived to join the 
 pendulum party. I think you have heard of our expedition 
 for the purpose of swinging pendulums at the bottom of the 
 Dolcoath mine. Had I imagined what time the experiments 
 would have taken I should certainly have kept far away from 
 them ; we remained nearly two months at Camborne, during 
 which time I indeed contrived to make a few interesting 
 excursions, re-examined the principal junctions, and settled 
 some of my notions : but all the work I did in the county 
 might have been completed in ten days. After all we had a 
 good deal of amusement out of the pendulums. Our ups and 
 downs upon the ladders, which between the higher and the 
 lower station amounted to more than fifty in number, and 
 
330 DOLCOATH MINE. 
 
 1828. extended to a length of nearly one-third of a mile; our young 
 * 43- attendant with a great belt stuffed with chronometers ; the 
 dirt and the tallow ; the uncertainty of the result ; the 
 speculations of the mining-men and mining-women ; these 
 were the materials out of which we extracted our share of 
 amusement. We had two beats, continued without inter- 
 ruption night and day for more than a week each during 
 which two of Kater's pendulums were running against each 
 other for more than 600,000 beats. Whewell and Airy out of 
 these materials hoped to have reached a result against which 
 it would have been impossible to take any exception. I am, 
 however, sorry to say that in consequence of an unlocked for 
 fault in the instrument, which is called " invariable" the 
 successive results have been in some measure variable. We 
 have therefore after all only gained an approximation. 
 
 Whewell visited with me some of the finest junctions, and 
 has sketched some of the magnificent granite veins which are 
 found on the coast. I was very much surprised to observe, 
 what had before escaped me, that several of the metalliferous 
 deposits of Cornwall are true Stockworks. The great mass of 
 granite north of St Austell is traversed by innumerable con- 
 temporaneous veins, some of which bear oxide of tin, and 
 where they abound the metal is extracted, as far as I under- 
 stand the case, exactly in the manner of the German Stock- 
 works. 
 
 As soon as the pendulum-party broke up I turned my 
 face towards the east ; just looked at the Exeter conglomerates; 
 then ran down to Ilfracombe, and crossed by a packet to 
 Swansea. From Swansea I ran down to Sully, the rectory 
 where our friend Conybeare has incarcerated himself. The 
 situation is, however, most delightful, and he has about him 
 the society of a charming family. I contrived to poke him 
 out of his den, and had a run of about three weeks with him 
 through a part of the South Wales coal-basin. It is a highly 
 interesting region, and exhibits the secondary rocks of the 
 older series in every variety of combination. After doubling 
 
DOLCOATH MINE. 331 
 
 out of the coal-field I visited one or two friends with whom I 1828. 
 have been eating and drinking to my heart's content, and I ^ 43- 
 am now in admirable condition for the winter work at 
 Cambridge. Yesterday I visited, for about an hour, the noble 
 collection at the Bristol Institution, and last night I came by 
 the mail to this place. I have all day been doing a great 
 deal of little business, and among other persons contrived to 
 see Greenough. He says that our Scotch paper wants 
 rasping, and has reported to that effect ; but he says that the 
 authors must do it themselves. I have no doubt he is right, 
 for it was a cobbled business. I will take it down and try 
 my hand at docking and cropping. But really it must all 
 be written over again, or we shall drive the printer's devils to 
 despair. Tomorrow morning I return to my den in Trin. 
 Coll. It is time for me to retire, and make up for my loss of 
 sleep last night. As good a repose to you and Mrs Murchison 
 as I am myself looking for. 
 
 Yours to the centre of the earth, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The experiments at the copper-mine of Dolcoath, in which 
 Sedgwick bore a somewhat reluctant part, had been com- 
 menced by Whewell and Airy in 1826. "The object was to 
 determine the density of the earth, and the essential part of 
 the process was to compare the time of vibration of a 
 pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of 
 vibration of the same pendulum at a considerable depth 
 below the surface. The experiment failed to lead to a 
 satisfactory result 1 ," because, as Sedgwick says, the pendulum 
 could not be trusted ; and also because, on each occasion, a 
 serious accident occurred. In 1826 Whewell and Airy had 
 conducted the experiment alone; but in 1828 it was thought 
 
 1 William Whewell, by I. Todhunter, 8vo. Camb. 1876, i. 37. The only 
 printed record of what Mr Todhunter calls "a very arduous experiment," is 
 contained in an anonymous pamphlet, known to be by Mr Whewell : Account of 
 Experiments made at Dolcoath Mine, in Cornwall, in 1826, and 1828, for the 
 purpose of determining the density of the Earth. 8vo. Camb. 1828. 
 
332 DOLCOATH MINE. 
 
 1828. desirable to enlarge the party, so as to carry on the observa- 
 nt. 43. tions without intermission day and night. By this means 
 some members of the party could take an occasional holiday, 
 and Sedgwick was probably absent when the accident of this 
 year a subsidence of a portion of the mine took place. 
 His account of the experiments, as given in the above letter, 
 may be supplemented by what he told Mr J. W. Salter : 
 
 "This mine had a great advantage for our purpose. 
 Besides being one of the deepest in Cornwall, it is overhung 
 by a steep hill 700 feet high, so that we got the means of 
 measurement to a greater extent than would have been 
 possible elsewhere. 
 
 " We went down in summer-time, and enjoyed ourselves 
 very much. The weather was propitious ; the company 
 excellent. But the natives evidently thought us no better 
 than we should be, bringing, as we did, strange instruments, 
 and strange earnest faces to such a spot, and taking down 
 uncouth-looking packages and baskets to all the deepest and 
 most dangerous-looking places. We often overheard their 
 remarks. One morning I listened to two men who had 
 watched our descent the day before : ' I think they're no 
 good. There must be something wicked about them the 
 little one (that was Airy) especially. I saw him stand with 
 his back to the Church, and make strange faces.' 
 
 "We gave them some cause for their suspicions. Our 
 lamp-box, marked outside ' Deville, Strand/ stood well for 
 a formal address to his infernal majesty. We were clamber- 
 ing down one day, when, to keep up the joke, I asked a 
 sturdy miner who was guiding us, 'How far is it to the 
 infernal regions ?' He was a match for me for he replied 
 ' Let go the ladder, Sir, and you'll be there directly.' " 
 
 The party were most hospitably entertained by the neigh- 
 bouring gentlemen with some amusing results. On one 
 occasion Sedgwick, Whewell, and Airy presented themselves 
 at the front door of a house, where they had been invited to 
 dine and sleep, in their working-dress. The butler thought 
 
PRESIDENTSHIP OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 333 
 
 that they were real miners, and had just exclaimed, somewhat 1828. 
 gruffly, " You go round to the back-door," when their host ^- 43- 
 came forward to greet them. At another house the host 
 himself is said to have mistaken the same party for agricul- 
 tural labourers in distress, and was just intimating to them, by 
 a shake of the head, and a wave of the hand, that it was no 
 use begging of him, when his friends revealed themselves by a 
 loud burst of laughter. We do not vouch for the absolute 
 accuracy of these stories. Sedgwick always found Cornwall 
 a land of humorous adventure, and other tales will have to 
 be related in connection with his subsequent visits to it. 
 
 In the autumn of this year, while Sedgwick was tranquilly 
 lecturing at Cambridge, Dr Fitton, whose term of office as Presi- 
 dent of the Geological Society was drawing to a close, came to 
 the conclusion that the Woodwardian Professor was the proper 
 person to succeed him. A certain amount of difficulty seems 
 to have been anticipated in persuading one so full of engage- 
 ments elsewhere to accept an office which would entail regular 
 attendance in London at stated intervals ; and the task of 
 sounding Sedgwick, and of obtaining, if possible, a favourable 
 reply was entrusted to Whewell. His letter is endorsed To 
 be opened immediately ', an amusing indication of Sedgwick's 
 habitual carelessness with regard to his correspondence. 
 
 8 October, 1828. 
 Dear Sedgwick, 
 
 Fitton will come to you on Friday to try to persuade you 
 to be President. Pray do not refuse. Make it possible, somehow 
 or other, for the thing is every way in the highest degree desirable. 
 It is clear, from what he says, that he has spoken of it to so many 
 people in London, that it will be generally known that the offer has 
 been made you; and after Buckland had found it possible in his 
 case it will not be easy to make them comprehend that it is not 
 ungracious in you to reject the proposal. Fitton is very earnest on 
 the subject for the sake of the Society, and with great reason. He 
 says that having just received favors from government 1 it is very 
 
 1 "The Society, at a special Meeting on the i8th of April, 1828, was informed 
 of the grant from the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, through the 
 mediation of the President and Council of the Royal Society, of apartments in 
 Somerset House." Report of Council, 20 February, 1828: Proceedings, i. in. 
 
334 PRESIDENTSHIP OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 1828. desirable and important to have a person at your head who is sure 
 JEt. 43. to be independent and straight-forward. He adds too that a new 
 era of the Society requires a leader who can fill his place with 
 distinction. All this is very right but / am very anxious that you 
 should take the office for our sake and yours. It will undoubtedly 
 give a degree of prominence and attraction to the science at 
 Cambridge which you cannot give it in any other way, and will add 
 weight and popularity to all your sayings and doings on the subject. 
 Without this we are hardly on a level with the Oxford men, which 
 we have a right to be, and which it is your business to make us. 
 
 You will tell me of your lectures, but I am persuaded they will 
 gain more in effect, than they will lose by any curtailment or 
 inconvenience. Then consider ; this business will not interfere 
 with the course of this term. You have often made your second 
 term somewhat irregular; it must be possible by some contrivance of 
 time or place to manage it again. Consider too that every such 
 inconvenience is a practical argument for new rooms, and will I 
 hope soon produce its impression. 
 
 I do not think the expense is a very formidable consideration. 
 Fitton says he shall suggest to Gilbert 1 the advisableness of trans- 
 ferring his parties to Sunday night. This would make them a 
 continuation of Fitton's, and might be very good. 
 
 Find the will, and make the way. I am sure you will not repent 
 it, and it will be an excellent thing for all of us. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 W. WHEWELL. 
 
 These excellent arguments did not have the immediate 
 effect intended by their writer ; others had to try their hands 
 at persuasion, before Sedgwick yielded. At last, 18 November, 
 he wrote to Murchison : " My reluctance in accepting the 
 office of President is by no means affected. I value the 
 honour as I ought to do, and I should delight in it if I had 
 all the accomplishments. But I am an absentee, and I am 
 poor. These are sad drawbacks. My friends here, however, 
 will not hear of a refusal. So, if you appoint me, I must 
 promise to do my best. It will be a sad falling- off after 
 Fitton, who has done the thing magnificently." We do not 
 know what verdict was passed by Sedgwick's contemporaries 
 upon his performance of the duties of President ; but it is 
 clear, from various allusions in his correspondence, that he 
 
 1 Davies Gilbert, Esq., then President of the Royal Society. 
 
VISIT TO MILTON HOUSE. 335 
 
 was not himself displeased with the work. He grumbled now 1828. 
 and then, and vowed that he was " nearly ruined " ; but when ^ 43- 
 it was over he admitted that he had found the employment 
 agreeable, and had liked the friends to whose society he had 
 been introduced. 
 
 Christmas was spent, in company with Whewell, at Viscount 
 Milton's house near Peterborough. At that time many of the 
 Fellows of Trinity used to find their way to that hospitable 
 mansion, and Whewell spent his Christmas there for many 
 years in succession. On one of these occasions possibly in 
 1828 he was asked if he would like to go out hunting. Of 
 course he said " Yes ". Mounted on a first-rate horse, well 
 up to his weight, he inquired how he could see most of the 
 run. " Keep close to Sebright (the huntsman) " was the 
 reply. Whewell did as he was bid, and followed that 
 splendid rider over everything. They had an unusually 
 good run, over a difficult country, in the course of which 
 Sebright took an especially stout and high fence. Looking 
 round to see what had become of the stranger, he found him 
 at his side, safe and sound. "That was a rasper, Sir", he 
 exclaimed, in admiration at his pluck. " I did not observe 
 that it was anything more than ordinary," answered Whewell. 
 Sedgwick was either less inquisitive, or more prudent, and 
 while the rest of the party were out hunting, rode quietly 
 over to Whittlesea to have a chat with the Aingers. The 
 Tory sympathies of his particular friend in that family were 
 so strong that he could not be persuaded even to write to 
 Sedgwick so long as he stayed with so pronounced a Whig as 
 Viscount Milton 1 an amusing illustration of the strength of 
 political convictions, not to say prejudices, at that time. 
 
 The Lent Term of 1829 opened with an event which must 
 have given Sedgwick unmitigated satisfaction. As soon as 
 it became known that the Duke of Wellington and his 
 colleagues intended to introduce a bill for the relief of 
 Roman Catholics, the University decided to petition par- 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 20 May, 1829. 
 
336 CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 
 
 1829. liament against it. In former years, as already related, the 
 JEt. 44. opposition which liberal members of the Senate offered to 
 such petitions had been defeated ; but on this occasion it 
 achieved a signal success, and the Grace to affix the Uni- 
 versity seal to the petition was rejected by fifty-two votes 
 to forty-three l . As the Cambridge Chronicle naively records : 
 "the result appears to have been principally owing to the 
 somewhat unexpected arrival of several members of the Inns 
 of Court, who came down for the express purpose of voting 
 upon the occasion ; two Paddington coaches with full com- 
 plements of inside and outside passengers arrived between 
 one and two o'clock, and returned to London the same 
 afternoon." The writer should have added that they dined 
 in Trinity before they started. The fact was, that the 
 Cambridge Liberals, chiefly Fellows of Trinity College, had 
 written to their London friends ; among whom Macaulay, 
 then resident in the Temple, had energetically exerted 
 himself in marshalling a number of barristers 2 . That Sedg- 
 wick would be among the promoters of these tactics might 
 be guessed without evidence; but a contemporary ballad 
 supplies distinct proof of his activity : 
 
 Oh Sedgwick, Oh Peacock, Oh Whewell, Oh Romilly, 
 
 I'll preach you a ballad, I'll sing you a homily; 
 
 Come hear the prophetical words of a Daniel, 
 
 They were uttered at Clare, they were heard at Emmanuel. 
 
 When devils to Cambridge shall Paddington marry 
 
 And St Pancras shall send an express to St Mary, 
 
 When the Bank shall go down with four horses to meet her, 
 
 Then down goes St Paul, and up goes St Peter. 
 
 The cat's in the larder, the wolfs in the fold, 
 The rat's in the garner, the thief's at the gold; 
 Oh Journal, and Standard, and John Bull, and Age, 
 The lawyers are come in the Paddington stage. 
 
 Come down to the Senate, come up to the vote, 
 
 From fen, and from dyke, and from ditch, and from moat; 
 
 Come darker and blacker, and thicker and faster, 
 
 Come web-footed parson, come well-landed master. 
 
 1 Cooper's A nnals, iv. 559. The Grace was offered to the Senate u February, 
 1829. 
 
 2 Trevelyan's Life of Lord Macaulay, ed. 1881, p. 106. 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 337 
 
 Oh ! were there no powers to check the Iscariots, 1829. 
 
 To hamstring their horses, to shatter their chariots ? ^ t> 4 
 
 There sprung not a spring, and there split not a spoke, 
 Though the Journal protested the compact was broke. 
 
 All Cambridge crowds round them, both gentle and simple : 
 "Now are ye for Church, Sirs, or are ye from Temple? 
 What sort of beast are ye, or what kind of vermin? 
 Is it wig, is it mitre, is it lawn, is it ermine ? " 
 
 "We come not for Church, and we come not for stall, 
 But we come for a dinner in Trinity hall; 
 We come not for King, if your commons you'll dish up, 
 We come not for Church, but we'll thank you for Bishop." 
 
 This victory in the restricted arena of the Senate House 
 proved only a foretaste of the pleasure which those who 
 sympathised with the Catholics had in store for them. In the 
 following month the House of Commons accepted Catholic 
 Emancipation by large majorities at each stage of the mea- 
 sure ; nor did the Lords offer any serious opposition. Sedg- 
 wick was present when the Duke of Wellington introduced 
 the second reading in a speech which has become historical 1 ; 
 and listened with natural enthusiasm to the brilliant debate 
 that followed. " I have hardly yet come to my sober senses," 
 he wrote on his return to Cambridge, " after the stimulus of 
 my last visit to London. Lord Grey's speech seems still to 
 be ringing in my ears 2 ." Sedgwick's convictions, one would 
 have thought, hardly needed stimulating ; but, possibly, the 
 general acceptance of principles which had hitherto been 
 held by a minority may have urged him to advocate with 
 even greater earnestness than heretofore the removal of 
 similar restrictions at Cambridge. At any rate we shall 
 find him, a few years later, taking a prominent part in the 
 great controversy respecting the admission of persons to 
 degrees without regard to their religious opinions. 
 
 On February 20, 1829, Sedgwick was formally installed 
 President of the Geological Society. At the anniversary 
 
 1 To Mrs Norton, 5 September, 1863. 
 
 2 To R. I. Murchison, April, 1829. 
 
 S. I. 22 
 
338 PRESIDENT OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 1829. dinner, which then, as now, succeeded the general meeting, 
 JEt. 44. there was a full attendance of members, and the new 
 President, according to Lyell, who was present, "quite 
 astonished them. Among innumerable good hits, when pro- 
 posing the toast of the Astronomical Society, and Herschel, 
 their President, then about to be married, he said : ' May the 
 house of Herschel be perpetuated, and like the Cassinis, be 
 illustrious astronomers for three generations. May all the 
 constellations wait upon him ; may Virgo go before, and 
 Gemini follow after 1 .'" 
 
 How singularly pleasant the meetings of the Geological 
 Society must have been when it was still a coterie of brilliant, 
 enthusiastic men, who knew each other intimately ; and how 
 mortifying it is that we should have to be content with far-off 
 glimpses, and faint echoes of what they said and did ! Would 
 that we could recall, not merely Sedgwick's post-prandial fun, 
 but his mode of delivering one of his scientific papers, or of 
 handling the discussion which it was sure to elicit. Mr Geikie 
 tells us that "by a few broad lines" he could "convey even to 
 non-scientific hearers, a vivid notion of the geology of a wide 
 region, or of a great geological formation. Embalmed in the 
 Society's Transactions, the paper, as we read it now, bears 
 about as much resemblance to what it must have been to 
 those who heard it, as the dried leaves in a herbarium do to 
 the plant which tossed its blossoms in the mountain-wind. 
 Brimful of humour, and bristling with apposite anecdote, he 
 could so place a dry scientific fact as to photograph it on the 
 memory, while at the same time he linked it with something 
 droll, or fanciful, or tender, so that it seemed, ever after, to 
 wear a kind of human significance. No keener eye than his 
 ever ranged over the rocks of England; and yet, while noting 
 each feature of their structure or scenery, he delighted to carry 
 
 1 Life of Sir C. Lyell, 8vo. Lond. 1881, i. 251. There were four Cassinis, not 
 three, who were successively Astronomers Royal at Paris. The last, John Dominic 
 Cassini, succeeded his father in 1784. Sedgwick had probably met him in Paris 
 in 1826. 
 
DIVINITY ACT. 339 
 
 through his geological work an endless thread of fun and 1829. 
 wit 1 ." ^t. 44 
 
 While Sedgwick was President he did his best to attend 
 the meetings of the Society with regularity, but, as he said 
 when his two years of office were over, his had been " an 
 interrupted service." The next letter enumerates the inter- 
 ruptions in a single month, April, 1829 : 
 
 " My hands at present are sufficiently tied. I am in the 
 first place reading the Fathers and School Divines by way of 
 preparation for my Divinity Act, which I must keep on the 
 3<Dth of this month. In the meantime I have a rascally 
 examination to superintend which will nail me down for a 
 whole week 2 . Lastly, we shall soon have a contested election, 
 and they have already requested me to become chairman of 
 the Committee which will sit at Cambridge. I shall not 
 refuse if they come to the scratch, tho' it will be a tiresome 
 business. It is a strange thing that good Christians can't 
 keep out of troubled water 3 ." 
 
 At that time Divinity Acts were held every fortnight 
 during Term. Every Master of Arts of four years standing 
 complete was obliged, under rather severe penalties, to be 
 a Respondent, that is, to maintain a thesis against three 
 Opponents. The proceedings were similar to those which 
 preceded the Bachelor of Arts Degree, and therefore need no 
 further explanation. If the regular days appointed for the 
 keeping of Acts happened to be all engaged, a private Act 
 was allowed, at which some Doctor in Divinity, other than 
 the Regius Professor, might preside. A letter to Mill shows 
 that Sedgwick had adopted the latter course. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. April 15, 1829. 
 
 " I expected from what you said, when we last met in 
 the Athenaeum, that you would have been in Cambridge 
 
 1 Life of Murchison, i. pp. 138, 195. 
 
 2 The scholarship examination at Trinity College. 
 
 3 To R. I. Murchison, without date, but endorsed by him "April, 1829." 
 
 22 2 
 
340 FOREIGN TOUR WITH MURCHISON. 
 
 1829. before this. My Act comes on on the 3Oth of this month. 
 JEM. 44. if you cannot conveniently preside, Dr Lamb 1 has under- 
 taken to perform the task for me. Pray write to tell me 
 what you intend to do. My questions are : 
 
 1. The Divinity of Christ. 
 
 2. A denial of the Millennium ; perhaps in the words of 
 our expunged Article. 
 
 By opposing me, and pronouncing a determination, you 
 will get over two of your exercises, which will be some 
 advantage. In regard to arguments, you may bring as many 
 or as few as you please. In case of a private Act it is not 
 however customary to bring many. 
 
 Pray let me hear what is your final determination. If you 
 can't come I must settle with Dr Lamb. Though I have not 
 the honor of knowing her, I hope Mrs Mill will accept my 
 kindest wishes." 
 
 Murchison had found his foreign tour of the previous year 
 so instructive, that before he had been many weeks abroad 
 he had urged Sedgwick to come and do likewise. Writing 
 from Nice, he describes what he had seen, and adds : 
 
 We left various things undone, consoling ourselves with the 
 parting reflection that such a case was to be worked out by Sedgwick 
 next year. And here let me, by way of parenthesis, invoke the 
 philosophical spirit of inquiry which prevails at Cambridge, and urge 
 you, who are really almost our only mathematical champion, not to 
 let another year elapse without endeavouring to add to the stock of 
 your British Geology some of the continental materials. Pray do it 
 before you marry and settle for life; pray even do it before you 
 bring forth that long-expected second volume on the Geology of 
 England and Wales 2 . Your comparisons will then have a strength 
 and freshness which will quite electrify us 3 . 
 
 These arguments, enforced by conversation after his 
 return, had convinced Sedgwick, and he agreed to accom- 
 pany Murchison on a second journey, so soon as he could 
 
 1 John Lamb, D.D. Master of Corpus Christ! College. 
 
 2 The work which Sedgwick and Conybeare were supposed to be writing 
 together. See above, p. 324. 
 
 3 Murchison to Sedgwick, 18 August, 1828. 
 
CONTESTED UNIVERSITY ELECTION. 341 
 
 get away. They were to leave England towards the middle 1829. 
 or end of June, and explore the northern flanks of the Alps, ^ 44- 
 with the central parts of Germany, Bohemia, and Saxony 
 "a glorious field for a knight of the hammer 1 ." Meanwhile, 
 Sedgwick had plenty of work to do in presiding over the 
 Geological Society, and in putting the final touches to the 
 three papers read the previous year "the rasping and 
 trimming of which, before they were finally delivered over 
 to the devils, was no small labour 2 ." But other matters were 
 soon to interfere with his preparations for his journey. Be- 
 fore May was over Sir N. C. Tindal, one of the University 
 representatives in Parliament, was made Chief Justice of the 
 Court of Common Pleas, and his seat had of course to be 
 filled without delay. No burning question was agitating the 
 country, and it was hoped that some distinguished person 
 might be found, who would satisfy both parties, and a contest 
 be thus avoided. This hope proved delusive. Two candi- 
 dates appeared in the field on the same day: Mr E. H. 
 Alderson, of Gonville and Caius College; and Mr George 
 Bankes, of Trinity Hall 3 . Alderson had been senior wrangler, 
 first Smith's prizeman, and senior Chancellor's medallist in 
 1809; Bankes had taken an ordinary law degree in 1825. 
 Alderson, moreover, besides his brilliant degree, could show 
 a distinguished career at the bar. Bankes had had some 
 parliamentary experience as member for the family borough 
 of Corfe Castle, and had filled a subordinate post in the 
 government of the Duke of Wellington, which he had re- 
 signed when Catholic Emancipation became a government 
 measure. After that measure had been passed, however, he 
 had resumed his place a step which said but little for his 
 consistency. Meanwhile a feeling had gradually spread 
 through the University, that it would be well to elect Mr 
 Cavendish now our honoured Chancellor who in the 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 4 June, 1829. 
 
 2 To the same, 20 May, 1829. 
 
 3 Their circulars are dated 29 May, 1829. 
 
342 MR CAVENDISH BROUGHT FORWARD. 
 
 1829. previous January had been second wrangler and first Smith's 
 Et. 44. prizeman ; and besides, had won general admiration " by his 
 superior talents, by his studious and reflective habits, and by 
 the unimpeached regularity of his University life 1 ." But an 
 unexpected difficulty presented itself. Mr Cavendish, though 
 himself willing to come forward, was for nearly a week pre- 
 vented from entering the field by the head of his family, 
 whose objections were only overruled by " a public address, 
 signed by many distinguished members of the University." 
 Mr Alderson then retired ; and a canvass commenced for 
 Mr Cavendish ''unexampled for the energy and heartiness 
 of those who were engaged in it 2 ." That he was supported 
 by the liberal party cannot be denied. The chairman of 
 his Cambridge Committee was Dr Lamb, well-known for 
 his liberal opinions, and in consequence one of the tory 
 organs nicknamed him "Lamb's adopted"; but, on the other 
 hand, many of the most decided tories voted for him. That 
 Sedgwick was foremost in the fight will readily be believed. 
 He "personally worked day and night so as almost to destroy 
 his health 3 "; he marshalled the supporters who could be 
 relied on ; he stimulated the lukewarm ; he exposed and 
 controverted the tactics of the other side with a headstrong 
 energy which in some cases lacked discretion. It was soon 
 found that Mr Bankes had obtained numerous pledges of 
 support before the resignation of Sir N. C. Tindal had been 
 made public; and moreover the whole influence of the govern- 
 ment was exerted on his behalf. " Not one member of the 
 Senate," we are told, "who was placed directly, or indirectly, 
 within a minister's influence, escaped an official canvass 4 ." 
 Not only did his brother, once member for the University, 
 write to his former supporters ; but Mr Goulburn, now Chan- 
 
 1 From A letter to a Member of the Senate of the University of Cambridge, by 
 Robert Grant, M.A., M.P., Fellow of Magdalene College. 
 
 2 These quotations are from an article in The Times, 19 June, 1829, which is 
 known to have been written by Sedgwick. 
 
 3 To Dean Monk, i November, 1829. 
 
 4 The Times, ut supra. 
 
LETTER TO MR GOULBURN. 343 
 
 cellor of the Exchequer, wrote to many resident members of 
 the Senate on his behalf. These tactics were controverted by ^t. 44. 
 Sedgwick in a letter to Goulburn which was printed and 
 circulated in the University. It is signed A resident member 
 of the Senate, but there could never have been any doubt 
 about the authorship. It was evidently written under the 
 influence of strong excitement, and had it been merely an 
 ephemeral composition dashed off to serve the purpose of 
 the hour, the obvious course would have been to leave it in 
 the oblivion into which it has long since fallen ; but it is so 
 vigorously written, and throws so much light on the Uni- 
 versity politics of that day, that it has been decided, after 
 much hesitation, to reproduce it. 
 
 To the Right Honourable Henry Goulburn. 
 SIR, 
 
 I expected before this time to have seen you at Cambridge ; 
 and when I at length found that a reluctance to meet your old 
 partisans, or some other motive well understood by yourself, 
 prevented you from again being a candidate for the vacant seat 
 in the University, I took for granted that you would at least know 
 what was due to your former supporters, and that you would preserve 
 a dignified neutrality. In this expectation I have been disappointed. 
 You have condescended to become the bustling advocate of Mr G. 
 Bankes ; and in a position so unnatural, the result has been what 
 you ought to have anticipated. Your letters from Downing-street to 
 certain resident members of the Senate, have done no good to the 
 cause of which you have so unexpectedly become the advocate, and 
 have been received only with expressions of contempt and resent- 
 ment. Your personal elevation prevents you from hearing at all 
 times the language of truth ; but it is well that it should sometimes 
 be spoken, and so loudly too, that even those who sit in high places 
 should not find themselves exalted above its influence. I beg leave, 
 Sir, to remind you that you have twice been a candidate for the 
 representation of our University, that you stood forward as the 
 champion of the Protestant ascendancy, and that you received on 
 that ground the support of many high-minded and honourable men. 
 There is a vulgar proverb of very obvious application, which may, 
 perhaps, explain the rancorous bitterness which existed between 
 some of your friends and the party which supported Mr W. Bankes. 
 Your person and your conduct were assailed by that party with 
 long-sustained invectives, conveyed in language such as English 
 gentlemen are not often in the habit of giving or of receiving. You 
 received these assaults with exemplary calmness, and endured them 
 
344 LETTER TO MR GOULBURN. 
 
 1829. with a patience which was the admiration of your friends, and was 
 t worthy of the high religious ground which you had then taken. I 
 may, however, remind you, that although our religion commands us 
 to forgive our enemies, it never enjoins us to be the patrons of those 
 by whom we have been vilified, or the champions of those whose 
 principles are in open hostility with our own. Mr W. Bankes is not, 
 indeed, in the field ; but his brother professes (how consistently is 
 not now the question) to be the representative of the same party, 
 and of the same opinions, and on this ground alone comes forward 
 to ask for our support. 
 
 During the last session of Parliament your opinions underwent 
 one of those sudden revolutions which, whether they happen in the 
 physical or the moral world, astonish and confound us. I was not 
 among the number of those who made an unfavourable analysis of 
 your motives. I believe you, and I still wish to believe you, sincere. 
 If you were not sincere in the line of conduct which you have 
 recently adopted during the agitation of one of the gravest questions 
 which ever came before Parliament, you must be content to find 
 your name written in the list of those men who barter themselves 
 and their faculties for office and emolument, and who hold to no 
 principle with a grasp which does not relax at the approach of a 
 vulgar temptation. Of this baseness I dare not and I cannot 
 accuse you ; but if you escape from this imputation, I would tell 
 you, in the language of our schools, that you are still on the horns 
 of a dilemma ; and I would ask you, in the name of the Senate, by 
 what new metamorphosis you are become the champion of Mr G. 
 Bankes, whose only pretension, I repeat it, whose only pretension 
 is, that he opposed you and your colleagues on that great question 
 to which I have alluded, and who, had he succeeded, would have 
 contributed to thrust you out from that office which you now fill 
 through the kindness of your Sovereign. If you were in the right, 
 Mr Bankes was in the wrong ; and for this wrong he is to have your 
 support, and appear among us backed and recommended by your 
 autographs from Downing-street. But Mr G. Bankes has returned 
 to the party which he once vilified and opposed, and he must be 
 treated with the affection of a brother, because he also now wears 
 the semblance of an apostate. Whether I am right in this conjecture 
 I know not ; but I do know that the members of the Senate are 
 justly indignant at any direct interference with the freedom of their 
 elections; that they believe themselves to be the proper judges of 
 who is the best person to represent them, and that they are not yet 
 reduced so low as to supplicate at a Government office for the 
 nomination of a candidate. 
 
 In what you have done, you have not appreciated our character 
 or our sentiments. The resident members of the Senate, by their 
 votes on a late occasion, did good service to the Government ; and 
 by way of return for this, you now endeavour to force upon us a 
 representative who does not himself stand upon the high ground of 
 political consistency, who is almost unknown to us, who is not a 
 
LETTER TO MR GOULBURN. 345 
 
 member of our Senate, who is decorated with no academic honours, 1829. 
 whose name is associated with no pleasant recollections, and ^t. 44. 
 who, by his only public acts connected with our body, encouraged 
 and vindicated a combination of the Undergraduates, avowedly 
 made in a violation of all discipline, and in contradiction to our 
 existing authorities 1 . I do not wish to speak harshly of Mr G. 
 Bankes, because I think that he does not deserve it : but I am bold 
 to say that he comes forward with no high pretensions, and that he 
 has done nothing to entitle him to the honour of being thrust upon 
 us by all the forcing power of Government influence. If he consults 
 his own honour and the dignity of the University, he will imme- 
 diately withdraw : and you, Sir, if you have any regard for your own 
 consistency, and the good opinion of those distinguished and honour- 
 able men by whom you were once supported, ought to be among the 
 very first to recommend this measure to him. 
 
 Mr Cavendish is this moment arrived amongst us. He is urged 
 forward by no party and no faction. He was put in nomination 
 (without his own knowledge or participation, and against the wishes 
 of the highest members of his family) by many distinguished resident 
 members of the Senate, who, however they may differ on other 
 questions, think it for the honour of our establishment that on this 
 they should be united. They come forward to support Mr Cavendish 
 because he is a young man of modest and amiable temper, and of 
 unsullied life, because, during the years he lived among us, he 
 conformed himself in the purest and highest sense to the true spirit 
 of our institutions, because he has proved, by his academic dis- 
 tinctions in literature and in science, that he possesses talents of no 
 ordinary kind, and habits of application which even in early life 
 have resisted extraordinary temptations. I have now lived more 
 than twenty years in the University. I can assert without the risk 
 of contradiction, that during this long lapse of time, no young 
 nobleman has appeared amongst us who could have been brought 
 before the Senate with such high and unsullied pretensions. If, 
 from his youth, he has been hitherto prevented from exhibiting his 
 powers as a senator, at least he has been saved from error during 
 times of no ordinary difficulty, and comes before us without any 
 tarnish of inconsistency. He has reaped his first laurels amongst 
 us ; they sit fresh upon him, and they will wear well, and they will 
 for ever be associated with the ardent recollections of early life. 
 Under these circumstances, we may safely count upon his lasting 
 attachment to us and to our venerable institutions, and upon that 
 consistent and dignified exercise of his great talents which will be for 
 his honour and for our own. 
 
 With such qualities, I cannot for an instant doubt the success of 
 Mr Cavendish. All the high aristocracy, belong to what party they 
 
 1 Mr George Bankes presented to the House of Commons, 23 March, 1829, a 
 petition signed by about 600 Bachelors and Undergraduates, against any further 
 concessions to the Roman Catholics. Cooper's Annals, iv. 560. 
 
346 CANVASS FOR MR CAVENDISH. 
 
 1829. may, are interested in his success : for he stands forward as the 
 
 Mi. 44. representative and the ornament of their order, and has assisted to 
 
 keep alive in a great public body that constitutional respect for 
 
 dignity and for rank, in the absence of which the highest privileges 
 
 would lose all their grace and much of their importance. 
 
 I cannot believe that the illustrious individual who is now at the 
 head of administration can have given his sanction to a canvass from 
 the Treasury, which is so plainly against the best interests of his 
 own order. Be this as it may, the University of Cambridge can and 
 will judge for themselves ; and are, notwithstanding your humble 
 opinion of them, placed far above the reach of improper influence, 
 however high the quarter from which it may descend. 
 
 I have now performed the task I have undertaken. I could 
 have wished to have had more time for its performance, but I hope 
 I have made myself understood. I believe I have fairly represented 
 the motives of a great body of the Senate, and the feelings which 
 your unexpected canvass has excited. I therefore leave this homely 
 expression of truth to its proper influence ; and, notwithstanding the 
 strange revolutions I have witnessed in the conduct of others, I 
 venture still to subscribe myself, with great respect, Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient and humble servant, 
 
 A RESIDENT MEMBER OF THE SENATE. 
 CAMBRIDGE, June 3, 1829. 
 
 A few extracts from letters to private friends show better 
 than any description Sedgwick's feverish condition during the 
 first fortnight of June divided as he was between the election, 
 preparations for his journey, and his duty to the Geological 
 Society. 
 
 To R. I. Murchison, Esq. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. Tuesday Morning, 
 
 2 June, 1829. 
 
 "We are up to the ears in politics. Bankes has started 
 for the University, and we have pitted Cavendish against 
 him. I hope to God we shall succeed. I shall take care to 
 be up in time for the Council on Friday ; but in our present 
 disturbed state I don't know that I can be with you sooner. 
 I am sorry for it ; as I should have rejoiced to meet your 
 party of Wednesday. This hurly burly at this time is 
 unfortunate, but I can't help it. Pray can you do us any 
 service ? If you know any voter, or any one who can 
 
CANVASS FOR MR CAVENDISH. 347 
 
 influence a vote, at him by all means. Our cause is good 1829. 
 in both ways. Cavendish is a man who would do us great ^ tp 44- 
 honor Bankes is nobody, and wishes to ride upon the 
 shoulders of the ultras. No Popery was a grand stalking- 
 horse ; but I hope it has now broken its knees, and will not 
 carry weight." 
 
 During this visit to London Sedgwick tried to secure Mill, 
 who had returned from India for a short holiday, and was 
 staying at an hotel. Mill was out when he called, but he intro- 
 duced himself to Mrs Mill, and left with her the following note, 
 endorsed, " From Adam Sedgwick, Professor, canvassing for 
 Cavendish. Written with his heart's blood." The pollbook 
 shows that the appeal was successful. 
 
 GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 Dear Mill, 
 
 By your love of virtue of Trinity College and of 
 literature, and of science, come and vote for Cavendish. He 
 has committed no political sin. If this will not do by your 
 friendship for myself and for the other residents who were 
 the academic companions of your early life, do not vote 
 against him. I wish I had time to see you, but I am 
 engaged here from three till half-past eleven. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To Rev. William Ainger. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., June 4, 1829. 
 
 " I dare not canvass you for Cavendish, because I know 
 that you see things with eyes so different from mine that we 
 hardly on some matters can find a starting-point from which 
 we may begin an argument. He is one of the most amiable 
 and accomplished young noblemen whom we have had among 
 us in this last century, and has been started by men of all 
 parties, purely on his personal merits. I dare say you don't 
 like his name, and think it sounds Whiggish. Bankes has no 
 
348 CANVASS FOR MR CAVENDISH. 
 
 1829. merit that I know of except that he pretended to go out on 
 - 44- the Catholic question. It was all mockery, he never was out 
 or he would not now be in. The cast-off rags of No Popery 
 won't cover his nakedness. But enough of this. If Cavendish 
 come in the University will have an honourable rest. All I 
 ask is that you do not come against us." 
 
 To R. I. Murchison, Esq. 
 
 COMMITTEE ROOM, June n. 
 
 " I have not one thought, word, or deed, except for 
 Cavendish. Pray do what you can in the way of preparation 
 for our tour. The election ends on Thursday week. On 
 Friday morning following I shall come up to Town to attend 
 the meeting of the Geological Society. But I fear it will be 
 impossible for me to be ready by the Wednesday following. 
 By Saturday I should be able to start. Coddington 1 means 
 to accompany us up the Rhine. His German will be of 
 great use to us. I don't think he will go very far. Whewell 
 will if possible join us in the Thiiringerwald. Excuse this 
 hurry." 
 
 To the same. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, 15 June^ 1829. 
 
 " Good God ! you will have to do everything for me. To 
 start at six o'clock in the morning of Friday, immediately 
 after the election, and to be off on Wednesday ! But I will 
 do my best. Pray look out some papers for me to read, e.g. 
 Boue's &c. ; enquire about maps, and other geological neces- 
 saries. If these be in readiness, I hope I may be ready 
 myself by Wednesday. How abominably unprepared I shall 
 be. My mind will be like white paper ready for any im- 
 pressions. Be it so. The election is horribly inconvenient. 
 I am sitting on the edge of a razor. At 8 o'clock tomorrow 
 we start. Both sides are confident." 
 
 The Poll closed on Thursday, 18 June, when Mr Cavendish 
 was elected by 609 votes to 462 a majority of 137. When 
 
 1 Rev. Henry Coddington, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College. 
 
CONTINENTAL TOUR. 349 
 
 the result was declared an undergraduate in the gallery shouted : 1829. 
 " Farewell, a long farewell to all the Bankeses ! " The day ^ 44- 
 ended, according to Mr Romilly, with " a huge dinner " in the 
 Hall of Trinity College, at which Sedgwick " spoke finely." 
 
 The next morning Sedgwick was off to London, hurried 
 through his preparations, and started with Murchison for the 
 continent on the appointed day. The route followed up to the 
 middle of September is described in the next letter 1 . 
 
 GMUNDEN NEAR SALZBURG, September 14, 1829. 
 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 I have for some hours been twirling my thumbs and 
 watching the weather ; but there is no longer a gleam of 
 hope. The spirits, under such circumstances, undergo a 
 kind of recoil. When a man cannot move his body forward, 
 he casts his thoughts backward, and thinks of those who are 
 behind him. If this letter deserves thanks, you must thank 
 the weather and not me. In some respects I am still to be 
 envied. While I wield a pen in my right hand, I hold a 
 German pipe in my left, and the images of past scenes are 
 floating before my mind's eye among the fumes of Hungarian 
 tobacco. If the elements were less turbid, I should have 
 before me one of the most lovely lakes in the world, backed 
 by peaks of the Saltzburg Alps. I am too much a man of 
 business to write much ; but I always intended to send you 
 one sheet full of such matter as I could scrape together. So 
 here I take up my parable. 
 
 I left England on June 24th, steamed to Rotterdam, and 
 after a delay of a few hours not ill employed in that truly 
 Dutch city, continued rny journey up the Rhine, by the same 
 conveyance, to Bonn. There we halted, and took in a quantity 
 of geological ballast from sundry German Professors. We 
 again embarked, and landed at Andernach ; and made an 
 excursion on foot up the country to visit some very interesting 
 
 1 Our account of this tour should be compared with that in Geikie's Life of 
 Murchison, i. 157 162. 
 
350 NORTH GERMANY. 
 
 1829. extinct volcanoes. We traced lava-currents to their craters, 
 * 44- and travelled for miles upon pumice, scoria, and ashes. I was 
 bewildered and confounded at the sight, for these fires have 
 never smoked within the records of mankind. We then 
 travelled along the lovely banks of the Rhine to Maintz, and 
 crossed to Frankfort, where Murchison and myself purchased 
 a carriage ; and since that time we have been travelling by 
 post, always excepting excursions over hill and dale, above 
 ground and under, in places where horses have never trodden. 
 Our first excursion was to Cassel, a beautiful capital ; from 
 thence we walked over some of the Hessian mountains, and 
 met our carriage on the south edge of the kingdom of 
 Hanover. We halted one day at Gottingen, and were above 
 all measure delighted with old Professor Blumenbach. Thence 
 we posted to the Hartz mountains. They detained us some 
 days ; but I will not torment you with geology. We then 
 posted to Eisleben, famous for fossil fish and copper, and 
 after angling, or more properly haggling, for these fish, we 
 went to Halle, and again rested one day, and smoked with 
 German Professors. From Halle we posted across the sandy 
 plains of Prussia to Berlin. It is a fine modern capital, but 
 is devoid of any venerable monument of former times ; and, 
 after the first flash which astonishes you, ceases to give any 
 pleasure. We found some very well-informed persons there, 
 who gave us the kind of information we wanted, and after a 
 halt of four days we started for Saxony. I do wish that I could 
 take you by the skirts of your coat and place you upon the 
 Bastei, a perpendicular rock on the banks of the Elbe, and I 
 would show you one of the finest views in the world. From 
 thence we would walk over the field of battle, pause at the 
 spot where Moreau fell (marked now by a small granite 
 pillar) 1 ; thence we would track our way through the defiles 
 of the Bohemian mountains; sleep at a small inn close by 
 
 1 Moreau, the celebrated French republican general who joined the Allies after 
 Napoleon's defeat in Russia, was fatally wounded at the battle of Dresden, 
 27 August, 1813. 
 
VIENNA. THE ARCHDUKE JOHN. 351 
 
 Culm, where Vandamme was defeated 1 ; and next day we 1829. 
 would visit Toplitz, a broiling hot city where the streets ^- 44- 
 during the season are rilled with German Barons and Counts, 
 Bohemian and Polish princes, and where you might walk in 
 the public rooms cheek by jowl with the King of Prussia. 
 All this I cannot do ; I must therefore be content to tell you 
 that this was my track : that from Toplitz I went to Prague, 
 one of the most magnificent cities I ever beheld ; and from 
 thence posted through southern Bohemia and Moravia, a 
 dull and dismal long journey, to Vienna. We were rather 
 unfortunate, as the most eminent men of science, at least in 
 our way, were gone out of the city. A few Professors were, 
 however, left ; and our ambassador very politely invited us 
 to his country-house, and we spent a delightful day with him. 
 His house stands upon the site of the old Turkish camp 
 occupied during the siege of Vienna. It commands a view 
 of the Danube, the fatal plains of Aspern and Wagram, the 
 city, the Hungarian mountains, and the Styrian precipices 
 which form the eastern termination of the Alpine chain. 
 
 On leaving Vienna we took the road towards Trieste, 
 and, after crossing a corner of the Alps, descended by the 
 banks of the Mur, and spent about ten days in lower Styria. 
 It is full of interest, moral and physical; a most lovely 
 country peopled by a most beautiful race, who are simple 
 and kind-hearted beyond anything I have ever seen. We 
 had some excellent introductions, and saw everything we 
 wanted, with one exception. We had letters to the Emperor's 
 brother, the Archduke John, the Governor of Styria, and he 
 was unfortunately absent. He is one of the most extraordinary 
 men in Europe ; accomplished as a man of science, kind- 
 hearted, liberal, and of extraordinary simplicity of manners. 
 He was unfortunate in the wars against Napoleon, and, 
 perhaps in some disgust with a court life, retired to his 
 government ; adopted a simple style of living ; visited every 
 corner of his extensive province, and almost every family, 
 
 1 At the second battle near Culm, 30 August, 1813. 
 
352 TRIESTE. 
 
 1829. often travelling on foot without a single servant. He has 
 
 .. 44. established museums and scientific institutions, encouraged 
 
 everything good and liberal, and has gained such influence 
 
 that in case of need he could raise up the whole population 
 
 by a motion of his finger. 
 
 We crossed the desolate mountains of Carinthia, and at 
 length reached their southern limit and found ourselves in 
 one moment looking over the blue waters of the Adriatic. I 
 dare not attempt to describe my sensations when the rocky 
 shores of Idria, the plains of Italy, and the great wall of the 
 Alps burst upon the view ; I should fly into heroics which 
 would be out of keeping for a geologist who travels with 
 stones in his pockets, and is therefore kept from soaring. 
 We spent a day at Trieste, among surly English captains, 
 sleepy Dutchmen, and Levant merchants in oriental dresses. 
 We crossed the sultry plains of Italy among olive-groves and 
 vineyards, and then plunged into the defiles of the Taglia- 
 mento, and, after wandering several days among the southern 
 flanks of the Alps, crossed the axis of the chain at the Tauern, 
 a pass which is at the elevation of about 6500 feet above the 
 level of the sea. We then descended by some gorgeous 
 defiles to Salzburg, and here I am, as I before said. My 
 pipe is out and my eyes are nearly out... 
 
 I am now going to zigzag along the north flank of 
 the Alps, and sometime in October hope to hammer my 
 way to Paris. In the meantime I wish you a very good 
 night. My kind regards to your sister, and my love to your 
 children. 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 On entering the Tyrol from Italy they fortunately fell in 
 with the Archduke. Already, though they had not seen him, 
 they had profited by his presence in the country ; for, writes 
 Sedgwick, "wherever we went in the valleys of Styria with 
 
 

 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN. 353 
 
 our hammers, we were set down at once as odd fellows who 1829. 
 were friends of the Archduke John 1 ." &* 44- 
 
 " We first saw him at a little village of the higher Alps 
 called Bad Gastein ; and in five minutes found ourselves as 
 much at home with him as if we had known him twenty 
 years. He had received the letters we intended to have 
 presented to him, and therefore knew our objects of search 
 and who we were. He proposed an excursion to the glacier 
 and waterfalls [at Nassfeld], to which we of course joyfully 
 assented ; and added most courteously that it would give 
 us an occasion of talking of many things by the way, and 
 this would be the only opportunity, as the day following he 
 was going to cross the great chain on foot to visit a friend in 
 the southern Carinthian Alps. We started in a machine 
 with two seats, but in every other respects like a Dent's 
 shandery-dan; and, after going as far as this machine would 
 go, we scaled the precipices on foot, and traversed one of 
 those magnificent amphitheatres of ice and snow of which 
 no written language can convey any adequate description. 
 We descended in the evening to a little tidy alehouse [at the 
 village of Bockstein] where we supped upon trout and bottled 
 ale, and we finally tracked our way by the light of a lantern 
 to the village from which we started. 
 
 " Everything we had heard of this excellent man was 
 more than realised. He is sensible, liberal to a degree which 
 offends the despotic Emperor, accomplished as a man of 
 science, of most amiable temper, and wonderful simplicity of 
 manners. The moment the girls of the little alehouse knew 
 who he was, I thought they would have gone into fits through 
 joy. They seized his hands, kissed them a hundred times, 
 and, if he would have allowed them, would have gone down 
 on their knees before him. He talked with great freedom ; 
 spoke of the partition of Poland as an iniquity which 
 he feared would some day bring down a great national 
 punishment, and frankly pointed out many existing evils in 
 
 1 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 10 August, 1829. 
 
 s. i. 23 
 
354 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN. 
 
 1829. the system of government. I before told you of the way 
 Et. 44. i n which he passes his time among the people whom he 
 governs. Everybody seems happy under him, and all insti- 
 tutions flourish. There was one subject on which I dared 
 not speak to him, and that was religion. He is a catholic, 
 and assuredly is a liberal one. Where the people wanted 
 ministers and chapels he has built them, in several parts of 
 Styria. All this is right, for the country is entirely catholic ; 
 but about matters of faith he did not seem inclined to speak. 
 "The morning after our excursion I called on him just as 
 he was about to start. He was dressed in worsted stockings, 
 hob-nailed shoes, and jacket, with a little green hat and 
 feather, the costume of Styria. Three men in a kind of 
 uniform, with rifles, followed him, for the purpose of shooting 
 chamois, wild-deer, or other animals they might meet with. 
 His parting was like the rest of his manner ; simple, kind- 
 hearted, and unceremonious. We saw him start, and ascend 
 towards the higher Alps on foot 1 ." 
 
 The travellers next made a rapid exploration of the Salz- 
 kammergut, with which Sedgwick was delighted. " The 
 whole region," he wrote, " is of exquisite beauty, and the 
 inhabitants have the same honest, simple, kind-hearted 
 character which I praised and admired so much among the 
 StyriansV Letters from the Archduke gave them ready 
 access to the salt-mines; and at Berchtesgaden they came in 
 for the close of a grand hunting-party given by the King of 
 Bavaria to some foreign princes. 
 
 1 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 31 August, 1829. The Archduke John was the 
 sixth son (born 20 January, 1782) of the Emperor Leopold II. He commanded 
 the Austrians at Hohenlinden, where he was defeated by Moreau (3 December, 
 1800), and his subsequent military career was equally unfortunate. Throughout 
 his whole life he took great interest in the Tyrolese and Styrians. The former 
 were incited by him to the unsuccessful revolt under Hofer (1809). In after-life 
 he resided in Styria, chiefly at Gratz, where he married the daughter of a postmaster. 
 He had no official post in Styria, but employed himself, as Sedgwick says, in the 
 improvement of the people. In 1848 he became vicar-general of the Empire, an 
 office which he held for only a few months. He died in 1859. 
 
 2 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 26 September, 1829. 
 
ROYAL SPORT AT BERCHTESGADEN. 355 
 
 " The sport was nearly over before we arrived, but we saw 1829. 
 the company, and the manner of the chase, which was all we ^ Et 44' 
 wanted. The scene altogether reminded me of some of Sir 
 Walter Scott's finest descriptions, but was upon a scale more 
 grand than Scotland could ever boast of. For some weeks 
 before the visit of the royal party many hundred persons are 
 employed in driving the deer, chamois, and other wild animals 
 into a particular part of the Bavarian forests just under the 
 snowy Alps. They form two great lines on the opposite 
 extremes of the great forests, at the distance of twenty or 
 thirty miles from each other, and by means of dogs, horns, 
 etc. drive the affrighted beasts towards the central region. 
 It is so contrived that these central forests are under a 
 long succession of precipices, through which there is no escape 
 to the Alpine summits, except by a few ravines and narrow 
 gorges. On an appointed day the king and his attendants 
 place themselves in these ravines accompanied by soldiers 
 armed with rifles ; and on an appointed signal thousands of 
 persons, some employed by government, others led by curiosity 
 and love of the sport, rush into the forests, and drive out the 
 wild inhabitants from their hiding-places. The poor animals, 
 thus beset on all sides, become frantic, and rush out of the 
 forest, sometimes singly, sometimes in large herds, and, having 
 no means of escape except through the narrow defiles I have 
 mentioned, scores of them are brought to the ground before 
 they can get out of the reach of the riflemen. The different 
 ranks and costumes of the assembled multitude, the shouts 
 of the hunters, the echoes of the guns among the great 
 precipices of the Alps produce a combination of circum- 
 stances well fitted to excite the imagination 1 ." 
 
 From Salzburg they went to Munich, and thence by 
 Ulm, Stuttgart, and the Lake of Constance to Strasburg. A 
 letter from the latter place to Whewell, who had been dis- 
 porting himself in Switzerland with Mr Coddington, enters so 
 
 1 To Rev. John Sedgwick, from Stein on the Lake of Constance, 26 September, 
 1829. 
 
 232 
 
356 GEOLOGICAL DETAILS. 
 
 1829. much more into geological detail than any of the other letters 
 * 44- of this year, that, at the risk of some repetition, we will give 
 a few extracts from it. After describing their visit to the 
 Hartz, Eisleben, Halle, etc. Sedgwick proceeds : 
 
 "This is the focus of Wernerian geology, and to my 
 infinite surprise it is the most decidedly volcanic secondary 
 country I ever saw. The granite bursts through on one side, 
 sends out veins, and along the whole eastern flank the 
 secondaries are highly inclined and often absolutely vertical. 
 Near Goslar they are absolutely heels over head.... 
 
 " In Styria we found a great deal of good tertiary geology. 
 Our Styrian tertiaries led us down into the edge of Hungary, 
 from which we doubled to the great road, and beat our way 
 down to Trieste. Dull geology, but the finest caverns in the 
 world.... From Trieste we crossed the plains of Italy to the 
 Tagliamento, by which we entered a great gorge in the Julian 
 Alps. We emerged from these gorges at Bleiberg, and began 
 to ascend the primary axis. To our great surprise found the 
 oldest rocks of the calcareous zone full of gryphites, and not 
 older than our lias, though crystalline as white as sugar ! 
 We crossed the axis at the top of the great Tauern Alp 
 amidst mica-schists and crystalline marbles, serpentines, etc., 
 etc., and, what do you think ? in this series we found beds 
 top-full of encrinites. I could hardly believe my eyes. Thence 
 down the high road to Werfen, from which place we again 
 doubled, and ascended to the primary axis by a parallel 
 valley.... On our return to Werfen we set off to Salzburg, 
 and afterwards threaded our way among the links of the 
 great southern calcareous zone. And how shall I describe 
 the wonders we here saw ? The tertiary deposits resting on 
 the outskirts of this calcareous zone are thicker than all our 
 secondary formations put together. For scores of miles they 
 are in a vertical position. In many places the Alps, in rising 
 through them, have lifted great rags of them into the regions 
 of snow. Some of these rags are 3000 or 4000 feet thick, and 
 stuck on like great poultices on the bruised pates of the older 
 
GEOLOGICAL DETAILS. 
 
 357 
 
 rocks. From Salzburg to Innspruck. Thence once more 1829. 
 over the calcareous chain top-full of fish, and stinking of ^t- 44- 
 fish-oil, which in many places trickles out like tar. From the 
 fish-beds to a bed at Munich. Pictures and antiques one 
 day off to the great tertiaries on the Bavarian flanks so 
 to the Lake of Constance. Two noble sections linking in 
 our work with the tertiaries of Switzerland. Thence to 
 Oeningen, Murchison's fox-cover 1 . Thence to the Danube 
 Ulm. N.B. Freshwater hills all around the city. From Ulm 
 we visited the famous field of Blenheim on our way to 
 Solenhofen ; a wonderful place for lithographic stone and 
 fossil fish. From this depot we crossed the Jura limestone, 
 through some beautiful freshwater basins, to Stuttgart, and so 
 down the Neckar to Heidelberg. This outline will give you 
 some notion of what we have been about. I think we have 
 done some good work. I am anxious to be home again, but 
 we must go by Paris. We have some work by the way, and 
 may not be there before the i/th or i8th. My kindest 
 regards to all who regard meV 
 
 Lyell tells us that Sedgwick returned " full of magnificent 
 views; throws overboard all the diluvian hypothesis; is vexed 
 he ever lost time about such a complete humbug ; says he 
 lost two years by having also started as a Wernerian, etc. 3 " 
 He did not himself admit that his conversion was so complete 
 as this report of his conversation would imply ; but no doubt 
 his views had been greatly modified and extended by what 
 he had seen on the continent, and by his intercourse with 
 foreign geologists. 
 
 On this occasion Murchison had no cause of complaint 
 against Sedgwick on the ground of delay in getting their 
 joint work ready for publication. In about a fortnight after 
 
 1 In the previous year Murchison had obtained from this celebrated quarry a 
 unique skeleton of a fossil fox ( Galecynus oeningensis] now in the British Museum. 
 He described it in the Transactions of the Geol. Soc. iii. 277. Compare also his 
 Life, i. 154. 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Whewell, 10 October, 1829. 
 
 3 Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 256. 
 
358 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF TOUR. 
 
 1829. their return (6 November, 1829) their first paper On the 
 Et. 44. Tertiary Deposits of the Vale of Gosau in the Salzburg Alps, 
 was read to the Society ; and, wonderful to relate, in spite of 
 Sedgwick's occupations and ailments, which appear to have 
 been unusually severe, it was succeeded, at the two following 
 meetings (20 November and 4 December) by a second, On 
 the Tertiary Formations which range along the Flanks of the 
 Salzburg and Bavarian A Ips. The method of setting about 
 the work, and the value of the results, do not call for much 
 comment. It was not a new and unexplored district, such as 
 Sedgwick loved, and yet it was an area where great problems 
 were suggested, and it formed a fine field for a holiday tour. 
 Murchison, as was his very useful custom, "got the subject up" 
 before starting ; he read what had been written on the 
 district, corresponded with the authors and authorities upon 
 it ; and, thus furnished, the colleagues started to examine for 
 themselves, and to criticise the interpretation of the geological 
 structure of the country given by Boue and others. 
 
 In the summary given by Sedgwick in his presidential 
 address to the Geological Society, we have as clear an 
 account as we can desire of what was proposed and what was 
 done. It was a question of identification and correlation, and 
 Sedgwick and Murchison were among the great host of 
 explorers and authors who have treated of the bands of 
 calcareous and arenaceous rocks, with nummulites in the 
 newer beds, and hippurites in the older, which flank the 
 Alpine ridges from the Rhone to the Danube. They did not 
 collect materials for a minute classification indeed it would 
 have been impossible for them to do so but they gave a 
 good account of the district, with much new work ; and they 
 brought the whole subject before English geologists for the 
 first time. 
 
 The principal points established are thus stated by 
 Sedgwick : 
 
 " We have shewn that several transverse sections from the 
 central axis of the Alps to the basin of the Upper Danube 
 
SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF TOUR. 359 
 
 would present a succession of phenomena in very near accord- 1829. 
 ance with those of other transverse sections from the same ^ 44> 
 axis to the tertiary formations at the other base of the chain 
 in the North of Italy. On both sides of this chain, after 
 passing over the great secondary calcareous zones, we meet 
 with the lower tertiary strata always highly inclined, some- 
 times vertical, and occasionally conformable to the beds 
 of the older system. We contend that this remarkable 
 symmetry confirms the hypothesis of a recent elevation 
 of the Eastern Alps ; and makes it probable, independently 
 of arguments derived from organic remains, that the tertiary 
 deposits of the Sub-Apennine regions and of the basin of the 
 Upper Danube belong to one period of formation. 
 
 " Thick masses of strata full of organic remains, and often 
 occurring at low levels near the northern foot of the chain, 
 are sometimes also found (e.g. in the valley of Gosau) in 
 unconformable positions, caught up among the serrated peaks 
 of the Alps, four or five thousand feet above the level of the 
 sea. Such a disjunction of corresponding strata is inexplic- 
 able on any hypothesis which rejects the theory of elevation. 
 We have concluded, chiefly on zoological evidence, that the 
 unconformable beds of Gosau are more recent than the chalk. 
 We believe that they contain neither ammonites nor belem- 
 nites, nor any other known species of secondary fossils ; and 
 on the whole we regard them as a term of that unknown 
 series of formations which may hereafter close up the chasm 
 between the lowest beds of the Paris basin and the chalk. 
 
 " We have pointed out the limits of the old chain of the 
 Salzburg and Bavarian Alps, and traced the direction of its 
 valleys anterior to the tertiary epoch : and we have described 
 a great deposit of lignite far up the valley of the Inn, contain- 
 ing fresh water and marine shells, which seem to connect it 
 with the period of the London clay. We have further shewn 
 that there are within the basin of the Upper Danube two or 
 three higher zones of lignite separated from each other by 
 sedimentary deposits of enormous thickness. 
 
360 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF TOUR. 
 
 1829. "The tertiary system of Bavaria is shewn to pass into, 
 
 Et. 44. an d to be identical with, the molasse and nagelflue of Switzer- 
 land. The higher part of this series must therefore be of the 
 same age with some of the formations of the Sub-Appennines. 
 We have proved that enormous masses of sandstone and 
 conglomerate many thousand feet in thickness, stretching 
 from the base of the Alps to the plains of the Danube, are 
 chiefly derived from the degradation of the neighbouring 
 chain that many of these masses cannot be distinguished 
 from the newest detritus which lies scattered on the surface 
 of the earth that in their prolongation into Switzerland 
 they sometimes contain bones of mammalia that they are 
 regularly stratified, and alternate with beds containing marine 
 shells and that they cannot have been caused by any 
 transient inundation. 
 
 " Finally, we point out the probable effect of debacles 
 which took place when the basin was deserted by the sea. 
 We shew that the excavations produced by the retiring 
 waters have been augmented by the bursting of successive 
 lakes, of which we found traces in all the upland valleys 
 of Bavaria ; and that these excavations have been since 
 carried on by the erosive power of the streams which roll 
 down from the sides of the Alps to the plains of the Danube 1 ." 
 To read an elaborate paper is one thing ; to make it fit 
 for publication is another ; and it was soon found that some 
 very hard work had yet to be done. When the abstracts 
 appeared in the Proceedings of the Society, the views therein 
 advanced especially those relating to the Valley of Gosau 
 were combated both in England and abroad, notably by 
 Dr Ami Boue. It became therefore necessary to test con- 
 clusions by a second visit to the ground. Sedgwick, ap- 
 parently, had no wish to leave home again so soon ; and the 
 task therefore devolved on Murchison, who devoted the 
 summer of 1830 to it, with complete success. On his return 
 
 1 Address to the Geological Society, 19 February, 1830, p. 9. Proceedings, 
 i. 193. 
 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 361 
 
 he read a separate memoir to the Geological Society, in 1830. 
 which the old conclusions were fortified with fresh facts. ^" 45- 
 After this the Council of the Society decided that it would 
 be more instructive, and save repetition and correction, if the 
 whole subject were treated in a single memoir. This was no 
 doubt a wise decision, but it entailed the re-writing of both 
 memoirs, so as to weld them properly together. A good deal 
 of this labour fell to Sedgwick's share, and occupied him, 
 conjointly with other work, for several months in 1831. The 
 volume in which the paper appears in its final form was not 
 published until 1835. 
 
 At the beginning of 1830 it became Sedgwick's duty to 
 deliver, as President of the Geological Society, the customary 
 address at the Anniversary Meeting. Perfunctory work of 
 this sort rarely repays careful analysis. Questions which the 
 author weighs in the balance of a good-natured criticism 
 have long since been settled, or forgotten ; and praise or 
 blame when delivered from the Chair is apt to lose in 
 sincerity as much as it gains in authority. Sedgwick 
 always honest and straight-forward avoids these defects as 
 far as the nature of the case permits. He passes in review 
 what had been accomplished during the previous year ; the 
 papers by Lyell and Murchison ; by Murchison and himself; 
 by Dr Fitton, and others ; and these works lead him to 
 discuss the action of river-currents, with his own views there- 
 on ; the true sub-divisions of the tertiary strata ; the import- 
 ance of the study of organic remains, etc.; so that the speech 
 is lifted above the accidents of the moment, and possesses 
 permanent value. These diverse subjects are not only clearly 
 and eloquently treated, but what in other hands would have 
 been a dry discussion is enlivened with graphic similes 
 humorous touches inspiriting appeals to unwearied labour, 
 especially in the field of English Geology and hints at the 
 true method of correlating facts, and establishing a correct 
 induction from them in a manner well worthy of the 
 " mathematical geologist." The concluding paragraphs are 
 
362 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 
 
 830. devoted to a piece of criticism as severe as anything that 
 Et- 45- Sedgwick ever penned. A member of the Society, Andrew 
 Ure, M.D. had lately published A New System of Geology, 
 " in which the great revolutions of the earth and of animated 
 nature are reconciled at once to modern science and to sacred 
 history." This " monument of folly," as Sedgwick calls it, is 
 pulled to pieces without mercy, and some of its worst 
 blunders exposed. Into these we need not enter indeed the 
 subject would not have been alluded to at all had it not given 
 occasion to a passage so noble, and of such general applica- 
 tion, that we cannot resist the pleasure of quoting it. 
 
 Laws for the government of intellectual beings, and laws by 
 which material things are held together, have not one common 
 element to connect them. And to seek for the exposition of the 
 phenomena of the natural world among the records of the moral 
 destinies of mankind, would be as unwise, as to look for rules of 
 moral government among the laws of chemical combination. From 
 the unnatural union of things so utterly incongruous, there has from 
 time to time sprung up in this country a deformed progeny of 
 heretical and fantastical conclusions, by which sober philosophy has 
 been put to open shame, and sometimes even the charities of life 
 have been exposed to violation. 
 
 No opinion can be heretical but that which is not true. Con- 
 flicting falsehoods we can comprehend, but truths can never war 
 against each other. I affirm, therefore, that we have nothing to fear 
 from the results of our inquiries, provided they be followed in the 
 laborious but secure road of honest induction. In this way we may 
 rest assured that we shall never arrive at conclusions opposed to 
 any truth, either physical or moral, from whatsoever source that 
 truth may be derived : nay rather, (as in all truth there is a common 
 essence) that new discoveries will ever lend support and illustration 
 to things which are already known, by giving us a larger insight into 
 the universal harmonies of nature 1 . 
 
 The first half of 1830 was fully occupied with the pre- 
 paration of the above address (delivered 19 February) with 
 journeys to London on the business of the Society, and other 
 matters which his recognised position as one of the first of 
 English geologists imposed upon him as, for instance, exami- 
 nation before a Committee of the House of Commons on the 
 Coal Measures, and attendance at "a Committee appointed 
 
 1 Address, p. 23. 
 
WOODWARDIAN MUSEUM. 363 
 
 to direct a Survey of the Thames 1 ." In the midst of all this 1830. 
 
 he found time to congratulate his friend Dean Monk on being ^ { ' 45 ' 
 
 promoted from the Deanery of Peterborough to the Bishopric 
 
 of Gloucester. " We all rejoice at this event/' he wrote, " from 
 
 feelings of personal regard, founded in a long experience both 
 
 of your unwearied kindness and of your great services rendered 
 
 to ourselves and our Society while you were one of our 
 
 resident members : we all rejoice on public grounds, for we 
 
 see in yourself an instance of honourable distinction, founded, 
 
 as it ought to be, not on party interest, but on high literary 
 
 claims 2 ." 
 
 May brought the usual preparations for the Woodwardian 
 audit. This year he had plenty of additions to record : 
 "specimens from the extinct volcanoes near Bonn;" from 
 nearly every district visited in 1829, including "a very fine 
 series of organic remains from Solenhofen," and several 
 geological maps purchased at Berlin. As usual he laments 
 " that want of room prevents him from having the pleasure of 
 exhibiting many of these additions," but " hopes that before 
 long he shall have an opportunity of unpacking them, and of 
 arranging them in a Museum of the University 3 " a sanguine 
 aspiration which was not realised for more than eleven years 
 after this report was written. 
 
 Murchison had started early in the summer to " riddle the 
 Alps in all directions," as he said ; and he kept Sedgwick 
 constantly informed of all that he was doing of the help 
 he obtained from continental geologists, and of the new facts 
 he was ascertaining in support of their common position. 
 His letters, interesting and valuable as they are, are too 
 technical for a biography; and indeed, would be hardly 
 intelligible without the maps and sections to which they refer. 
 Of Sedgwick's letters to him one only has been preserved 
 perhaps only one was written. It is occupied chiefly with a 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, May, 1830. 
 
 2 To Dean Monk, 14 February, 1830. 
 
 3 Report to the Woodivardian Aiiditors , i May, 1830. 
 
364 STARTS FOR THE CHEVIOTS. 
 
 1830. very severe criticism on the abstract of their joint papers 
 * 45- which Murchison had sent to the Annals of Philosophy, and 
 which Sedgwick had fortunately intercepted before it was 
 printed off. Murchison calls the letter "very cross," and 
 declares that Sedgwick must have been " in a mathematically 
 exact humour" when he wrote it; but he concedes all that 
 was wanted when he speaks of the paper in question as "my 
 very careless abstract 1 ." This matter despatched, Sedgwick 
 proceeds to tell him that he had stayed in London for some 
 time, " being in daily expectation of the commencement of a 
 canvass for a new contest in the University;" that "fortu- 
 nately the storm had blown over," and that he was then " in 
 all the press and confusion of a man who is going to desert 
 his quarters. Tomorrow morning I am off on my way to 
 Northumberland. I shall halt at Newcastle, and try to lay 
 in a stock of information ; and then, as soon as possible, bear 
 down upon the Cheviots. If I knew how to hit you I would 
 send a fly-leaf after you when I had properly pounded the 
 porphyries. I am delighted with your account of the Low 
 Countries; you have done some excellent work there.... Lyell 
 has been off about three weeks, and has not been since heard 
 of. His book 2 has a hard delivery ; it is not yet out. This is 
 very vexatious, as I wanted to take it with me. The King's 
 death ; speeches in the House of Commons ; the fear of a 
 contested election; these have been the chief topics.... Give 
 my best regards to Mrs Murchison. How does she bear the 
 fatigues of your campaign 3 ?" 
 
 A letter to Mrs Murchison (21 October) records a few 
 particulars of the summer's work, which had proved some- 
 what disappointing: "Among the Cheviot hills I worked 
 hard for about ten days ; and I did some good work in a 
 small way on the Scotch borders. Soon after I was attacked 
 with indisposition ; and in a great measure driven off the 
 
 1 From R. I. Murchison, Ischl, 15 August, 1830. 
 
 2 The first volume of his Principles of Geology. 
 
 3 To R. I. Murchison, Cambridge, 15 July, 1830. 
 
ROYAL SOCIETY, 365 
 
 field. After making one or two vain efforts among the 1830. 
 Cumberland mountains I finally took shelter in my native ^ 45- 
 valley." There he was detained by a long spell of bad 
 weather: "all the powers of the air," he says, " were in league 
 against me." He was therefore obliged to give up a projected 
 excursion to North Wales and Ireland, and content himself 
 with Ingleborough. In that district he " ransacked the hills 
 from the ridge of Stainmoor to the heart of Craven." By the 
 end of October, as usual, he was back at Cambridge. 
 
 Towards the close of this year certain Fellows of the Royal 
 Society let it be known that, in their opinion, His Royal 
 Highness the Duke of Sussex was a fit and proper person to 
 be President; that he was willing, not to say anxious, to accept 
 the office ; and that he did so with His Majesty's approval. 
 Thereupon the actual President, Mr Davies Gilbert, retired. 
 The scientific section of the Fellows, indignant at what they 
 regarded as an interference with their independence on the part 
 of the Court, persuaded Mr Herschel to allow himself to be 
 nominated in opposition to the Duke. Murchison took an 
 active part in getting up the requisition to Herschel, which was 
 signed by Sedgwick and most of his Cambridge friends. He 
 had been for some years anxious to see Herschel President 1 , 
 but, being out of London, did not work himself up to the 
 white heat of anger that seems to have been there prevalent. 
 At the same time he did what he could to stop the Duke's 
 pretensions in his usual straightforward fashion. He wrote 
 to Murchison (21 November): " I did sign a paper requesting 
 Herschel to come forward. What this new paper is I don't 
 exactly know, and I don't intend to take any more public 
 
 1 In 1827, when he had heard of a suggestion to elect Sir R. Peel, he wrote to 
 Murchison (25 November) : " The republic of science will indeed be degraded if 
 the Council of the Royal Society is to become a mere political junta, and we are 
 to sit under a. man who condescends to be our patron. The Institute of France 
 have not yet learned to degrade themselves by placing in the chair a man who has 
 no other recommendation than that of having been a King's Minister. Why don't 
 some of you propose Herschel? He is by far the first man of science in London, 
 and would do the work admirably." Sedgwick became F.R.S. in 1820. 
 
366 PAPER ON LAKE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 1830. steps. But I intend to take a private step, and a very strong 
 * 45- one. By this post I shall write to the Duke of Sussex, and 
 explain my views to him very plainly. I shall then have 
 liberated my conscience. In case of a contest I cannot come 
 up. Whewell and some others will come up Coddington, 
 Willis, &c. Whewell wishes me to impress upon you the 
 very great importance of inducing Herschel to come forward 
 as a candidate. Many men will tail off if they have an 
 excuse, and Herschel's unwillingness is a good apology for 
 weak minds. Indeed it is no bad apology for any one." 
 
 At that time the Duke was a frequent visitor to Cambridge, 
 where he greatly enjoyed the hospitalities profusely laid at his 
 feet by the Fellows of Trinity College, two of whom, Sedgwick 
 and G. A. Browne, had been appointed his chaplains 1 . On 
 these occasions he would breakfast with one, dine with an- 
 other, sup with a third, and in general behave as if he were 
 one of themselves. He was evidently not displeased with 
 Sedgwick's boldness, and wrote in reply: "I thank you for 
 your candour, and whether our opinions may differ on this or 
 any other subject, I know how to respect the talents as well 
 as the motives of any individual" but he persisted in his 
 candidature, and was elected by 1 19 votes to 1 1 1. 
 
 At the beginning of January, 1831, Sedgwick read to the 
 Geological Society his first paper On the General Structure 
 of the Lake Mountains of the North of England, the materials 
 for which had been collected several years before. For the 
 present, we merely note the fact, reserving for a subsequent 
 chapter an account of his views on the geology of Lakeland. 
 
 In the following month he concluded his two years of 
 office as President of the Geological Society; but, before 
 retiring from the chair (18 February, 1831), he had a singu- 
 larly agreeable duty to perform. Three years before, Thomas 
 Hyde Wollaston, M.D. had transferred one thousand pounds 
 to the Society, the dividends on which were to be applied 
 after his death, "in promoting researches concerning the 
 
 1 Sedgwick's patent is dated 10 May, 1819. 
 
WILLIAM SMITH. 367 
 
 mineral structure of the earth, or in rewarding those by whom 1831. 
 such researches may hereafter be made." Dr Wollaston died ^ * 
 22 December, 1828, just a fortnight after executing the above 
 transfer. The first year's income was devoted to the purchase 
 of a die, designed by Chantrey, " bearing the impress of the 
 head of Dr Wollaston" ; in order that a commemorative gold 
 medal, value ten guineas, might form part of the annual 
 donation; and it was not until early in 1831 that the Council 
 met to decide upon the first award. They resolved unani- 
 mously that the medal should "be given to Mr William Smith, 
 in consideration of his being a great original discoverer in 
 English Geology ; and especially for his having been the first, 
 in this country, to discover and to teach the identification 
 of strata, and to determine their succession, by means of 
 their imbedded fossils." 
 
 The conscience of any other President than Sedgwick 
 would probably have been satisfied by declaring this award 
 in a few well-selected phrases at the begining or the end of 
 his own address ; for, he might well have argued, the merits 
 of " Strata Smith " are by this time fully recognised by 
 geologists. But Sedgwick was too generous, too warm- 
 hearted, to adopt so selfish a course. " I for one," he said 
 " can speak with gratitude of the practical lessons I have 
 received from Mr Smith: it was by tracking his footsteps, 
 with his maps in my hand, through Wiltshire and the 
 neighbouring counties, where he had trodden nearly thirty 
 years before, that I first learnt the subdivisions of our oolitic 
 series, and apprehended the meaning of those arbitrary and 
 somewhat uncouth terms, which we derive from him as our 
 master, and which have long become engrafted into the 
 conventional language of English Geologists." He determined 
 to publish to the world, with all the authority of the position 
 he then held, the wonderful story of that humble land- 
 surveyor who, in the course of his professional work, had 
 discovered the key, if we may so speak, to the geological 
 cipher. The result is a rapid, but singularly clear and 
 
368 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
 
 1831. appreciative sketch of a remarkable life, interspersed with 
 JEt. 46. S ome nobly eloquent passages, the effect of which, as 
 originally delivered, with all the force of Sedgwick's energy 
 and enthusiasm, may be measured by that which they still 
 produce upon a reader. Towards the close of his speech he 
 demanded from his hearers their approbation of the Council's 
 award : " I would appeal " he said " to those intelligent men 
 who form the strength and ornament of this Society, whether 
 there was any place for doubt or hesitation ? whether we 
 were not compelled, by every motive which the judgment can 
 approve, and the heart can sanction, to perform this act of 
 filial duty, before we thought of the claims of any other man, 
 and to place our first honours on the brow of the Father of 
 English Geology. 
 
 " If in the pride of our present strength, we were disposed 
 to forget our origin, our very speech would bewray us ; for 
 we use the language which he taught in the infancy of our 
 science. If we, by our united efforts, are chiseling the 
 ornaments, and slowly raising up the pinnacles of one of the 
 temples of Nature, it was he who gave the plan, and laid the 
 foundations, and erected a portion of the solid walls, by the 
 unassisted labour of his hands 1 ." 
 
 In the evening of the same day Sedgwick delivered his 
 own address as President. As in that of the previous year, 
 he reviews the progress of stratigraphical geology, with even 
 more than his former felicity of treatment, and clearness of 
 exposition ; while the publication of Herschel's paper On 
 the Astronomical Causes which may influence Geological 
 Phenomena, of the first volume of Lyell's Principles of 
 Geology, and of the papers contributed by M. Elie de Beaumont 
 to the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, gave him an opportunity 
 of dealing with the fundamental theories of the science. 
 
 Of Lyell's work he spoke with genuine admiration. 
 " Were I to tell him," he said, " of the instruction I received 
 
 1 Proceedings of the Geological Society, i. no, 270 279. Memoirs of William 
 Smith, LL.D., by John Phillips, 8vo. Lond. 1844. 
 
L YELL'S PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY. 369 
 
 from every chapter of his work, and of the delight with which 1831. 
 I rose from the perusal of the whole, I might seem to flatter ^ 46- 
 rather than to speak the language of sober criticism;" but, 
 when the criticism came, it struck at the very foundation of 
 the author's theory. He " could not but regret " that Lyell 
 seemed to stand forward as " the champion of a great leading 
 doctrine of the Huttonian hypothesis ", and that " in the 
 language of an advocate he sometimes forgets the character 
 of an historian." Sedgwick had not time to deal with the 
 whole of even the single volume then published ; but 
 addressed himself, in the main, to the theoretical portion. 
 The following paragraphs are, we think, of especial value, 
 as the truth of the doctrine of Uniformity has again been 
 called in question. 
 
 According to the principles of Mr Lyell, the physical operations 
 now going on, are not only the type, but the measure of intensity, of 
 the physical powers acting on the earth at all anterior periods : and 
 all we now see around us is only the last link in the great chain of 
 phaenomena, arising out of a uniform causation, of which we can 
 trace no beginning, and of which we can see no prospect of the end. 
 And in all this, there is much that is beautiful and true. For we all 
 allow, that the primary laws of nature are immutable that all we 
 now see is subordinate to those immutable laws and that we can 
 only judge of effects which are past, by the effects we behold in 
 progress But to assume that the secondary combinations arising 
 out of the primary laws of matter, have been the same in all periods 
 of the earth, is an unwarrantable hypothesis with no a priori 
 probability, and only to be maintained by an appeal to geological 
 phaenomena. 
 
 If the principles I am combating be true, the earth's surface 
 ought to present an indefinite succession of similar phaenomena. 
 But as far as I have consulted the book of nature, I would invert 
 the negative in this proposition, and affirm, that the earth's surface 
 presents a definite succession of dissimilar phaenomena. If this be 
 true, and we are all agreed that it is ; and if it be also true, that 
 we know nothing of second causes, but by the effects they have 
 produced; then "the undeviating uniformity of secondary causes ", 
 the "uniform order of physical events", "the invariable constancy 
 in the order of nature", and other phrases of like kind, are to 
 me, as far as regards the phaenomena of geology, words almost 
 without meaning. They may serve to enunciate the proposi- 
 tions of an hypothesis ; but they do not describe the true order 
 of nature. 
 
 S. I. 24 
 
370 ALTERED VIEWS ON DILUVIUM. 
 
 1831. We are not surprised that Lyell should have written : 
 
 Et. 46. " Sedgwick's attack is the severest, and I shall put forth my 
 strength against him in l " the second volume. 
 
 But, cautious as Sedgwick was in expressing agreement 
 with Lyell's theory, he accepted, almost without hesitation, 
 the startling views of M. Elie de Beaumont on the elevation 
 of mountain-chains, and exhausted the vocabulary of praise 
 on his "noble generalisations," " admirable researches", and 
 so forth because "his conclusions are not based upon any 
 a priori reasoning, but on the evidence of facts ; and also, 
 because, in part, they are in accordance with my own 
 observations." It is only just, however, to mention, that 
 Sedgwick warned his hearers that even these generalisations 
 had been " already pushed too far." 
 
 This careful study of M. de Beaumont's work led Sedgwick 
 to one important conclusion, which has by no means lost its 
 interest at the present time, namely : " that the vast masses 
 of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the 
 earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period." 
 And then he had the courage to proceed as follows : 
 
 It was indeed a most unwarranted conclusion, when we assumed 
 the contemporaneity of all the superficial gravel on the earth. We 
 saw the clearest traces of diluvial action, and we had, in our sacred 
 histories, the record of a general deluge. On this double testimony 
 it was, that we gave a unity to a vast succession of phenomena, not 
 one of which we perfectly comprehended, and under the name 
 diluvium, classed them all together. 
 
 To seek the light of physical truth by reasoning of this kind, is, 
 in the language of Bacon, to seek the living among the dead, and 
 will ever end in erroneous induction. Our errors were, however, 
 natural, and after the same kind which led many excellent observers 
 of a former century to refer all the secondary formations of geology 
 to the Noachian deluge. Having been myself a believer, and, to 
 the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a 
 philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for 
 opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last 
 acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation. 
 
 We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the 
 diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the 
 
 1 Life of Sir Charles Lyell, i. 318. 
 
ALTERED VIEWS ON DILUVIUM. 371 
 
 action of the Mosaic flood. For of man, and the works of his 1831. 
 hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of yt. 4 6. 
 a former world entombed in these ancient deposits. In classing 
 together distant unknown formations under one name ; in giving 
 them a simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by 
 the organic remains we had discovered, but by those we expected 
 hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them ; we have given one 
 more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon 
 general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the 
 consideration of unconnected truths. l 
 
 It is strange that so cautious a writer as Sedgwick should 
 have written the last paragraph, even in 1831. But he lived 
 long enough to make a second recantation, and to admit that 
 Man had appeared upon the earth at a period long anterior 
 to that for which he had previously contended. 
 
 1 An interesting account of the way in which Sedgwick was led to change his 
 views on diluvium occurs in a letter to Murchison, dated 17 November, 1831. 
 "If I have been converted in part from the diluvian theory (which by the way I 
 never held to the same extent with Buckland, as you may see if you read the last 
 page of the only paper I ever wrote on the subject) it was... by my own gradual 
 improved experience, and by communicating with those about me. Perhaps I 
 may date my change of mind (at least in part) from our journey in the Highlands, 
 where there are so many indications of local diluvial operations.... Humboldt 
 ridiculed [the doctrine] beyond measure when I met him in Paris. Prevost 
 lectured against it." 
 
 24 2 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 (18311834). 
 
 THE REFORM BILL. CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY. 
 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS. TOUR IN WALES WITH CHARLES DARWIN 
 (1831). DECLINES THE LIVING OF EAST FARLEIGH. MRS 
 SOMERVILLE'S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE. BRITISH ASSOCIATION 
 AT OXFORD. SUMMER AND AUTUMN IN WALES. PRESIDENT 
 OF CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. DISCOURSE ON THE 
 STUDIES OF THE UNIVERSITY (1832). BRITISH ASSOCIATION 
 AT CAMBRIDGE. THE BEVERLEY CONTROVERSY (1833). DIS- 
 LOCATES RIGHT WRIST. PETITION AGAINST TESTS. BRITISH 
 
 ASSOCIATION AT EDINBURGH. MADE PREBENDARY OF NORWICH 
 (1834). 
 
 WHEN Sedgwick ceased to be President of the Geological 
 Society, and, as he put it, " exchanged dignity for liberty," 
 he probably looked forward to a spell of leisure, during which 
 he might work at geology without interruption. Such hopes, 
 however, if he ever entertained them seriously, were doomed to 
 disappointment; and we shall find that during 1831 and the 
 three succeeding years he was more than ever absorbed in 
 University and College occupations. 
 
 In less than a fortnight after the annual general meeting of 
 the Geological Society at which Sedgwick delivered his 
 farewell address, Lord John Russell introduced the Reform 
 Bill into the House of Commons. A man of letters or of 
 science, whichever side he took in the controversy which 
 
THE REFORM BILL. 373 
 
 thenceforth divided England, might well have exclaimed, 1831. 
 ' O now for ever farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content' ; &* 46- 
 and therefore it need not surprise us that Sedgwick should 
 complain shortly afterwards : " I am sadly out of sorts, and 
 involved in politics, which are dividing old friends, and 
 playing the devil amongst us 1 ." More than half a century has 
 elapsed since these words were written, and few are left in 
 Cambridge who can remember the state of feeling which 
 justified them. But there are still some who can recall 
 the after-effects, and can truthfully describe the Reform Bill 
 as the nightmare of their childhood. It appeared to them, 
 from the way in which they heard their elders speak of it, to 
 have been a maleficent influence an embodiment of the 
 spirit of evil which had brought discord into a peaceful 
 society, and had left to the next generation an inheritance 
 of sundered friendships and bitter feuds. When a child 
 inquired, "Who is that?" he was not unfrequently answered, 
 " That is Mr So and So ; we used to be very intimate before 
 the Reform Bill, but we never speak now." But nothing of 
 this sort could be said about Sedgwick. He was an ardent 
 reformer ; but his high personal character, his great popularity, 
 and his uniform kindliness and good humour towards those 
 who differed from him, enabled him to pass through the ordeal 
 unscathed. It has been often said that he and Mr Pryme 
 were the only liberals in the University who took a prominent 
 part in favour of reform, and yet neither made an enemy nor 
 lost a friend. 
 
 Soon after the introduction of the Reform Bill, the 
 University sent a petition to the House of Commons against 
 it. The promoters were evidently by no means sure of their 
 ground, for a contemporary fly-sheet records that the petition 
 " was carried through with a haste extremely indecorous and 
 reprehensible ; the notice to the Senate having been barely of 
 the legal extent, and given on a day on which the post did not 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 24 March, 1831. 
 
374 THE REFORM BILL. 
 
 1831. leave Cambridge; the previous meetings of the Heads having 
 Mt. 4 6. been held with the shortest possible notice ; some of their 
 deliberations having taken place on a Sunday; and the petition 
 having been agreed to by them in the two hours preceding 
 the congregation at which it was offered at the Senate 1 ." 
 Under these circumstances it was of course impossible to give 
 notice to non-residents ; and the grace to affix the University 
 Seal to the document, though opposed, was carried in each 
 of the houses into which the Senate was then divided. 
 
 The petition having been carried, Sedgwick tells us that 
 he and his friends are setting to work "to remedy the evil 
 of it as well as we can, by getting a Declaration up in favour 
 of the sitting candidates 2 ." This Declaration was supported 
 by some of "the original promoters of the recent petition 
 to the House of Commons against certain provisions in 
 the Reform Bill ; " and was probably suggested by the 
 knowledge that the success of the petition would be followed 
 by an attempt to unseat Lord Palmerston and Mr Cavendish, 
 in the event of a dissolution of Parliament 3 . The Declaration 
 is dated 23 March, and is signed by thirty-six members 
 of the Senate, among whom, in addition to Sedgwick, 
 are Smyth, Cumming, Whewell, Henslow, Airy, Worsley, 
 J. C. Hare, and Thirlwall. It was promptly succeeded (28 
 March) by a counter-declaration, the signatories to which, 
 forty-two in number, bound themselves "to promote the 
 return of two representatives entertaining more moderate 
 
 1 Reasons for regretting the University Petition of March 21. This fly-sheet 
 is dated "Trin. Coll. March 23, 1831," and is believed to have been written 
 by the Rev. W. Whewell. Notice was given on Saturday, 19 March, for a Con- 
 gregation to be held on Monday, 21 March, at n A.M. A letter from Cambridge 
 printed in The Times of 23 March says : "If two days' notice had been given, we 
 should have had twenty or thirty Masters of Arts from London, who would have 
 thrown the petition out, as we did in the case of the Catholic Petition [in 1829]." 
 See above, p. 336. 
 
 2 To R. I. Murchison, 24 March, 1831. 
 
 3 Sedgwick says, in the last-quoted letter: "The petition will, I fear, create a 
 contest at Cambridge, in case of a dissolution, and such an event would be almost 
 the death of me." 
 
CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY. 375 
 
 views than those of the present representatives of the Uni- l8 3i- 
 versity upon the vital question of Parliamentary Reform." 
 It became evident, therefore, that, whenever a dissolution 
 should occur, there would be a contest, and probably a 
 severe one, for the honour of representing the University 
 in Parliament. 
 
 When the dissolution took place (22 April) the con- 
 servatives brought forward Mr Goulburn and Mr William 
 Yates Peel, who declared themselves, in the most unqualified 
 language, opposed to the Bill, though not averse to the 
 consideration of reform in general. Neither said a word on 
 any subject except reform an omission of which Sedgwick 
 was not slow to take advantage. He printed a short address 
 (2 May), signed, like his letter to Mr Goulburn, A Resident 
 Member of the Senate. After pointing out that the two 
 candidates had rested their claims to election solely on 
 their opposition to the Reform Bill, he proceeds : 
 
 And why, may I ask, have they reduced the question within 
 these narrow limits? because that they are well aware they have 
 nothing else to produce as a recommendation to any part of the 
 University, except their pledges in opposition to the Bill brought 
 forward by Ministers. 
 
 How far these pledges are likely to be fulfilled, I will not now 
 stop to inquire ; but I wish to put this question to every Member of 
 the Senate, "whether it is consistent with the dignity of the Uni- 
 versity to select two Members to represent them in Parliament, 
 on account of the Vote which they may give upon a particular 
 question, without considering their general qualifications for defining 
 the interests, and maintaining the character, of this Learned Body?" 
 
 With regard to the measure of Reform, the result of the 
 Elections which have already taken place, must convince every 
 impartial mind that its success is no longer doubtful. The ground, 
 therefore, upon which the new Candidates lay claim to your favour, 
 is fast crumbling beneath their feet, and when the Reform Bill has 
 passed, I defy the most zealous Anti-Reformer to point out a single 
 advantage which the University can derive from this change in its 
 Representatives. 
 
 This appeal to what might happen in the future met, we 
 may well suppose, with but little consideration in those stormy 
 times. A large majority of the electors were satisfied with 
 
376 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS. 
 
 1831. the knowledge that Lord Palmerston and Mr Cavendish were 
 JEt. 46. both reformers. The former, as Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, was a member of the Government, the latter had 
 voted for the Bill. The non-residents flocked to the Poll, 
 and at its close Mr Goulburn had polled 805 votes, Mr Peel 
 804, Mr Cavendish 630, and Lord Palmerston 6io\ When 
 the election was over, Sedgwick wrote : " I was extremely 
 fatigued with last week's work, and mortified at the result 
 more than I can find words to express ; and it certainly does 
 not take away from the painful feelings when I reflect that 
 the defeat was courted by the vacillation of our own party 2 ." 
 
 Amidst this excitement Sedgwick found time to write a 
 second paper in continuation of his work on the Cumbrian 
 Mountains a Description of a Series of Longitudinal and 
 Transverse Sections through a Portion of the Carboniferous 
 Chain beween Penigent and Kirkby Stephen^ read to the 
 Geological Society in March, 1831. With this and his 
 usual share in the Scholarship Examination at Trinity 
 College, he was fully occupied till the middle of April, when 
 he set to work on the revision of the paper on the Eastern 
 Alps, which, as previously explained, had now to be recast, 
 and almost re-written. He had hoped to get this work 
 rapidly off his hands, and to be ready to start for Wales at 
 the beginning of the Long Vacation. But, when June came, 
 he was out of sorts, his time had been cut up by a succession 
 of visitors, and, as he went on with his work, he found it 
 increase, rather than diminish. 
 
 Early in June Murchison started to commence those 
 investigations into the then little known Transition Rocks, 
 as they were called, which ended in the publication of The 
 Silurian System. Sedgwick had been invited to accompany 
 
 1 The poll was taken 36 May, 1831. An analysis at the end of the Poll- 
 book shews that the number of voters was 1450 a strong proof of the excitement 
 of the hour for it exceeded by 157 the largest number polled on any previous 
 occasion. 
 
 2 To Mrs Murchison, n May, 1831. 
 
TOUR IN NORTH WALES. 377 
 
 him, but his plans were made, and he declined to alter them. 1831. 
 As events turned out it was an unfortunate decision. Had he ^-'4 
 said " Yes " instead of " No," how different the future of the 
 two men might have been ! They would have commenced 
 their exploration of Wales from the same point, instead of 
 from opposite sides of the principality ; they would have 
 worked out the proper sequence of the rocks together instead 
 of separately ; Siluria might never have had an existence 
 independent of Cambria ; and no misunderstanding need ever 
 have arisen between the two explorers. 
 
 The next letter describes Sedgwick's difficulties with the 
 paper, and at the commencement of his survey of North 
 Wales. 
 
 LLANLLYFNI, near CAERNARVON, 
 
 September i^th, 1831. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 Had the elements been more favourable you 
 might have waited long for an answer. But I was driven 
 by stress of weather to Caernarvon on Saturday, and on 
 Sunday morning found a packet of letters waiting for me, 
 and yours among the rest. Yesterday was fine and I did 
 some work here ; today everything is wrapped in mist, 
 and the rain is falling in buckets. I did not get from 
 Cambridge before the ist of August. The Alpine paper was 
 infinitely more troublesome to reduce than I expected. The 
 fossils, I took for granted, would fall into their right places, 
 and, as their determination was not a part of my labour, I 
 hoped simply to have the trouble of writing out the lists. 
 You may therefore judge of my vexation when I tell you 
 that I was stopped by the fossils over and over again ; that I 
 had two journeys up to London, and that Lonsdale had 
 one down to Cambridge arising out of them. This was not 
 as it ought to have been. The lists ought to have been 
 settled for better for worse sooner. And, after all, the result 
 is far from satisfactory. I last year actually bullied Boue 
 about the lowest strata in Styria, assuming that the fossils 
 
378 TOUR IN NORTH WALES. 
 
 1831. were those of the London clay. Now it turns out, after the final 
 
 *.. 46. rev i s ion, that in the lowest Styrian clays there is not a single 
 
 London Clay fossil ascertained. There is one with a query, 
 
 and that is all : in fact, I do not believe now that the London 
 
 Clay is found in Styria. But enough of this. 
 
 I spent one day at Dudley and two days at Shrewsbury, 
 and finally entered North Wales on the 5th August. As the 
 Prince of the Air would have it, I was almost drowned in a 
 thunderstorm the very morning I commenced my labours. 
 As the greywacke hills continued in cloud I crossed to the 
 vale of the Clwyd, hoping at least to do some work among 
 the secondaries 1 . It would have delighted me to have 
 attacked the Mold district, but I knew that I had no time, 
 so I confined myself to the vale. The day following was 
 beautiful, and I worked my way down to Denbigh. Next 
 day I made a traverse, and descended to St Asaph, thence 
 in my gig to Conway. The Old Red all round by Orm 
 Head &c. &c. is a pure fiction. At least I can't see a trace 
 of it. There is not a particle of it between Denbigh and 
 the Isle of Anglesea. There are, however, some red beds 
 (which may pass for Old Red for want of better) in a ravine 
 west of Ruthin, and in one or two places near Llangollen 
 under the Mountain Limestone escarpment. The band of 
 limestone on the east side of the vale of Clwyd is not, I 
 believe, continuous there are, if I mistake not, several 
 interruptions in it. I spent some days in the Isle of Anglesea 
 in the hopes of learning my lesson for Snowdonia. Henslow's 
 paper 2 is excellent, but the lesson is worth next to nothing ; 
 for Anglesea is almost as distinct in structure from Snowdonia, 
 as if they had been separated by the Atlantic sea rather than 
 the straits of Menai. I have now been at real hard work, 
 cracking the rocks of Caernarvonshire for rather more than 
 three weeks, and can report progress. My health is much 
 better, but I am liable to rheumatic attacks at night, after 
 
 1 This term includes the carboniferous rocks, as was usual at that time. 
 
 2 See above, p. 234. 
 
CHARLES DARWIN. 379 
 
 the fatigues of the day, and truly fatiguing work it is to climb 183 
 these mountains ; but nothing can be done without. Already &* 
 I have been upon all the most elevated summits in this 
 county. This is pretty well considering the many inter- 
 ruptions from mist and rain. If my health continue, and my 
 limbs are not jostled out of their sockets, I shall remain here 
 as long as the weather will let me, or at least till I have 
 finished this county. I can then quit the country with a good 
 conscience, and if I live till next year, can come back to the 
 Principality in good hope of finishing my work in another 
 summer. 
 
 Under these circumstances York is quite out of the 
 question. I should be a traitor to quit my post, now that I 
 am keeping watch among the mountains. It would be very 
 delightful to meet the philosophers, and commence deipno- 
 sophist, but it would be very bad philosophy in the long run. 
 You may tell Mr Vernon 1 that keeping away is a great act 
 of self-denial on my part, and that I am in fact doing their 
 work by staying away. I shall rejoice to meet you and 
 Mrs M. at Cambridge on your return ; you may then tell me 
 all about it. If you write, address me still at Caernarvon. I 
 consider it my head quarters, though I may not be there 
 
 again for a fortnight or three weeks I have no room for a 
 
 Snowdonian transverse section. The structure is on the whole 
 regular, and the strike longitudinal ; I have nearly completed 
 one base line to work upon ; the rest must be done by 
 traverses. My best regards to Mrs M. 
 
 Yours ever, A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 For two or three weeks, at the commencement of this tour, 
 Sedgwick was accompanied by Charles Darwin, then a young 
 man of twenty-two. It is provoking that neither should have 
 written down his impressions of the other at the time ; for 
 
 1 The Rev. William Vernon (afterwards Vernon Harcourt) third son of the 
 Archbishop of York, zealously promoted the first meeting of the Association. 
 Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 185. 
 
380 DARWIN'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 1831. it is evident that from this time forward Sedgwick took a 
 t. 46. keen interest in him. In 1835, while Darwin was absent on 
 board The Beagle, Sedgwick wrote to Dr Butler of Shrews- 
 bury : " His [Dr Darwin's] son is doing admirable work in 
 South America, and has already sent home a collection 
 above all price. It was the best thing in the world for him 
 that he went out on the voyage of discovery. There was 
 some risk of his turning out an idle man, but his character 
 will be now fixed, and if God spares his life he will have a 
 great name among the Naturalists of Europe 1 ." In after life, 
 though they differed widely, Sedgwick always spoke of his 
 geological pupil, as he may be termed, with cordiality and 
 kindness ; and Darwin, replying to a note received from 
 Sedgwick not very long before his death, could write : "I am 
 pleased that you remember my attending you in your 
 excursions in 1831. To me, it was a memorable event 
 in my life: I felt it a great honour, and it stimulated me 
 to work, and made me appreciate the noble science of 
 geology." In 1875, in answer to an inquiry from Professor 
 Hughes, Darwin wrote down all he could remember about 
 the tour of 1831. 
 
 DOWN, BECKENHAM, KENT, 
 
 May 24, 1875. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I understand from my son that you wish to hear about 
 my short geological tour with Professor Sedgwick in North Wales 
 during the summer of 1831 ; but it is so long ago that I can. tell you 
 very little. 
 
 As I desired to learn something about Geology, Professor Henslow 
 asked Sedgwick to allow me to accompany him on his tour, and he 
 assented to this in the readiest and kindest manner. He came to 
 my father's house at Shrewsbury, and I remember how spirited and 
 amusing his conversation was during the whole evening ; but he 
 talked so much about his health and uncomfortable feelings that my 
 father, who was a doctor, thought that he was a confirmed hypo- 
 chondriac. 
 
 We started next morning, and after a day or two he sent me 
 across the country in a line parallel to his course, telling me to 
 collect specimens of the rocks, and to note the stratification. In 
 
 1 To Dr S. Butler, 7 November, 1835. 
 
DARWIN'S RECOLLECTIONS. 381 
 
 the evening he discussed what I had seen; and this of course 1831. 
 encouraged me greatly, and made me exceedingly proud ;; but I ^ t> 4 
 now suspect that it was done merely for the sake of teaching me, 
 and not for anything of value which I could have told him. I 
 remember one little incident. We left Conway early in the morning, 
 and for the first two or three miles of our walk he was gloomy, and 
 hardly spoke a word. He then suddenly burst forth : "I know that 
 the d d fellow never gave her the sixpence. I'll go back at once;" 
 and turned round to return to Conway. I was amazed, for I never 
 heard before, or since, anything like an oath from him. On inquiry 
 I found that he was convinced that the waiter had not given to the 
 chambermaid the sixpence which he had left for her. He had no 
 reason whatever, excepting that he thought the waiter 'an ill-looking 
 fellow.' On my hinting that he could hardly accuse a man of theft 
 on such grounds, he consented to proceed, but for some time he 
 grumbled and growled. At last his brow cleared, and we had a 
 delightful day, and he was as energetic as on all former occasions in 
 climbing the mountains. We spent nearly a whole day in Cwm 
 Idwal examining the rocks carefully, as he was very desirous to find 
 fossils. 
 
 I have often thought of this day as a good instance of how easy 
 it is for any one to overlook new phenomena, however conspicuous 
 they may be. The valley is glaciated in the plainest manner, the 
 rocks being mammillated, deeply scored, with many perched boulders, 
 and well-defined moraines ; yet none of these phenomena were 
 observed by Professor Sedgwick, nor of course by me. Never- 
 theless they are so plain, that, as I saw in 1842, the presence of a 
 glacier filling the valley would have rendered the evidence less 
 distinct '. 
 
 Shortly afterwards I left Professor Sedgwick, and struck across 
 the country in another direction, and reported by letter what I saw. 
 In his answer he discussed my ignorant remarks in his usual 
 generous and frank manner. I am sorry to say that I can tell you 
 nothing more about our little tour. 
 
 I find that I have kept only one letter from Professor Sedgwick, 
 which he wrote after receiving a copy of my Origin of Species*. His 
 judgement naturally does not seem to me quite a fair one, but I think 
 that the letter is characteristic of the man, and you are at liberty to 
 publish it if you should so desire. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 CHARLES DARWIN. 
 
 1 These phenomena are described in a paper by Darwin in the Philosophical 
 Magazine for 1842, xxi. 180. See Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, i. 57. 
 
 2 This letter, written in 1859, will appear when we come to speak of 
 Sedgwick's attitude towards Darwin's great work. It has already been printed 
 in Darwin's Life, ii. 247. 
 
382 DR MILL. 
 
 1831. Sedgwick got home sooner than he had intended, driven 
 
 Et. 46. ou t of Wales by bad weather. His letter to Murchison, 
 
 announcing his return to Cambridge, indicates a certain 
 
 amount of disappointment. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. October 20, 1831. 
 
 " I came here the night before last. The weather be- 
 came so bad that I was driven out of Caernarvonshire before 
 I had quite finished my work ; but, God willing, I hope to be 
 in North Wales next year before the expiration of the first 
 week in May, and with five months before me I shall perhaps 
 be able to see my way through the greater part of the 
 Principality. If I live to finish the survey I shall then have 
 terminated my seventh or eighth summer devoted exclusively 
 to the details of the old crusty rocks of the primary system 1 . 
 What a horrible fraction of a geological life sacrificed to the 
 most toilsome and irksome investigations belonging to our 
 science ! When I finished Cumberland I hoped some one 
 else would have done North Wales but I have been dis- 
 appointed. N'wnporte. I am now in for it, and must go on ! 
 
 Many thanks for your account of the York meeting. I 
 suppose I must enrol myself one of your body corporate, 
 though I shall certainly not be able to attend the next 
 meeting at Oxford. But we will talk of it when we meet." 
 
 Before the Michaelmas Term was over it fell to Sedgwick's 
 lot to urge the claims of his friend W. H. Mill to be chosen 
 the first Boden Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford. Mill had 
 written to him from Calcutta expressing his anxiety to obtain 
 an office which, while it took him away from a noxious 
 climate, would enable him to " prosecute the Indian studies 
 I most like in an academic retirement which, though not the 
 abode of my mother, is that of her venerable sister " ; and 
 in a style not unlike Sedgwick's own, proceeded to claim his 
 good offices : 
 
 1 He told Lyell that their investigation was like "rubbing yourself against a 
 grindstone." Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 367. 
 
LIVING OF EAST FARLEIGH. 383 
 
 "Now I do not suppose, my dear Professor, that JOMI ad eundem 1 1832. 
 degree gives you a vote in Convocation ; nevertheless I do canvass yt. 47. 
 you, and implore you, if I have appeared to you one on whose 
 behalf such things may be done or attempted without unjust 
 partiality, and acceptation of persons such as Scripture and sound 
 reason do condemn by the memory of old times, and our several 
 meetings and crossings in France, Switzerland, and Alsace by the 
 canvassing scenes of 1818 and 1829, diverse though they be in many 
 material respects from this that you will wisely bethink yourself 
 how you may befriend me in this affair. Perhaps your friends 
 Professor Buckland (to whom you introduced me at Somerset House), 
 and Mr Lyell, and other scientific men of the other University might 
 be induced to lend me their powerful aid by your mentioning my 
 name to them 2 ". 
 
 Sedgwick did as Mill suggested, and at once wrote to 
 Professor Buckland, who entered warmly into his views. His 
 letter "transcribed in a fair hand" a preliminary step which 
 was doubtless necessary if it was to have any effect upon the 
 University was placed in the hands of the Vice-Chancellor, 
 together with the testimonials of the other candidates ; and at 
 first Buckland seemed sanguine of success; but, when the day 
 of election came, an Oxonian was preferred to a member of 
 another University, and the Professorship was conferred upon 
 Horace Hayman Wilson. 
 
 In March 1832, Lord Chancellor Brougham invited Sedg- 
 wick to accept the living of East Farleigh in Kent. The 
 offer was probably prompted by personal feeling as much as 
 by the wish to reward a political supporter, for Brougham 
 had sought Sedgwick's cooperation in his schemes for the 
 diffusion of knowledge, and we believe that the correspond- 
 ence had led to more than one interview. Sedgwick declined, 
 apparently without hesitation ; a refusal which was much 
 deplored by several of his friends, and especially by Lyell, 
 who records in his diary (16 March) his own conviction that, 
 were Sedgwick to leave Cambridge and marry, " he would be 
 much happier, and would eventually do much more for 
 
 1 Sedgwick, Peacock, Whewell, Airy, Henslow were all admitted ad eundem 
 gradum at Oxford, 17 June, 1830. 
 
 2 From Dr Mill, 6 June, 1831. 
 
384 LIVING OF EAST FARLEIGH. 
 
 1832. geology 1 ." Lyell states that it was Murchison who advised 
 t. 47. Sedgwick to decline ; but, had this been the case, Sedgwick 
 could hardly have written the following letter : 
 
 To R. I. Murchison, Esq. 
 
 " I returned this morning from the little living of Shudy 
 Camps, from which I used to derive 4.0 or 50 per annum , 
 but which now is worse than nothing. Under such circum- 
 stances you will think it strange that I have been mad 
 enough to refuse the living about which you wrote, but so it 
 is. I cannot accept it without my Professorship being vacant, 
 and breaking off my work in the middle. I do not think 
 this would be to my honour, or that it would add to my 
 happiness. Many thanks for your kind note. I have written 
 to Le Marchant 2 , and also to the Lord Chancellor ; to the 
 former yesterday between services, to the latter to-day. I 
 fear they will both set me down for an egregious fool 3 ." 
 
 If Sedgwick was serious in thinking that the Chancellor 
 would ridicule him for saying " No," the answer which he was 
 not long in receiving must have caused him considerable 
 pleasure. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I read both your letters to the Chancellor yesterday. 
 He more than once interrupted me to express his warm approbation. 
 When I had done, I asked him what I was to say to you. "Say to 
 him," the Chancellor answered, "all that is kind and respectful on 
 my part"; and he then proceeded in very forcible terms to eulogise 
 your disinterestedness. He also descanted upon your claims, and 
 trusted something would turn up that would enable him to prove 
 that they had not been overlooked. I have seldom heard him more 
 warm in his commendation, and I only regret I cannot tell you all 
 he said. I hope however that I have recollected enough to satisfy 
 you that you have been dealing with a person capable of appre- 
 ciating merit. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 D. LE MARCHANT. 
 
 1 Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 374. 2 The Lord Chancellor's principal secretary. 
 3 This letter bears neither date nor postmark. 
 
LIVING OF EAST FARLEIGH. 385 
 
 Soon afterwards Sedgwick had an interview with Lord 1832. 
 Brougham, and it was probably in consequence of what was ^ 47- 
 then said that he wrote with even more than his usual 
 vivacity to Ainger : 
 
 LONDON, March 17, 1832. 
 
 " What strange things are in the womb of Time ! 
 Who would have thought that the Lord Chancellor would 
 ever offer me a living worth perhaps ;iooo a year, and that 
 I should refuse it ? But this very event has come to pass 
 within the last week. You may well think, as some of my 
 other friends have done, that I am raving mad. No matter. 
 The Chancellor thinks me in my sober senses, and has 
 promised me one of the very first stalls which is vacant 
 which I can hold both with my Fellowship and Professorship, 
 and make my hammer ring more merrily than ever against 
 the rocks.... 
 
 On Monday I return to Cambridge, where I have some 
 geological papers to finish, and about the first week in May 
 I hope to be off for North Wales, when I shall, I hope, be 
 following my vocation for five months. On my return I shall 
 begin to write a book with which I have been pregnant for 
 seven or eight years." 
 
 It was to be expected that the high spirits which 
 prompted this letter would not be maintained for long at the 
 same level. On the very next day a reaction had set in, 
 as Lyell tells us. His estimate of Sedgwick is severe, but 
 events proved him to have been right. 
 
 "Sedgwick asked me to walk home with him. I found a gloom 
 upon him, unusual and marked. I most carefully avoided all 
 allusion to the rejected living, but now, when the first excitement 
 of the declining the boon is over, and that others have expressed 
 their wonder at it, and that he finds himself left alone with his glory, 
 he is dejected. He told me, Thursday last, that he wished before 
 he left Cambridge to do something. 'Now if I take a living instead 
 of going to Wales, I abandon my Professorship, and cannot get out 
 the volume on the primary rocks with Conybeare,' etc. Then he 
 hinted that in a year, when this is done, he may retire on some 
 
 S. I. 25 
 
3 86 LIVING OF EAST FARLEIGH. 
 
 1832. living, and marry. But I know Sedgwick well enough to feel sure 
 yt. 47. that the work won't be done in a year, nor perhaps in two ; and then 
 a living, etc. won't be just ready, and he is growing older. He has 
 not the application necessary to make his splendid abilities tell in a 
 work. Besides, every one leads him astray. A man should have 
 some severity of character, and be able to refuse invitations, etc. 
 The fact is that to become great in science a man must be nearly as 
 devoted as a lawyer, and must have more than mere talent 1 ." 
 
 On reviewing the whole case with the help of what we 
 know of Sedgwick in the closing years of his life we are 
 inclined to agree with Lyell, and to decide that he was wrong 
 in refusing Farleigh. No doubt he would have regretted 
 Cambridge at first ; but he had a happy capacity for accept- 
 ing new surroundings and new occupations. In a few months 
 the rector of Farleigh would have been as much at home 
 there as the Prebendary of Norwich became afterwards in 
 the Cathedral Close. Nor would he have found the duties of a 
 parish clergyman especially as those duties were understood 
 fifty years since incompatible with the pursuit of geology. 
 His best geological friends, the brothers Conybeare, were 
 both beneficed clergymen, and we believe that they did not 
 neglect either parish or science. Lastly, Sedgwick made a 
 fatal mistake, when he cut himself ofT, irrevocably, from 
 marriage ; and that he deliberately chose a bachelor life is 
 evident from what he says about his readiness to accept a 
 stall which he could hold with his Professorship and Fellow- 
 ship. We are not aware that he ever owned to regrets for 
 Farleigh ; but in the loneliness which is inseparable from old 
 age within the precincts of a college he not seldom dwelt 
 upon what might have been, had he been blessed with a wife 
 and children. 
 
 Sedgwick must have needed some distraction after the 
 excitement of such a decision as has just been recorded ; and 
 he found it in the entertainment of the celebrated Mrs 
 
 1 Life of Sir C. Lyell, i. 375. The above extract is from Ly ell's diary for 
 Tuesday, -20 March. The passage immediately preceding the extract speaks of a 
 party at Murchison's on the previous Sunday, i.e. r8 March. 
 
MRS SOMERVILLE AT CAMBRIDGE. 387 
 
 Somerville and her husband, whom he persuaded not only to 1832. 
 spend a week with him, but to occupy rooms in College. ^t- 47- 
 
 To Dr Somerville. 
 
 Tuesday morning, 
 
 [3 April, 1832]. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Your letter delighted me, and I am sure you have 
 decided wisely not to rusticate at the Observatory 1 . 
 
 The time you have fixed is the best of all possible times, 
 and I hope you will write as soon as possible to finally fix 
 the hour of your arrival. I have a plan in my eye which I 
 think quite excellent. Mr Sheepshanks' rooms, on my stair- 
 case 2 , are now empty, and I believe he does not return into 
 residence next week. In that case we will mount a regular 
 matrimonial four-posted bed, and try to domesticate you and 
 Mrs Somerville w r ithin the College walls. This experiment 
 was tried and approved of by Mr and Mrs Murchison. The 
 rooms in question are very good ; have a dressing-room with 
 a fireplace attached to them, and a small mathematical 
 library in which Mrs S. may disport herself when she is tired 
 of duller subjects. The day you arrive I can either give you 
 a quiet dinner, or ask a few friends to meet you. I mention 
 this alternative because Mrs Somerville may perhaps antici- 
 pate fatigue, and not wish to meet a party the first evening. 
 Only express your wishes on this matter, and they shall be 
 law. I shall write by this post to Sheepshanks, and if by 
 any mischance I should be disappointed in my present plan 
 I will secure rooms for you opposite Trin. Coll. Give my 
 
 1 Then occupied by Geo, Biddell Airy, M.A., Plumian Professor of Astronomy 
 1828 1836. He and his accomplished wife were intimate friends of Dr and Mrs 
 Somerville. 
 
 2 At this time Sedgwick occupied the rooms in the Great Court, on the upper 
 floor of the building between King Edward's Gate and the Master's Lodge, 
 which he held till his death. He succeeded Professor Clark, who accepted a 
 college living in 1825. Sedgwick's rooms as an undergraduate were between the 
 Chapel and the Great Gate, as mentioned above (p. 78). We do not know 
 where he lived between his degree, when he would probably change, and 1825. 
 
 25 2 
 
.388 MRS SOMERVILLE AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 1832. kindest greetings to Mrs Somerville and your family, and 
 t. 47. believe me most truly yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Dr Somerville replied that he and his wife had "no 
 habits in hours, food, or in any other circumstances. Dispose 
 of us as you list ; we are ready to feed in seclusion, petit 
 comit^ or in any party you like to form on Monday, meaning 
 not to be fatigued by the journey, which rather recruits 
 Mrs Somerville." To this communication Sedgwick promptly 
 replied : 
 
 To Dr Somerville. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. Thursday evening, 
 
 [5 April, 1832]. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Your letter delighted me. I have ordered dinner on 
 Monday at half-past six, and shall have a small party to 
 welcome you and Mrs Somerville. In order that we may not 
 have to fight for you we have been entering on the best 
 arrangements we can think of. On Tuesday you will I hope 
 dine with Peacock on Wednesday with Whewell on Thurs- 
 day at the Observatory. For Friday Dr Clark, our Professor 
 of Anatomy, puts in a claim. For the other days of your 
 visit we shall (D.V.), find ample employment. A four-posted 
 bed (a thing utterly out of our regular monastic system) will 
 rear its head for you and Madame in the chamber immediately 
 under my own; and your handmaid may safely rest her bones 
 in a small inner chamber. Should Sheepshanks return we 
 can stuff him into a lumber-room of the Observatory ; but of 
 this there is no fear, as I have written to him on the subject, 
 and he has no immediate intention of returning. You will of 
 course drive to the great gate of Trinity College, and my 
 servant will be in waiting at the Porter's Lodge to shew you 
 the way to your academic residence. We have no Canons at 
 Trin. Coll. others (sic) we would fire a salute on your entry. 
 
MRS SOMERVILLE AT CAMBRIDGE. 389 
 
 We will however give you the warmest greeting we can. 1832. 
 Meanwhile give my best regards to Mrs S. and believe me *& 47- 
 most truly yours, A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The visit lasted for a week, and though Sedgwick un- 
 fortunately was "sadly out of sorts" during part of the 
 time, he evidently enjoyed himself thoroughly. Whewell, 
 whose health and spirits were always in good order, was quite 
 as enthusiastic in his commendation of the lady. Before she 
 came to Cambridge, he had probably known her only as the 
 authoress of The Mechanism of the Heavens, and was somewhat 
 surprised to find her not only accomplished in music, drawing, 
 and various languages, but "a very feminine, gentle, lively 
 person, with no kind of pretence to superiority in her 
 manners or conversation 1 ." In consequence, she soon be- 
 came a great favourite with the ladies of Cambridge, and a 
 tradition of her grace and affability long survived among 
 them. When the week was over Sedgwick and Whewell 
 escorted their friends to Audley End, where they enjoyed 
 their society for four days more, and then, as Sedgwick put it, 
 " they moved to London, and we returned to our respective 
 dens in College." A few days afterwards Mrs Somerville 
 expressed her satisfaction by letter : 
 
 CHELSEA, April 25, 1832. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Fruitless as the endeavour would be to express how 
 highly we have been gratified with the delightful week spent within 
 the hospitable walls of Trinity College, I still feel it to be due 
 to you, and all our kind friends, to assure you in language as 
 rigorously true as ever was conveyed by x, y, that our reception has 
 made an impression upon us not to be forgotten. Our anticipations 
 were sanguine, but they were surpassed by the reality, and you will 
 only do us justice by believing that the attentions so liberally 
 bestowed are duly appreciated. That my studies should merit the 
 notice of such men as adorn your University, it would have been 
 presumption to expect ; their approbation therefore, so handsomely 
 given, is the more gratifying. The two acts of our little drama, the 
 first at Cambridge, and the second at Audley End, form a very 
 agreeable episode in our life. 
 
 1 Whewell's Life, by Mrs Stair Douglas, p. 142. 
 
390 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 
 
 I trust you have completely recovered from the cold which I fear 
 47 vou caught while kindly devoting your time to me, and that we shall 
 soon have the pleasure of seeing you in town. I beg you will let me 
 know of your arrival before you have made engagements among the 
 numerous friends who are so desirous of your society, for I can assure 
 you there is no one who will value the privilege of being included 
 among them more than yours very sincerely, 
 
 MARY SOMERVILLE. 
 
 Sedgwick started for Wales towards the end of May, as 
 he had proposed ; but, anxious as he was to complete his 
 work there, he allowed himself a week's holiday in June at 
 Oxford, where the British Association held its second meeting. 
 He had rather sneered at the notion of such a gathering when 
 it was first started, and had protested that he would not leave 
 Wales for either York or Oxford. Murchison, however, made 
 him break his resolution in favour of the latter city, and 
 Buckland clenched the matter by a humorous invitation 
 which nobody could well have refused. " I exhort you," he 
 wrote, "by all your love for Professorial Unity and the 
 eternal fitness of things, to locate yourself in a fraternal 
 habitat within my domicile during the orgies of the week 
 beginning on the 3rd of June 1 ,'' and then went on to tell him 
 of the arrangements that Mrs Buckland had made for his 
 comfort, and the friends whom he would probably meet. 
 Still he went unwillingly, and, not many days before the 
 meeting assembled, wrote to Murchison : 
 
 CAERNARVON, June 5, 1832. 
 
 ...I shall be glad to make myself of use [at Oxford], 
 but in the bustle of the meeting, and among friends, philo- 
 sophical reporters, blue-stockings, and big-wigs, I shall not 
 find much time. If I say anything it must be extrumpery, 
 and I suppose about Snowdonia, which I now know something 
 about. It is, however, a terrible hard crust for sucking geo- 
 logists to mumble, and as for the ladies (God bless 'em !) it 
 will I fear turn their stomachs. I am, in short, willing to be 
 
 1 From Rev. W. Buckland, 19 April, 1832. 
 

 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 391 
 
 of use, but I have not good cards in my hand ; and if other 1832. 
 people are there who are better prepared (and I defy them to &*. 47. 
 be worse) I shall be very glad to have an excuse for sparing 
 my breath.... Yours to the top end of his hammer, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick's reluctance vanished in the congenial society 
 he found at Oxford. The Report of the meeting shews that 
 he not only took an active part in the business of the geological 
 section, but accepted without a murmur the office of President 
 for the following year, when the Association was to meet at 
 Cambridge, saying in a public speech " that it would be at all 
 times and in all situations one of his greatest pleasures to 
 contribute his assistance to the British Association 1 ." Six 
 weeks afterwards, writing calmly and deliberately to a friend, 
 he admitted that the meeting had " gone off admirably." As 
 soon as the meeting was over Murchison hurried back to his 
 work in Wales, and Sedgwick, after a short excursion with 
 Whewell "to Stratford on Avon and other not distant 
 places 2 /' followed his example. He was evidently anxious 
 that their separate investigations should become part of a 
 common whole, and therefore kept his friend informed of his 
 whereabouts and his plans, while, with indomitable energy, 
 he followed the strata over hill and dale, principally on foot, 
 through a wide extent of rugged country. The rough pen- 
 and-ink sections which illustrate the first of the next two 
 letters are of especial value as exhibiting the views which 
 he held when it was written. 
 
 BARMOUTH,//V 23, 1832. 
 Dear Murchison, 
 
 On Saturday the 3Oth of June, I had from Rodney's 
 pillar a glimpse of you and the Colonel on the summit of 
 Moel-y-Golchfa. I landed that evening at Llanymynach, and 
 
 1 Second Report of the British Association, p. 102. 
 
 2 Whewell's Life, p. 141. 
 
392 GEOLOGY OF NORTH WALES. 
 
 1832. spent next day with my friend Evans in a proper clerical 
 * 47- manner. I did, however, after church, go up on the hill north 
 of the town, and enjoyed what I think one of the very finest 
 views I ever beheld. I was certain, at the first glance, that 
 there was a great deal of work before me in Montgomeryshire 
 which I had very little expected. The porphyritic system of 
 Snowdonia is there told over again, as I made out from the 
 look of the country, and the information I obtained from 
 Evans. The next day, July 2, very early, we started for 
 Llanrhaidr, where we breakfasted ; then visited the celebrated 
 Pistill Rhaidr, which is caused by great ribs of porphyry 
 passing through the greywacke, which it binds together and 
 saves from degradation. The water tumbles over the grey- 
 wacke and porphyry through a perpendicular height of about 
 230 feet. It is a gorgeous fall for a geologist, though the 
 artists think it formal and unpicturesque. We then scaled 
 the Berwyns, and went along the top as far as the highest 
 point (Gaderferwyn), and descended by a tributary valley to 
 Llanrhaidr. Thence I drove to Llangynog late in the evening. 
 The Berwyns for many miles N. and S. dip to the W. or 
 W.N.W. ; there must therefore be an anticlinal line in Mont- 
 gomeryshire ranging somewhere N.E. and S.W., and probably 
 passing near Llanfyllin. E. of that town the beds again roll 
 over to the S.E. so as to bring in the newer rocks between the 
 Vernwy and the Severn which form the base of the system in 
 which you are working. Before the end of the summer I shall 
 endeavour to make traverses on the line of Llanidloes, New- 
 ' town, (perhaps Pool and Montgomery), Llanfair, Llanfyllin, 
 and Llangollen ; and, if I have time, I shall then make a long 
 run towards the south, so as to make one or two long 
 traverses in South Wales. In this way our work will link 
 together. 
 
 Next day, July 3, I crossed the Berwyns to Bala. Through 
 the whole ascent, and nearly to the base on the W. side of the 
 chain, the dip is about W. by N., working gradually to N.W. 
 in the prolongation of the chain towards Corwen. On the 
 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH WALES. 393 
 
 western side of the chain an anticlinal line strikes through the 1832. 
 region about N.N.E. and W.S,W., in consequence of which &* 47- 
 some bands of black shelly limestone I found at the top of the 
 Berwyns are brought out again with an opposite dip, viz. 
 E.S.E. These bands of black limestone are absolutely 
 identical with the transition lime which separates the greywacke 
 of Westmoreland from the great system of greenslate and 
 porphyry of the central mountains of Cumberland. They form 
 a very grand base-line, which I have now traced from Glyn- 
 Diffws (five miles N.W. of Corwen) to Dinas Mowddy, a 
 distance, as the crow flies, of about 30 miles. 
 
 From Bala I examined the range of the limestone, and 
 made excursions to the Arenig chain, extending my rambles 
 almost to the great Bangor road. The whole region forms the 
 side of a great saddle, dipping about E.S.E., much interrupted 
 by vast unstratified masses of porphyry, which are, however, 
 more or less tabular, and range with the strata, without 
 altering their dip. A little to the W. of Penmachno the great 
 Merioneth anticlinal strikes in, ranging N.N.W. and E.S.E. 
 (i.e. geometrically parallel to the four Caernarvon anticlinals, 
 and also to the beds of shell limestone above mentioned). 
 This line I have traced into the sea near Barmouth, and I 
 have examined all the country on the W. side of it. In short, 
 I have toiled like a slave, and have made myself ill, so that I 
 am now almost confined to the house. Tomorrow I hope to 
 be in working condition again. There are no porphyries on 
 the W. side of the great Merioneth saddle between Festiniog, 
 Harlech, and Barmouth, but an enormous fault, which cuts slap 
 through Caernarvonshire from Llanllyfni to Tremadoc, strikes 
 in three miles N. of Harlech, and may be traced into the sea 
 two miles from Barmouth. It is a very grand geological 
 phenomenon, connected, as I believe, with the vast eruptions 
 of syenite in the S. parts of Caernarvonshire. The country S. 
 of the Barmouth river I hardly know anything about, having 
 for the two last days been laid up by a very feverish cold and 
 sore throat. This is very provoking, as the weather is glorious, 
 
394 GEOLOGY OF NORTH WALES. 
 
 1832. and the porphyritic peaks are glittering in the sun as if in 
 * 47- mockery of my infirmity. I have, however, once scaled Cader 
 Idris. It forms a portion of the eastern side of the great 
 Merionethshire saddle, and differs in no essential respect from 
 other parts of the county. The crater on its southern side is 
 nothing more than a deep pool of water in soft calcareous 
 greywacke ! ! 
 
 I did not intend to make you pay for a double letter, but I 
 have already scrawled over the last page before I once thought 
 of the direction. You must see, by what I have written, that 
 I have had a good harvest ; its reaping is, however, most 
 laborious, as the tracing the geological parallels compels me to 
 climb almost every mountain. When I have worked down 
 through the Cader Idris region to Machynlleth, my labours 
 will become more light, as the hills are much lower, and there 
 are great uninteresting tracts I shall not be compelled to look 
 at. I now understand what formerly I was puzzled with ; 
 the transition or primary system of North Wales, though 
 enormously thick, is not one tenth part the thickness one 
 might at first imagine. In consequence of the anticlinal lines, 
 the system of rocks three or four miles S.E. of Bangor 
 reappears in the centre of Merionethshire ; and the shell 
 limestone E. of Bala lake reappears, if I mistake not, near 
 Meifod in Montgomeryshire. Pray write to me at Machynlleth, 
 and tell me what you think of this notion, and how far it 
 agrees with what you have seen. The dark calcareous beds 
 near Meifod &c., &c., I have not yet seen ; so I am arguing 
 on an imperfect case. I will fill up this sheet with one or two 
 
 sections for your amusement. 
 
 Most truly yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 MACHYNLLETH, August 10. 
 To the same. 
 
 "I am just arrived here, and have got your letters, 
 which I have read, or rather tried to read, with much interest. 
 You must see at once it is impossible we should meet. I am 
 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH WALES. 395 
 
 off for Towyn, and hope in two days to finish Merionethshire. 1832. 
 I shall then work into Cardiganshire as far as Plinlimmon and ^ 4 
 the Devil's Bridge. For this I will hypothetically allow a 
 week. Then I double back, and make traverses in Mont- 
 gomeryshire, partly to work out the anticlinals, partly to lock 
 my work into yours. I don't quite twig your sections ; indeed 
 I can't read 'em, but I see you have done excellent work. 
 
 I find, as a general rule, that the moment I get into a low 
 country the strata begin to roll and reel about, but while they 
 are in elevated ridges they keep their strike, and dip beauti- 
 fully, the changes being produced by parallel anticlinals. I 
 hope before this sun is down to trace the great Merionethshire 
 anticlinal into the sea, north of Towyn. I shall then have 
 followed it over hill and dale for more than 50 miles." 
 
 To Ainger, as usual, he wrote in more general terms. 
 After describing himself as "burnt as brown as a pack- 
 saddle, and a little thin from excessive fatigue," he proceeds : 
 
 " I have been rambling in various parts of North Wales, 
 for days, and almost for weeks, together, as much secluded as 
 if I had been in the centre of New Holland. Now and then 
 I stumbled on a struggling Cantab, with whom occasionally I 
 also contrived to spend the evening. These were, however, 
 rare occasions. North Wales is Cumberland over again, 
 only on a rather larger scale, and expanded over a wider 
 surface. The valleys of North Wales are many of them 
 glorious ; but they want the beautiful lakes of your county. 
 After all, the Lake Mountains for my money. The Welsh 
 are a kind-hearted, but rather dull set of people ; just made to 
 be beaten by the Saxons. It is, however, wrong to judge of 
 a people whose language one does not speak. I like to talk 
 to country people, and to see their humours, but from this I 
 am shut out among these children of Caractacus. This it is 
 which has made my solitude doubly solitary. As soon as the 
 weather changes, for it is now detestable, I shall look again 
 towards the south, and endeavour to effect a series of long 
 
396 CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 1832. traverses in South Wales ; but in what direction, you know 
 t- 47- at this time pretty nearly as much as I do myself. In short, 
 I shall hoist sail, and sail before the wind. Before my final 
 return I hope to spend a week with my friend Conybeare in 
 Glamorganshire ; this will, however, depend on the cholera, 
 which is raging not far from him, and may frighten me from 
 my present purpose 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick's share in the foundation of the Cambridge 
 Philosophical Society has been already related. His sanguine 
 anticipations of success had been more than realised in the 
 thirteen years which had elapsed since 1819. The members 
 were numerous ; the meetings well attended ; the papers 
 valuable, and of varied interest. Moreover the Museum, 
 begun in the very first days of the Society's existence, had 
 assumed respectable proportions, through the exertions of 
 Professor Henslow, Mr Leonard Jenyns, and their friends ; 
 and the reading-room which was not restricted to Fellows 
 of the Society had become a place of popular resort. This 
 rapid development might of itself have warranted a new 
 departure in the position of the Society, even if an accidental 
 circumstance had not rendered immediate action necessary. 
 The meetings were held, for the first few months, "in the 
 Museum of the Botanic Garden," and afterwards in rooms in 
 Sidney Street, facing Jesus Lane. These were commodious, 
 and well-suited to the purposes of the Society ; but their 
 tenure of them was limited, and early in 1832 it became 
 known that the owner declined to extend it. Thereupon, at 
 a special General Meeting held 7 April, 1832, it was decided, 
 on the motion of Mr Peacock, to be "expedient that the 
 Society should possess a house of their own, built expressly 
 to suit the objects of the institution ; " and, as a preliminary 
 step, that a charter of incorporation should be obtained 2 . 
 
 It happened that these important measures, amounting 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, dated "Llansilin, near Oswestry, 29 August, 1832." 
 
 2 We believe that the Cambridge Philosophical Society was the first Society, 
 out of London, that obtained the distinction of a charter. 
 
CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 397 
 
 almost to a second foundation of the Society, were adopted 1832. 
 during Sedgwick's tenure of the office of President, to which ^ 47- 
 he had been elected in May, 1831 ; and further, his name 
 appears alone upon the charter. As President, he was, for 
 the moment, the head of the Society ; and the adoption of a 
 single petitioner, in lieu of several, diminished the fees exacted 
 by the Stamp Office. But, whatever may have been the 
 reason, it must be esteemed a fortunate circumstance that 
 he, who took so deep an interest in the Society, should be 
 for ever associated with its permanent establishment. It is 
 almost needless to add that he was himself especially delighted 
 at being placed in such a position. Writing to Murchison, 
 7 November, 1832, he says : 
 
 "Yesterday after lecture I presided at a public meeting 
 held by our Society for the purpose of accepting a Charter. 
 We afterwards adjourned to an Inn and had a blow-out. 
 Finally three or four of my friends came to my rooms and 
 kept me up till two this morning for which I do not now 
 much thank them." 
 
 We can readily imagine Sedgwick's enthusiasm on this 
 occasion, probably the first of those annual celebrations in 
 which he bore so jovial a part ; and among the reminiscences 
 with which he used to amuse the company, none recurred so 
 frequently as the story of the charter, when, as he used to 
 say, " I was the Society." 
 
 Two other matters, of very diverse nature, occupied much 
 of Sedgwick's time and thought during the Michaelmas Term 
 of 1832. The first was a movement as we should now call 
 it to call forth "some expression of national gratitude to the 
 memory of Sir Walter Scott." Sedgwick became a member 
 of a committee appointed for that purpose, and did his best to 
 rouse the enthusiasm of his Cambridge friends but without 
 success. The scheme proposed, to purchase Abbotsford, and 
 to secure it to Sir Walter's children, did not commend itself 
 to the common-sense of those to whom he tried to recommend 
 it. It was in fact, as he himself said " a strange round-about 
 
398 CONTESTED ELECTION FOR UNIVERSITY. 
 
 1832. way of shewing respect 1 " and before long he found that a 
 Et. 47. f ew vei y modest subscriptions, given probably more out of 
 regard to himself than from any other motive, would represent 
 the generosity of Cambridge. 
 
 This was succeeded, after a brief interval, by a contested 
 election for the University, in which Sedgwick, Thirlwall, and 
 a few other ardent spirits made an energetic but unsuccessful 
 effort to persuade the constituency that Mr John William 
 Lubbock, Vice-President of the Royal Society, as " a man 
 distinguished for his literary and scientific attainments," would 
 be a more suitable representative for a learned body than a 
 mere politician. Sedgwick became chairman of the Cambridge 
 Committee, and an active canvass was set on foot. But the 
 " vehemence of some of his Whig friends 2 ," and the lukewarm- 
 ness of others, who agreed to vote but declined to canvass, 
 boded ill for the success of the attempt. After a ten days' 
 struggle Mr Lubbock withdrew, and Mr Goulburn, with the 
 Right Hon. Charles Manners Sutton, late Speaker of the 
 House of Commons, were duly elected. The following letter 
 from Dr Samuel Butler reached Sedgwick soon afterwards : 
 
 SHREWSBURY, December 10, 1832. 
 My dear Professor, 
 
 It is better to retire in time than to give a great many 
 friends an expensive and hopeless journey at such a season of the 
 year, and when many of them have their votes and interests pre- 
 occupied elsewhere. I had written this morning to bespeak chaises 
 all along the road, especially for the night hours, which I was very 
 anxious about. By to-morrow's post I can rescind the order. 
 
 I am almost sorry that Lubbock offered. I am no cynic ; I hate 
 to snarl and not to bite ; a grin and a growl does nothing but make 
 one laughed at. Another thing which I have observed in the course 
 of this canvas was, that people did not like to be called upon for so 
 long and expensive journies with apparently so little prospect of 
 success. It is an unwise waste of strength and interest. I should 
 not be surprised if some of our well-wishers took their names off the 
 boards to avoid such frequent solicitations, especially when they find 
 themselves on the losing side. I say this because I hope that on 
 some future occasion time and man may be well chosen, and that we 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 7 November, 1832. 
 
 2 Whewell's Life, p. 149. 
 
COMMEMORATION SERMON. 399 
 
 shall act with good hope of success, and not without at least a fair 1832. 
 chance of it. Nothing should have kept me, or any persons whom yt. 47. 
 I could influence, from the poll on this occasion, but physical 
 impossibility ; but wavering or luke-warm persons will not be equally 
 zealous, and the oftener they are called upon without any prospect 
 of success, the less inclined will they be to serve us. Therefore, I 
 say, look for influential candidates, and magna nomina. 
 
 To all that can be said of Mr Lubbock's merits I most willingly 
 subscribe. But look at the array against him. All the force of Eton 
 from attachment to the Speaker ; all his family connections ; and all 
 the Speaker's parliamentary friends. He was a well-chosen opponent, 
 whom no private person, however high in character for talents or 
 virtues, could hope to conquer, and I have no doubt he would have 
 headed the poll. We could not conquer even Goulburn, who has 
 a powerful party among the Saints, and whose interest is increased 
 by the talents of his son. Now look at the last election. Many 
 voted for Lord Palmerston from old connections, who would not * 
 have voted for us now. The high connections of Mr Cavendish 
 were all on the alert, and stood him in more stead than his own high 
 merits, and made many take the trouble of coming to serve him, 
 especially among the aristocracy, who would not stir a step for any 
 individual of private family. 
 
 All this I say, that you may ponder it, and either keep to your- 
 self, or communicate to the confidential friends of our party, as you 
 may judge best. But I repeat my exhortation that you will carefully 
 look out for highly connected, and, if you can, highly popular, as well 
 as highly gifted, candidates. Let us give them no possible advantage 
 that we can help. There is time to look about before the next 
 election. Let those of our friends who can be depended on, be 
 prepared in time, and be secret. 
 
 My dear Professor, I have one grand article of faith : that no 
 speech of four hours in either House ever did good to the cause it 
 presumed to advocate ; and that no sermon should be above half an 
 hour long if the preacher means to carry with him the good will and 
 attention of his congregation. Now I am afraid my preachment to 
 you is thirty one and a half minutes. God bless you. We shall 
 meet triumphant yet. Truly yours, S. BUTLER. 
 
 Before the year ended, it fell to Sedgwick's turn to preach 
 the sermon at the annual Commemoration of Benefactors in 
 Trinity College, on Monday, 17 December. It seems at first 
 sight impossible that such a sermon, preached every year in 
 the same place on the same subject, could ever be treated with 
 any marked originality ; and in fact, allusions to the founders, 
 benefactors, distinguished members of the college, and those 
 who have passed away since the last occasion, with the obvious 
 
400 COMMEMORATION SERMON. 
 
 1832. lessons to be drawn from such occurrences, form the staple of 
 * 47. these discourses, which vary only with the rhetorical power of 
 the writers. Sedgwick, however, struck out a new line, and 
 produced a work which not only made a sensation at the 
 time, as is proved by the fact that it ran through four editions 
 in two years, but which still possesses an historical interest, 
 not merely as evidence of the breadth of his own studies and 
 speculations beyond the range of his particular science, but as 
 a protest against the metaphysical and ethical doctrines then 
 commonly accepted. Unfortunately it is now presented to us 
 in a form so different from that in which it was originally 
 delivered, that it is impossible to realise the effect produced 
 on those who heard it. The subject, The Studies of the 
 University, had probably occupied Sedgwick's thoughts 
 for a long while ; but, with more than usual procras- 
 tination, he did not put pen to paper until the Thursday 
 preceding the day of delivery 1 . In consequence, when asked 
 to publish, he found himself in a considerable difficulty. As 
 he says in the preface : " having animadverted with much 
 freedom on some parts of the Cambridge course of reading, 
 [the author] felt himself compelled, before he dared to give 
 what he had written to the public, to enter at more length on 
 a justification of his opinions. On this account, his remarks 
 on the classical, metaphysical, and moral studies of the 
 University were cast over again, and expanded to at least 
 three times their original length." In fact, only one-third of 
 the work remains as it was originally written ; and this, it 
 must be reluctantly confessed, is not in Sedgwick's happiest 
 vein. The style is heavy and laboured, and there are none of 
 those eloquent passages which made his speeches so animated 
 and so delightful. The matter, therefore, rather than the 
 manner, must have caused those who heard it to wish to read 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 8 December, 1832. " I cannot be up in Town on 
 Monday the i7th,...when I have to preach the Anniversary Sermon. How I shall 
 get through I don't know, as I have not yet written it, and till next Thursday 
 night shall not have much time to think about Divinity." 
 
COMMEMORATION SERMON. 401 
 
 it quietly at home. This wish, expressed to Whewell as 1832. 
 Senior Tutor, reached Sedgwick in the following letter : ^Et. 47. 
 
 from Mr Whewell. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, December 23, 1832. 
 My dear Sedgwick, 
 
 When you had scribbled down the last sentence of your 
 sermon after the bell had stopt, and had succeeded by a sort of 
 miracle in reading your pothooks without spectacles, omitting how- 
 ever half the sentences, and a quarter of the syllables of those which 
 remained, I daresay you thought you had done marvellously well, 
 and had completed, or more properly had ended, your task. In this, 
 however, you were mistaken, as I hope soon to make you acknow- 
 ledge. 
 
 The rising generation, who cannot err, inasmuch as they will 
 discourse most wise and true sentences when you and I are laid in 
 the alluvial soil, declare that their intellectual culture requires that 
 you should print and publish your sermon. I will give you a list on 
 the other side of the names of the persons who have joined in 
 expressing this wish. I undertook very willingly to communicate 
 this their desire to your reverence, inasmuch as I thought your 
 sermon full of notions, as the Americans speak, which it will be very 
 useful and beneficial to put in their heads; or rather to call them 
 out, for a great number of those good thoughts are already ensconced 
 in the excellent noddles of our youngsters, like flies in a bookcase in 
 winter, and require only the sunshine of your seniorial countenance 
 to call them into life and volatility. I do not know anything which 
 will more tend to fix in their minds all the good they get here than 
 to have such feelings as you expressed, at the same time the gravest 
 and the most animating which belong to our position, stamped, upon 
 a solemn and official occasion, as the common property of them and 
 us. And I also think it of consequence that when they on their side 
 proffer their sympathy in such reflexions, we, on ours, that is, in the 
 present case, your dignified self, should not be backward in meeting 
 them, by giving to all parties the means of returning to, and dwelling 
 upon, these reflexions. 
 
 Such is my thinking about this matter, and therefore I have 
 undertaken to urge their request ; and I hope you will be able to 
 extract from some abysmal recess your manuscript, and to place it 
 before the astonished eyes of the compositor. It is probable that he 
 will look, as Dante says the ghosts looked when they peered at him, 
 like an old cobbler threading his needle, but never mind that. The 
 fronts of compositors were made to be corrugated by good sentences 
 written in most vile hands ; so let him fulfil his destiny without loss 
 of time.... 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 W. WHEWELL. 
 S. I. 26 
 
402 COMMEMORATION SERMON. 
 
 1832. 
 JEt. 47- 
 
 Petitioners for the printing of Professor Sedgwick's sermon : 
 
 Ld Lindsay 
 
 Monteith 
 
 Cator 
 
 R. Morgan 
 
 Blakesley 
 
 Forsyth 
 
 Childs 
 
 Whiston 
 
 Spedding 
 
 Merivale 
 
 English 
 
 S eager 
 
 Kemble 
 
 Campbell 
 
 Phelps 
 
 Potts 
 
 Garden 
 
 Brookfield 
 
 Good 
 
 Scratchley 
 
 Tennant 
 
 Wright 
 
 E. Morgan 
 
 Newton. 
 
 Alford 
 
 
 
 
 To this cordial request Sedgwick no doubt gave an equally 
 cordial assent, and prepared to print without delay. But ill- 
 health (as usual), and other occupations, intervened, and 
 November, 1833, came, before the Discourse, as it was then 
 termed, saw the light. It will, however, be best to complete 
 our account of it while noticing its first delivery; though, on 
 some grounds, we should have preferred to wait until we had 
 reached the publication of the last edition in 1850. By that 
 time the modest octavo of one hundred and nine pages had 
 swelled into a ponderous tome, in which four hundred and 
 forty-two pages of preface, and two hundred and twenty- 
 eight of appendix, include between them ninety-four pages of 
 discourse : " a grain of wheat between two millstones," as 
 Sedgwick himself admitted. In conversation he has been 
 heard to describe the publication as "the wasp," because it 
 had so small a body, and so large a head and tail. But, 
 whether he spoke seriously or in jest about it, it was the pet 
 child of his brain ; and, as is the way with indulgent parents, 
 he perhaps found virtues in it which others, especially at this 
 distance of time, may fail to discover. 
 
 A detailed criticism of the Discourse would lead us 
 into discussions unsuitable for a biography. We will 
 therefore content ourselves with a very brief sketch of the 
 subject-matter. It must be remembered at the outset that 
 the studies of Cambridge are approached from the moral 
 rather than from the intellectual side ; that the author is 
 speaking as a clergyman from the pulpit, not as a philosopher 
 from the desk. To him Cambridge was a place not merely 
 of sound learning, but also of Christian education. This 
 
COMMEMORATION SERMON. 403 
 
 obvious limitation of his survey has sometimes been lost sight 1832. 
 of, and in consequence an erroneous, not to say an unjust, ^ 47> 
 conception has been formed of his work. The studies of the 
 University are reviewed under a threefold division : (i) the 
 laws of nature ; (2) ancient literature and language ; (3) ethics 
 and metaphysics. Under the first of these divisions natural 
 science is considered in the light of the results to which a 
 reverent study of it ought to lead ; and it is pointed out that 
 its various branches, Astronomy, Anatomy, Geology 1 , minister 
 to natural religion, and "teach us to see the finger of God in 
 all things animate and inanimate." In other words, this part 
 of the discourse may be described as a rapid but forcible 
 exposition of the argument from design. Under the second 
 head ancient languages and ancient history are briefly 
 considered. Sedgwick was no scholar, though fond of classical 
 reading, and he does not seem to understand the necessity of 
 thoroughness in the study of ancient literature. When he 
 deplores the time wasted in "straining after an accuracy 
 beyond our reach," he loses sight of the fact that without 
 
 1 In the portion of the Discourse devoted to Geology the following passage 
 occurs : " By the discoveries of a new science (the very name of which has been 
 but a few years engrafted on our language), we learn that the manifestations of 
 God's power on the earth have not been limited to the few thousand years of 
 man's existence. The geologist tells us, by the clearest interpretation of the 
 phenomena which his labours have brought to light, that our globe has been 
 subject to vast physical revolutions. He counts his time not by celestial cycles, 
 but by an index he has found in the solid framework of the globe itself. He sees a 
 long succession of monuments, each of which may have required a thousand ages for 
 its elaboration. He arranges them in chronological order ; observes on them the 
 marks of skill and wisdom, and finds within them the tombs of the ancient inhabitants 
 of the earth. He finds strange and unlooked-for changes in the forms and fashions 
 of organic life during each of the long periods he thus contemplates. He traces these 
 changes backwards and through each successive era, till he reaches a time when 
 the monuments lose all symmetry, and the types of organic life are no longer seen. 
 He has then entered on the dark age of nature's history ; and he closes the old 
 chapter of her records." These remarks, and others of a similar kind, so shocked 
 the Rev. Henry Cole, " late of Clare Hall," that he attempted to refute them at 
 length in : Popular geology subversive of divine revelation ! A letter to the Rev. 
 Adam Sedg^uick .. .being a scriptural refutation of the geological positions and 
 doctrines promulgated in his lately published Commencement Sermon. 8vo. 
 Lond. 1834. 
 
 26 2 
 
404 COMMEMORATION SERMON. 
 
 1832. accuracy no work, whether in language or science, can be 
 * 47- satisfactorily carried out. At the same time he cordially 
 approves the cultivation of Greek and Latin authors with 
 certain limitations ; pleads for the further study of their 
 philosophical and ethical works ; and in justification of this 
 points out that " the argument for the being of a God, derived 
 from final causes, is as well stated in the conversations of 
 Socrates, as in the Natural Theology of Paley." 
 
 The third part of the discourse contains a severe criticism 
 of Locke, and of "the utilitarian theory of Morals" as 
 expounded by Paley. In this Sedgwick anticipated the 
 views which Whewell subsequently set forth in his Philosophy 
 of the Inductive Sciences (1840), and in his various writings on 
 Moral Philosophy. In the letter dedicating the former work 
 to Sedgwick he says : " the same spirit which dictated your 
 vigorous protest against some of the errors which I also 
 attempt to expose, would have led you, if your thoughts had 
 been more free, to take a leading share in that Reform of 
 Philosophy, which all who are alive to such errors, must see 
 to be now indispensable/' It is not improbable, having 
 regard to the intimacy between Whewell and Sedgwick at 
 that time, that the views set forth in the Discourse may be the 
 result of conversations between them. Moreover there was a 
 strong taste for metaphysical speculation in Trinity College 
 in those days ; and Thirlwall, Hare, and their friends, who 
 were Sedgwick's friends as well, would "tire the sun with 
 talking" on these subjects. In heading a reaction against 
 Locke and Paley, Sedgwick merely gave expression to opinions 
 deliberately arrived at by the most thoughtful men with 
 whom he was associated. One passage from his criticism on 
 Locke, though it has been often quoted, is so graphic, and 
 illustrates so well his position, that it may find a place here : 
 
 If the mind be without innate knowledge, is it also to be con- 
 sidered as without innate feelings and capacities a piece of blank 
 paper, the mere passive recipient of impressions from without ? The 
 whole history of man shows this hypothesis to be an outrage on his 
 

 COMMEMORATION SERMON. 405 
 
 moral nature. Naked he comes from his mother's womb; endowed 1833. 
 with limbs and senses indeed, well fitted to the material world, yet yEt. 48 
 powerless from want of use ; and as for knowledge, his soul is one 
 unvaried blank: yet has this blank been already touched by a 
 celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, 
 it takes not its tinge from accident but design, and comes forth 
 covered with a glorious pattern. 
 
 Interest in the Discoiirse was not confined to Cambridge. 
 The Quarterly Review, though it did not devote an article to 
 it, called it "the most remarkable pamphlet since Burke's 
 Reflections ; " and John Stuart Mill said all that could be said 
 against it in an elaborate article which he afterwards reprinted 
 in his Dissertations and Discussions^. 
 
 After this digression we will return to Sedgwick's own 
 proceedings. He had been more than usually unwell during 
 the Michaelmas Term, and therefore, as soon as the Com- 
 memoration was over, went down to Wensleydale in York- 
 shire with Mr Lodge, and thence proceeded to Dent, which 
 he found a good deal altered. "The architectural beauties 
 of this metropolitan city," he wrote, " are sadly on the wane, 
 which makes me rejoice in the icon I have at Cambridge of 
 Dent in its glory. In rambling about among the scenes of 
 my childhood I sometimes fancy I am a young man again. 
 The delusion however passes away when I look about me, and 
 see the young fry playing about the old parsonage the very 
 antics I was myself playing forty years since 2 ." During his 
 visit he gave himself a complete rest, and when he returned 
 to Cambridge at the end of January he was able to announce 
 that "my Christmas in the North has given me most ram- 
 pagious health, but has put me most dreadfully in arrears 3 ." 
 
 Among these arrears was the delivery of a short course of 
 
 1 Dissertations and Discussions, by John Stuart Mill, 8vo. Lond. 1859, 
 i. 95. There is a curious article in The Phrenological Journal for September 
 1834, in which Sedgwick is reproved for not alluding to Phrenology in his 
 Discourse. The writer is known to have been the celebrated phrenologist, 
 Mr George Combe. 
 
 2 To Rev. W. Ainger, 15 January, 1833. 
 
 3 To R. I. Murchison, 5 February, 1833. 
 
4o6 PRESIDENT OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
 
 1833. lectures, to make up for some which he had been compelled 
 Et. 48. to omit through ill-health in the Michaelmas Term of 1832. 
 Then came the revision of proofs of papers for the Geological 
 Society's Transactions ; a correspondence with Murchison on 
 the speech which he would have to deliver as President in 
 February, and which Sedgwick evidently revised and cor- 
 rected 1 ; and lastly, arrangements for the visit of the British 
 Association to Cambridge in June. But the year was barely 
 three months old when a fresh attack of illness evidently a 
 severe one put an end to all work, and very nearly rendered 
 the President elect incapable of meeting the Association. 
 
 Early in June he tells Murchison : " I returned home on 
 Thursday from Walton-on-the-Naze very much recovered. 
 Indeed I consider myself now fairly off the sick list. Perhaps 
 I ought more properly to say that I am restored to my senses ; 
 for during the last seven or eight weeks I have been under a 
 strange mental obscuration, unable to do a stitch of work 
 requiring thought or attention 2 ." 
 
 But, when the Association met, on Monday, 24 June, his 
 ailments were forgotten in the excitement of welcoming an 
 overflowing assemblage of men of science, not merely from 
 England, but from various parts of Europe. The importance 
 of the Association was becoming recognised, and the meeting 
 was in every way memorable ; not merely from the numbers 
 gathered together, but from the importance of the work done. 
 And, whatever was going forward, whether a general meeting 
 in the Senate House, or the more private business of the 
 geological section, or a dinner in the Hall of Trinity College, 
 
 1 After the serious discussion of various important topics, the following amusing 
 passage occurs in a letter dated 5 February: "In regard to the animating para- 
 graph you talk of, you ask for what is almost impossible. You cannot take a 
 flying leap in cold blood, you must lead up to it by the animation of the chase. 
 Anything I could write would be flat as ditch-water, and certainly would be out of 
 tone and keeping. Put your own notions in black and white, and before they are 
 printed or spoken I will look them over and purge them if I think they want it, 
 and you will endure the treatment." 
 
 2 To R. I. Murchison, 4 June, 1833. 
 
PRESIDENT OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 407 
 
 Sedgwick was the animating spirit, delighting everybody by 1833. 
 his geniality, or thrilling them by his unpremeditated eloquence. ^ * 
 Had he prepared his speeches, he said, " the intensity of present 
 feelings, would, like a burning sun, have extinguished the 
 twilight of a remembered sentiment." Probably on no 
 occasion in his life did he speak so often and so effectively. 
 Dr Chalmers, who was present, spoke of a the power and 
 beauty " of part of his farewell address to the Association ; 
 and is reported to have said in conversation afterwards that he 
 had never met with natural eloquence so great as that of 
 Sedgwick. But this excellence, so delightful to his con- 
 temporaries, prevents us from enjoying more than a very 
 faint reflexion of his brilliancy. The reporters could not 
 follow him ; and he was himself too indifferent to fame to 
 correct their travesties of what he really said as fully as we 
 could wish 1 . The official Report is of course a better authority 
 than the Cambridge Chronicle, but even there we have to 
 content ourselves, for the most part, with dry bones. One 
 passage from his opening address, in which he announced a 
 grant from the Civil List to the great chemist Dalton, will 
 bear quotation, not merely from his personal interest in 
 Dalton 2 , but because it has the true ring of authenticity : 
 
 There is a philosopher sitting among us whose hair is blanched 
 by time, but possessing an intellect still in its healthiest vigour ; a 
 man whose whole life has been devoted to the cause of truth ; my 
 venerable friend Dr Dalton. Without any powerful apparatus for 
 making philosophical experiments, with an apparatus, indeed, which 
 many might think almost contemptible, and with very limited external 
 means for employing his great natural powers, he has gone straight 
 forward in his distinguished course, and obtained for himself in those 
 branches of knowledge which he has cultivated a name not perhaps 
 equalled by that of any other living philosopher in the world. From 
 the hour he came from his mother's womb the God of nature laid His 
 hand upon him, and ordained him for the ministration of high 
 
 1 Sedgwick, writing to Murchison 7 July, 1833, says: "I have now been 
 working four days at it [the Report], till my head is almost in as much confusion 
 as the short-hand notes. You never read such a chaos. Our reporter was not up 
 to the work, and what he has done is almost worse than nothing." 
 
 2 See above, p. 248. 
 
4 o8 CHARNWOOD FOREST. 
 
 1833- philosophy. But his natural talents, great as they are, and his 
 ^ 4 8_ almost intuitive skill in tracing the relations of material phenomena, 
 would have been of comparatively little value to himself and to 
 society, had there not been superadded to them a beautiful moral 
 simplicity and singleness of heart, which made him go on steadily in 
 the way he saw before him, without turning to the right hand or to 
 the left, and taught him to do homage to no authority before that of 
 truth. Fixing his eye on the most extensive views of science, he has 
 been not only a successful experimenter, but a philosopher of the 
 highest order ; his experiments have never had an insulated character, 
 but have been always made as contributions towards some important 
 end, as among the steps to some lofty generalisation. And with a most 
 happy prescience of the points to which the rays of scattered obser- 
 vations were converging, he has more than once seen light while to 
 other eyes all was yet in darkness ; out of seeming confusion has 
 elicited order ; and has thus reached the high distinction of being one 
 of the greatest legislators of chemical science 1 . 
 
 The rest of the year 1833 was very uneventful. Sedg- 
 wick's exertions to entertain the philosophers brought on a fit 
 of the gout, and when that had passed away the reports of the 
 meeting had to be corrected and made ready for press, This 
 business despatched, the season was too far advanced for a 
 campaign in Wales ; so, after a week at Leamington, he 
 attacked Charnwood Forest, accompanied by Whewell and 
 Airy, and "made out its structure in considerable detail 2 ." An 
 amusing note, written from Leicestershire to Mrs Murchison, 
 indicates his difficulties there, and his subsequent intentions : 
 
 MONT SORREL, August i\th> 1833. 
 My dear Mrs Murchison, 
 
 You offer me most provoking temptations, but it 
 is quite in vain for me to try to meet you and Mr Murchison. 
 It will be the end of the month before I reach Cumberland, 
 where I want to make a few sections on the spot, especially 
 some on the coast near Whitehaven ; and by the time they 
 are over it will be high time for me to face about for 
 
 1 Report of the Third Meeting of the British Association, p. x. 
 
 2 Salter's Catalogue, p. xviii ; WhewelPs Life, p. 155. Charnwood Forest was 
 one of the places of which Mr Conybeare had suggested the investigation. See 
 above, p. 325. 
 
WHITEHA VEN. 409 
 
 Cambridge. The last motive you mention would operate 1833. 
 rather as a repulsive than as an attractive force, for the lady &*. 48. 
 you talk of is, as I have been told, a most formidable and 
 cruel tyrant, who has slain her tens of thousands without 
 pity. I should not like to be offered up as a burnt offering 
 before the shrine of any woman sprung from Eve, only to be 
 told that I was suffering in good company, and without being 
 permitted to take a single cup from the living fountain of 
 hope. 
 
 But in the name of wonder what have I to do with love 
 and hope and such flimsy matter ? I am wedded to the rocks, 
 and Mount Sorrel (does not the word set your teeth on 
 edge ?) is my present mistress. By the way she is a little 
 coy and hard-hearted, and refuses to tell me her pedigree, 
 and to introduce me to her old relations. But I am going 
 with Professors Whewell and Airy to knock at one of her 
 back doors tomorrow morning, and perhaps we may make an 
 entry, and establish ourselves in one of her larders. Should 
 that be the case we shall dish her up to some tune. But 
 talking of love has made me run into figurative language, 
 which you know is quite out of place in geology ; so leaving 
 all figures let me again tell you how much I thank you, and 
 how miserable I am that I cannot join your party, and how 
 delighted I shall be to meet you all again in London. Yours, 
 my dear Mrs Murchison, to the bottom of Lyell's Hypogene 
 rocks, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 At Whitehaven Sedgwick met with a kindred spirit in 
 Mr Williamson Peile, manager of Lord Lonsdale's collieries, 
 and he frequently revisited Whitehaven in subsequent years. 
 Mr Peile's duties had naturally led him to study geology 
 from its practical side; but with Sedgwick's help his know- 
 ledge was largely developed, and in 1835. a joint communi- 
 cation was made to the Geological Society : On the range of 
 tlie Carboniferous Limestone flanking tlie primary Cumbrian 
 
410 MR R. M. BEVERLEY. 
 
 1833. Mountains, and on the Coalfields of the N. W. coast of Cumber- 
 t. 4 8. land. 
 
 On returning to Cambridge in October, Sedgwick was 
 engaged in writing the appendix to his Discourse, which, 
 as mentioned above, was published in November. "Just as 
 the last term was waning to its end " he wrote in February, 
 1834, "my sermon broke its shell; and in consequence, no 
 doubt, of the long incubation, turned out to be six times the 
 orthodox stature. Whether it deserves to be sent to the 
 flames, for being of these most heretical and monstrous 
 dimensions, you will best judge for yourself when you see 
 it 1 ." Later in the year, when the third edition had appeared, 
 he could announce: "It has been very well received, and will, 
 I hope, be the means of doing some good to our young 
 men 2 ." 
 
 While Sedgwick's Discourse was passing through the 
 press, a slanderous pamphleteer named Beverley was pre- 
 paring an elaborate attack on the University ; and, by a 
 curious coincidence, the two works appeared in the course of 
 the same month. The pamphlet and its author were equally 
 worthless, and the whole question, though it created a pro- 
 digious excitement at the time, might well be allowed to 
 rest in the oblivion to which it has long since been consigned, 
 had not Sedgwick devoted much time and energy to exposing 
 and refuting the malicious calumniator. On this account the 
 matter cannot be passed over ; but our account of it shall be 
 as brief as possible. 
 
 In October, 1816, Robert Mackenzie Beverley, a native 
 of the town of the same name in Yorkshire, was admitted 
 a pensioner of Trinity College. He did not proceed to the 
 degree of Bachelor of Laws until 1821, and he continued to 
 reside in Cambridge for some months afterwards. If his own 
 account of himself could be believed, he was a virtuous, hard- 
 reading, student ; but, on the other hand, whenever he has a 
 
 1 To Rev. Charles Ingle, 16 February, 1834. 
 
 2 To Bishop Monk, i November, 1834. 
 
MR R. M. BEVERLEY. 411 
 
 particularly disreputable story to tell, the experience of one 1833. 
 of his own friends is given as the authority for it He could &* 4 8 - 
 not therefore have known the best set either in his own 
 college, or in the University at large. He seems to have 
 been chiefly remarkable for personal vanity, which shewed 
 itself in the set of his cap, and the carriage of his gown ; and 
 for an effeminate delight in dress. " For chains and chitter- 
 lings, for curls and cosmetics, for rings and ringlets, no man 
 was like him. He was indeed a finished and a fragrant 
 fop a very curious coxcomb. 1 " 
 
 In those days he professed to belong to the Church of 
 England, but after taking his degree he became a dissenter, 
 and, with the ardour of a convert, set himself to the task of 
 vilifying, and, if possible, of pulling down, the body of which 
 he had once been a member. He began with A Letter to his 
 Grace the A rchbishop of York, on the present corrupt state of 
 the Church of England. This was written in September, 1830, 
 and published early in 1831. Coarse and vulgar as the pro- 
 duction is, it was evidently suited to the taste of those for 
 whom it was intended, for before the end of the year it had 
 reached a sixth edition. Beverley was delighted at his unex- 
 pected success. " Though it becomes not me to say so," he 
 writes, " yet it cannot be concealed that my * Letter to the 
 Archbishop of York ' has produced a practicable breach in the 
 walls of the Establishment." He therefore lost no time in 
 publishing The Tombs of the Prophets, a Lay Sermon on the 
 Corruptions of the Church of Christ. Both these publications 
 were indited with the avowed object of effecting "a total 
 separation of the Church from the State, and a speedy con- 
 fiscation of that which is falsely called Church Property." 
 The success of the sermon was fully equal to that of the 
 letter. It was largely sold, and honoured by more than one 
 
 1 Sedgwick's Four Letters to the Editors of the Leeds Mercury in reply to 
 R. M. Beverley, Esq. 8vo. Camb. 1836, p. 55. See also Remarks upon Mr 
 Beverley's Letter to the Duke of Gloucester. By a Member of Trinity College. 
 8vo. Camb. 1833, p. 27. 
 
412 BEVERLEY'S LETTER TO THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 
 
 1833. reply. Beverley, fond as ever of display, and perhaps not 
 L 4 8. insensible to the pleasure of making money by the sale of 
 pamphlets which must have been easily written, began to 
 give himself the airs of a Luther. His exposure of the 
 corruptions of the Church had awakened the nation ; his 
 efforts must next be directed against the Universities from 
 which the Church draws " its mischievous strength." As 
 even he, with all his presumption, could not affect a know- 
 ledge of Oxford, he confined his operations to Cambridge, 
 and in November, 1833, brought out A Letter to his Royal 
 Highness the Duke of Gloucester, Chancellor, on the present 
 corrupt state of the University of Cambridge. 
 
 With affected candour, Beverley begs to be allowed to 
 instruct the ." illustrious Prince " whom he is addressing on 
 certain important matters. "It is not to be supposed," he 
 says, "that you can be acquainted with the arcana of that 
 mother and nurse of arts and wickedness." He then passes 
 in review the morals, the religion, and the learning, of the 
 University. All the scandalous stories which he had heard 
 while in residence, or with which his correspondents 1 had 
 supplied him, are gathered together. His ignorance is only 
 equalled by his falsehood and his malignity. Silly tales, 
 such as no one but a freshman would credit for an instant, 
 are gravely set down as undisputed facts. Exceptional 
 
 1 The way in which his evidence was collected is shewn by the following notice 
 " To Correspondents," at the end of his Reply to Professor SedgwicKs Letter : 
 " I take the opportunity of thanking my correspondents whose letters are not 
 yet answered. Two letters received the first week in December may be of 
 service. 
 
 " One correspondent, however, should remember that it is impossible to rely on 
 any anonymous information. As the Revelations of Verax might, if properly 
 authenticated, be useful, it is the more to be lamented that he withholds his name 
 and address. He may with confidence venture his name, which will never be 
 disclosed. 
 
 "The testimony from Emmanuel College is not forgotten. All communications 
 must be directed to the care of the Publisher, and the postage must be paid; for want 
 of attending to this established rule, some letters and notes have been refused 
 admission." Well might Sedgwick term him "the hucksterer of scandal, the 
 advertising broker of impurity." Four Letters, p. 37. 
 
BEVERLEY'S LETTER TO THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 413 
 
 instances of folly and depravity are assumed to be the rule. 1833. 
 Rioting, drunkenness, gambling, immorality, extravagance, &* 4 8 - 
 are stated to be universal ; the Fellows are as bad as the 
 undergraduates ; religion is a farce ; even learning is a thing 
 of the past. Lastly for Beverley's real object in writing his 
 Letter is artfully concealed until near the end the Dissenters 
 are excluded from a place " which should not be styled a Uni- 
 versity, but a Particularity," by an iniquitous system of tests. 
 But, before it can be made fit for the education of their sons, 
 Reform must have reached the root of the whole mischief. 
 The only practicable course is " to confiscate all the Univer- 
 sity property, to declare it lapsed to the Crown, and to 
 remodel it de novo" 
 
 This farrago of blunders and misrepresentations had an 
 immense circulation. Three editions appeared before the end 
 of 1833, and the author's friends among the dissenters, who 
 had read his previous works with satisfaction, probably 
 accepted his accusations against the University as true. 
 Those who knew better were not slow in replying. Ten 
 pamphlets, most of them written by indignant undergra- 
 duates, appeared as rapidly as the editions of the libel. 
 Some of these take the letter to pieces, paragraph by para- 
 graph, and point out that the picture there drawn of Cam- 
 bridge is a gross caricature ; others hold the author up to 
 ridicule in satiric verse. One of the former says, with much 
 truth : 
 
 "You have wilfully and deliberately belied the Undergraduates 
 of Cambridge. You have taken particular exceptions and built 
 generalities upon them. You have gloated over the recollections of 
 your own College intemperance till the foul corruption has quickened 
 into life, and your imagination, drawing its stores from the scenes 
 of debauchery in which you once revelled, has presented as the 
 general portrait of Cambridge what forms the rare and disgraceful 
 exception 1 ." 
 
 1 A Letter to R. M. Beverley, Esq. , from an Undergraduate of the University 
 of Cambridge. 8vo. Cambridge and London 1833, p. 6. The writer is known to 
 have been William Forsyth, B. A. 1834, afterwards Fellow of Trinity College. 
 
414 REPLY TO BEVERLEY. 
 
 1834. Another, parodying Canning's Knife- Grinder, thus apos- 
 
 JEt. 49. trophises Beverley : 
 
 Silly Lie-grinder, what have you been doing? 
 Great is the scrape your pen has got you into, 
 Deep are our threats : your head has got a crack in't, 
 So have your brains, Sir. 
 
 Tell me, Lie-grinder, how came you to write such 
 Lies against Cambridge ? Was it out of spite, or 
 Was it in hopes of sharing in the Uni- 
 versity plunder ? l 
 
 These well-intentioned answers no doubt afforded pleasant 
 reading to members of the University; but it might be doubted 
 whether any of them would reach the north of England, 
 or Beverley's native town, where he had now become, as it is 
 said, a popular dissenting minister. Sedgwick therefore wisely 
 determined to carry the war into the enemy's camp, and find- 
 ing that The Leeds Mercury had quoted some passages from 
 the Letter to the Diike of Gloucester with approbation, address- 
 ed a first letter to the editors 7 January, 1834, in which he 
 pointed out, with indignant severity, that Beverley knew "no 
 more of the University of Cambridge than might be learnt of 
 the glorious history of this country from the records of its 
 jail-deliveries or the calendar of Newgate." At the same time, 
 while he disposed satisfactorily of Beverley's general charges, 
 by quoting his own long experience, and the special know- 
 ledge gained when he was proctor, he damaged his case not a 
 little by asserting roundly that Cambridge had been free from 
 the vice of gambling for the past six years. This statement 
 drew the following remarks from Mr Conybeare : 
 
 " I cannot think that you have handled Beverley one whit too 
 roughly; his uniform scurrility admitted no other kind of answer, 
 and might have deceived that large portion of the public unac- 
 quainted with our Universities had not the fellow been gibbetted in 
 his true colours. And with regard to him you have certainly proved 
 
 1 An Anglo-Sapphic Ode, dedicated (with French leave), to Robert Mackintosh 
 (sic) Beverley, Esq., entitled The Friend of Veracity versus the Lie Grinder. 
 Not by a Can-ning, but a Can-tab. 8vo. Cambridge, 1833. 
 
REPLY TO BEVERLEY. 415 
 
 yourself a most correct herald, and blazoned him party per pale cox- ^34. 
 comb and knave, both proper. ^ t 49 
 
 " I have heard only one serious objection to what you have said, 
 namely as to your hypothesis of the non-gambling of the last six 
 years, and this you have qualified in your second letter. But I was 
 very sorry to find before that all the younger Cambridge men thought 
 you certainly at fault on this scent 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick's first letter was of the nature of a preface ; what 
 was to come next is indicated in the following passage : 
 
 " I deny not the existence of immorality in the University, but I 
 do deny the charges of Mr Beverley; and I assert that they are 
 preposterously exaggerated, or impudently untrue. Before long I 
 will appeal to specific facts ; and out of what he has written I will 
 again and again convict him of shameful and deliberate falsehood. 
 Out of his own mouth I will utterly damage and destroy his 
 testimony, and turn him out of the courts of honour and common 
 sense, as a witness not to be believed. If I fail in doing this, I 
 deserve to be pointed at, and to become a byword among my equals, 
 and to be held up to scorn by honest men." 
 
 This programme was strictly adhered to. In three 
 further letters which appeared in The Leeds Mercury during 
 the first half of i834 2 , the wretched Beverley has full and 
 signal justice dealt out to him. He is hunted from one posi- 
 tion after another, and shewn, by the citation of irrefragable 
 testimony, to have been guilty of direct falsehoods, falsehoods 
 of implication, and falsehoods of ignorance. So severe is the 
 castigation, that, had he been less criminal, one would almost 
 pity him. But, if the Letter to the Duke of Gloucester be read 
 in conjunction with Sedgwick's masterly reply, it will be 
 acknowledged that his scornful mockery of his antagonist's 
 pretended religion, his exposure of his ignorance, and his 
 indignant denunciation of his profligacy while at Cambridge, 
 are more than justified 3 . When the work was done, Sedg- 
 wick described his feelings while doing it to Bishop Monk : 
 
 1 From Rev. W. D. Conybeare, 10 May, 1834. It should, however, be stated 
 that Mr Forsyth, in his Letter quoted above (p. 413), maintains that "the extent 
 of gambling that goes on here is incredibly small." 
 
 2 The second letter appeared in The Leeds Mercury for 8 February 1 834 ; the 
 third is dated 15 May ; the fourth, i June. 
 
 3 Beverley attempted to answer his redoubtable antagonist in the columns of 
 The Leeds Mercttry, but without success. 
 
416 REPLY TO BEVERLEY. 
 
 1834. " Our opponent I believe I have effectually silenced ; and 
 
 * 49- many years, must, I think, elapse before any party will dare 
 to bring forward Beverley as an implement of mischief. I had 
 a most revolting task to perform, such as no man can go through 
 without dirtying his own fingers. If you saw my letters, I 
 hope you remembered that I was not writing for gentlemen 
 or scholars, but for the instruction of a multitude of bitter 
 blackguards in the shape of Yorkshire dissenters 1 ." 
 
 The following letter is specially interesting as shewing 
 that all dissenters were not prepared to agree with their self- 
 constituted champion. 
 
 From Mr T. M. Ball. 
 
 61 COLEMAN ST., LONDON, 
 
 10 February, 1834. 
 Sir, 
 
 I am a dissenter. In common with thousands of all 
 creeds I read Beverley's Letter to the Duke of Gloucester. Of 
 Cambridge and its noble University I know but little, but by 
 common report. The picture drawn of its condition by the writer of 
 that Letter was indeed horrible, but I for one could not and would 
 [not] believe all he had written; it bore evidently the stamp of 
 malice, and hatred, and every unchristian feeling. You may suppose 
 then that it was with much pleasure I read, and I did every word of 
 your excellent, eloquent, and convincing reply copied into The 
 Times from a Leeds paper. I have also this morning read another 
 in the same Journal, and I write now for the purpose of expressing 
 my hopes that your promised Letters will appear, not in a country 
 paper, but as pamphlets, for I should, for one, wish to possess them, 
 and you may be sure that I am not the only person who feels this 
 desire. Although a dissenter I am no enemy of the Church, no 
 dishonest longer to grasp what is her's by right and law. Trusting 
 you will excuse this intrusion, which only a love of truth, and strong 
 admiration of your admirable replies prompts me to venture thus 
 addressing you, and claiming your attention, and ardently hoping 
 it is your intention to do as I have expressed my hope, 
 
 I am, with great respect, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 T. M. BALL. 
 
 Early in January, 1834, while staying at Milton Park, 
 Sedgwick met with a severe accident, by which his right arm 
 
 1 To Bishop Monk, i November, 1834. 
 
DISLOCATES RIGHT WRIST. 417 
 
 was disabled for several months. " The day after I arrived at 1834. 
 Milton," he says, " I started with a party of ten for Croyland &* 49- 
 Abbey, and in passing carelessly under one of the branching 
 trees, whether by the swerving of my horse, or by incautiously 
 raising my head too soon, it was caught among the extreme 
 branches, and I was pulled off my horse 1 ." The extent of the 
 injury was unsuspected at the time, and the patient was 
 treated for a severe sprain. On his return to Cambridge he 
 sent for the celebrated surgeon Mr Okes, "who saw the whole 
 extent of the mischief in an instant, and pointed out the 
 existence of a great transverse fault, throwing down the 
 metacarpal bones in such a way as to bring one of them to 
 the end of the radius, and thrust the thumb below the palm 
 of the hand." The bones were soon put into their right 
 places, while Sedgwick "howled loud enough to shake all 
 the windows in the Great Court;" but his recovery was slow, 
 and for several months any work that entailed legible writing 
 had to be done by one of his friends. Even the letters 
 against Beverley were dictated to either Romilly or Kemble 2 . 
 His efforts at lefthanded penmanship did not go beyond a 
 letter to a relative or an intimate friend, nor could it be said 
 of him, as of a celebrated Puritan divine, 
 
 "though of thy right hand bereft, 
 Right well thou writest with the hand that's left." 
 
 Such a condition was ill-suited to a man of his bodily and 
 mental activity, and he likened himself, no doubt most truth- 
 fully, to " a chained bull-dog." 
 
 Before long, in despite of his maimed condition, and the 
 advice of doctors to avoid excitement, he became the central 
 figure in an agitation which threw the University into confu- 
 sion for more than six months, having for its object the 
 abolition of tests on proceeding to degrees. For the moment 
 he and his friends were unsuccessful, and thirty-seven years 
 
 1 This and the following extracts describing the accident, are from a letter to 
 R. I. Murchison, 8 February, 1834. 
 
 2 John Mitchell Kemble, of Trinity College, B.A. 1830. 
 
 s. i. 27 
 
4 i8 MOVEMENT TO ABOLISH TESTS. 
 
 1834. elapsed before tests were completely swept away. In the 
 JEt. 49. interval, whenever an occasion presented itself, Sedgwick 
 shewed unflagging interest in the cause, and one of the last 
 occasions on which he spoke in public was a meeting at 
 St John's College Lodge, to assist the movement which 
 resulted in the Test Act of 1871. 
 
 The movement of 1834, in which Sedgwick bore so promi- 
 nent a part, began with a petition, drawn up under the 
 following circumstances. In December, 1833, Professor Pryme 
 had offered Graces to the Senate suggesting the appointment 
 of a Syndicate to consider the abolition or modification of 
 subscription on proceeding to a degree. These were rejected 
 by the Caput. In February, 1834, Dr Cornwallis Hewett, 
 Downing Professor of Medicine, offered a similar Grace, with 
 special reference to the faculty of medicine. This also was 
 rejected by the Caput, on the veto of the Vice Chancellor, Dr 
 King, President of Queens' College. Finally, 12 March, 1834, 
 the Senate petitioned to be heard by counsel in respect of the 
 charter of the London University 1 . Thereupon several 
 members of the Senate met at Professor Hewett's rooms, 
 Sedgwick was called to the chair, and it was resolved to draw 
 up a petition to both Houses of Parliament not as coming 
 from the body at large, but as expressing the opinion of cer- 
 tain individuals, who, from the tactics of their opponents, had 
 no other mode of recording their opinions 2 . After expressing 
 their attachment to the Church, and the University, and their 
 conviction that "no system of civil or ecclesiastical polity was 
 ever so devised by the wisdom of man as not to require, from 
 time to time, some modification, from the change of external 
 
 1 It is difficult to understand why this demand should have given so much 
 offence, but Sedgwick himself enumerates it among the reasons for the action of 
 the petitioners in his letter to The Times, dated 8 April, 1834. The University had 
 merely prayed to be heard by Counsel in support of the insertion of a clause in 
 the Charter, " declaring that nothing in the terms of the Charter should be 
 construed as giving a right to confer any Academical distinctions designated by 
 the same titles, or accompanied with the same privileges, as the degrees now 
 conferred by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge." 
 
 2 Sedgwick's Letter to The Times, ut supra. 
 
PETITION TO PARLIAMENT. 419 
 
 circumstances, or the progress of opinion," the petitioners make 1834. 
 the following statement : &* 49 
 
 " In conformity with these sentiments, they would further suggest 
 to your honourable house that no corporate body like the University 
 of Cambridge can exist in a free country in honour or in safety unless 
 its benefits be communicated to all classes as widely as is compatible 
 with the Christian principles of its foundation. 
 
 Among the changes which they think might be at once adopted 
 with advantage and safety, they would suggest the expediency of 
 abrogating by legislative enactment every religious test exacted from 
 members of the University before they proceed to degrees, whether 
 of bachelor, master, or doctor, in Arts, Law, and Physic. In praying 
 for the abolition of these restrictions, they rejoice in being able to 
 assure your honourable house that they are only asking for a restitu- 
 tion of their ancient academic laws and laudable customs. These 
 restrictions were imposed on the University in the reign of King 
 James I, most of them in a manner informal and unprecedented, 
 and grievously against the wishes of many of the then members of 
 the Senate, during times of bitter party animosities, and during the 
 prevalence of dogmas, both in Church and State, which are at vari- 
 ance with the present spirit of English Law, and with the true 
 principles of Christian toleration." 
 
 As it was thought desirable to get the petition presented 
 before the Easter recess, time was precious. Accordingly, it 
 was not circulated publicly, but lay for signature at the rooms 
 of Mr Thomas Musgrave 1 in Trinity College, from Friday 
 14 March, to Monday 17 March, while those interested in its 
 success solicited support by private canvass. It received the 
 signatures of sixty-two resident members of the Senate. 
 Among them were two Masters of Colleges, Dr Davy of 
 Gonville and Caius, and Dr Lamb of Corpus Christi ; nine 
 Professors, Hewett, Lee, Cumming, Clark, Babbage, Sedgwick, 
 Airy, Musgrave, Henslow ; several Tutors of Colleges, and 
 distinguished Masters of Arts. Some of these were either 
 conservatives, or very moderate liberals. It was presented to 
 the House of Lords (21 March) by Earl Grey, at Sedgwick's 
 personal instance; and to the House of Commons (24 March) 
 
 
 1 Fellow of Trinity College, B.A. 1810. He was Lord Almoner's Reader in 
 Arabic from 1821 1837, when he was made Dean of Bristol. He became Bishop 
 of Hereford a few months afterwards, and Archbishop of York in 1847. 
 
 272 
 
420 LETTER TO THE TIMES. 
 
 1834. by Mr Spring Rice, member for the town of Cambridge. By 
 Et- 49- both houses it was received with respect, and became the 
 subject of animated debate. 
 
 As might have been expected, it was succeeded, after about 
 ten days, by a Declaration, signed by 101 residents. "We do 
 not admit," said this laconic document, "that 'the abolition 
 of the existing 'restrictions' would be, as alleged, c a restitu- 
 tion' of the 'ancient laws and laudable customs' of the Univer- 
 sity: neither do we acknowledge that any of 'these restrictions 
 were imposed in a manner informal and unprecedented'." 
 As these words directly controverted the statements of the 
 petition, Sedgwick, as " chairman of a party of the resident 
 members of the Senate who agreed to the words of the 
 petition lately presented in parliament," addressed a long 
 letter to The Times (8 April) in vindication of himself and his 
 friends, which may be taken as an official statement of their 
 position. It deals chiefly with the historical question, and it 
 is only towards the end. that he gives a short account of the 
 motives by which the petitioners had been actuated, and the 
 circumstances under which the document had been drawn 
 up. 
 
 By this time the excitement in the University had become 
 very great. As the number of resident members of the Senate 
 did not exceed one hundred and eighty, sixty-two of whom 
 had signed the Petition, and one hundred and one the Declara- 
 tion, nearly every resident was directly interested in the 
 question. The promoters of the Declaration, elated at their 
 success, gave notice of a Grace at the next congregation 
 (16 April), to affix the University seal to a petition to 
 both Houses of Parliament praying for the maintenance 
 of existing tests. Non-residents came up in considerable 
 numbers, but only to find that Dr Hewett had availed 
 himself of his right of veto as a member of the Caput, and 
 thrown out the Grace. This manoeuvre, however, could 
 scarcely be called successful, for the petition was imme- 
 diately deposited in the hall of Queens' College, and before 
 
LETTER TO BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 421 
 
 long received two hundred and eighty signatures. On the 1834. 
 following day it was taken to London by the Vice &* 49- 
 Chancellor, and within a week presented to the House of 
 Lords by the Chancellor, and to the House of Commons by 
 Mr Goulburn. 
 
 Professor Hewett's action was eloquently defended by 
 Sedgwick in a letter to The Cambridge Chronicle (16 April), 
 the publication of which, taken in conjunction with his previous 
 letter to The Times, and his Seventeen Reasons for adopting 
 the prayer of the Petition signed by sixty -two Resident Members 
 of the Senate, involved him in further controversy, notably 
 with a correspondent of The Cambridge Chronicle who signed 
 himself A Member of tJie Senate, a designation which concealed 
 his old antagonist, Dr French. From these ephemeral publi- 
 cations we will pass on to a letter written to Bishop Blomfield, 
 as containing a dispassionate statement of the whole question 
 from the point of view of himself and the petitioners 1 . 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, April 27, 1834. 
 My Lord, 
 
 I have this moment, under your Lordship's frank, 
 received a copy of your speech delivered in the House of 
 Peers on April 2ist 2 , and sit down at my breakfast table to 
 reply to one or two paragraphs in which you seem to misap- 
 prehend the wishes of the sixty-two petitioners who first 
 moved the question. In my present condition I am com- 
 pelled to write with my left hand, and have consequently a 
 mechanical difficulty in expressing myself. I must be as 
 plain and short as I can... 
 
 Your Lordship's speech seems constructed on the supposi- 
 tion that Dissenters, under the contemplated Act, would have 
 
 1 This letter is printed from a copy taken by the Rev. J. Romilly, and 
 preserved by him in the Registry of the University. A few paragraphs, not 
 specially important, have been omitted. 
 
 2 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Ser. 3. xxii. 994. The occasion was the 
 presentation of the petition signed 16 April against any removal of tests. 
 
422 LETTER TO BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 
 
 i8 34 . the right of admission. What Mr Wood's 1 intentions were I 
 Et - 49- know not I wish heartily the getting up of the Bill had not 
 been with a Dissenter but our intentions were to give no 
 such right, and I have in two letters written some time since, 
 pressed this very strongly on Lord Grey.... We wish no man 
 to be forced on the University ; and if Mr Wood adopts the 
 suggestions sent up last night and agreed to at my rooms, 
 the Bill will not touch the rights of the admitting officers in 
 the several colleges. A man is not to come up as a Dissenter; 
 he is not to be considered as such by any official college act ; 
 he must conform to discipline, and we give him a degree 
 without exacting subscription. A moderate, well-informed 
 Dissenter will come up under such a system (this is not 
 conjecture but fact) and he will take a degree. A bigot a 
 man who would haggle about organs and surplices will and 
 must keep away, and we do not want him. A right to a 
 degree without signing a test does not do away with the 
 necessity of discipline, or of conforming to college rules ; nor 
 does it give (as far as our wishes are concerned) any right of 
 admission which is not sanctioned by the voluntary acts of 
 the admitting officers. If Dissenters were to come up as such, 
 and allowed to force themselves on the several colleges, I 
 should then agree with every syllable in the speech I have 
 before me. But we look to no such result ; and if it come at 
 all it will come as a future consequence of the exclusive policy 
 which is now maintained. The Universities cannot maintain 
 their old position and continue Universities. This your 
 Lordship seems in part to admit, as you contemplate the 
 lopping off of the Medical Faculty. I may be mistaken, but 
 I cannot bear the thoughts of this, and I think the policy that 
 suggests the possibility of it perfectly suicidal. 
 
 1 Mr G. W. Wood obtained leave (17 April) to bring in a Bill to grant to His 
 Majesty's subjects generally the rights of admission to the English Universities, 
 and of equal eligibility to degrees therein, notwithstanding their diversities in 
 religious opinion degrees in Divinity alone excepted. It passed the House of 
 Commons by large majorities at its different stages, but was rejected by the House 
 of Lords. Hansard, ut supra, 902; xxiv. 492, 63-2, 1087; xxv. 815. 
 
LETTER TO BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 42$ 
 
 You say, my Lord, that when Dissenters but be it 1834. 
 remembered only after having been admitted and having ^ 49- 
 kept terms like other men have a legal right to academic 
 honours they will not long consent to be subject to college 
 rules relating to chapel, lectures, etc. I am compelled to 
 say that I do not see the force of this. A Dissenter knows 
 our organization when he comes up, and if the advantages of 
 our education have induced him to conform during years 
 past, a fortiori he will be willing to conform when he can 
 thereby have also the advantage of a degree. This appears 
 to me perfect demonstration. Dissenters may have some 
 foolish expectations from the operation of the intended Bill, 
 but we cannot help this. Again, I affirm with perfect con- 
 fidence that the operation of the Bill implies no change 
 whatsoever in the college lectures. We have had amongst us 
 during the last twenty years Roman Catholics, Methodists, 
 Presbyterians, Quakers, Congregationalists of every shade, 
 and they all attended lectures, and never, I believe, made a 
 single objection to a lecture given in College. Let me appeal 
 to your own experience, and to that of your friends the 
 Bishops of Gloucester and Lincoln 
 
 I feel so confident in the truth of what I am now saying 
 that I have not in my heart been able to acquit of a charge 
 of insincerity some of those who have accused the sixty-two 
 petitioners of attempting to destroy root and branch the 
 system of religious education in this University. Were our 
 wishes carried into effect I verily believe we should be com- 
 pelled to compromise nothing on which a good and charitable 
 churchman ought to make a stand. No man is now forced to 
 attend the sacrament. The attendance at chapel would, 
 I think, be better after the proposed change than it is at 
 present, and the public Professors of Theology would probably 
 be called to renewed and more effective exertions in behalf of 
 the doctrines of our Church. In parochial instruction it is, I 
 doubt not, impossible to blend together men of different 
 persuasions. But may it not probably be far otherwise, or 
 
424 LETTER TO BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 
 
 1834. rather, I ought to say, has it not been far otherwise in a 
 Et. 49. system of academic instruction ? The two cases are so dis- 
 similar, that, with all deference, we cannot, I think, argue 
 
 from one to the other. 
 
 ****** 
 
 You say that the proposed Bill would be an infringement 
 of our privileges. In which respect? To give degrees in the 
 faculties is our privilege : the tests with which these degrees 
 are clogged are no privileges, and we want to wipe them out 
 as worse than nothing. This is our prayer. We may be 
 right, or we may be wrong, but we want to preserve our privi- 
 leges. And those who resolve to keep these tests at all 
 hazards know that they are supporting that which, if upheld, 
 will lead to an infraction of our privileges, and virtually cut 
 off from us the medical faculty. Your Lordship does not 
 know the enormous injury this amputation would inflict on 
 us. Our Professor of Physic gives an admirable course 
 of lectures, and his pupils attend the Hospital. The 
 Professor of Anatomy gives a new and extended course. 
 We have built a Museum and purchased specimens and 
 anatomical models at the expense of thousands. We have 
 an extended course of Chemical and Botanical lectures with 
 reference to the Anatomical Class. Are all these things 
 to vanish away? Yes! say those who oppose the sixty-two 
 petitioners : Perish Science and live the Tests ! We will 
 not allow even so much as a Syndicate of inquiry! And 
 yet the same persons would enter on a negotiation with 
 Sir Henry Halford which would virtually swamp our whole 
 medical faculty, as well as the lectures which have risen in 
 consequence of it! 
 
 Since your time, my Lord, Cambridge has improved in 
 vitality. We have a chartered Philosophical Society which 
 has produced five large volumes of Transactions rivalling in 
 original matter the first scientific memoirs in Europe. We 
 have a noble Observatory in full action, and in honourable 
 correspondence with all the other public Observatories in the 
 
LETTER TO BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 425 
 
 world. And who first started and set afloat these noble ^834. 
 monuments of Cambridge zeal and learning ? Some of those &* 49- 
 who took a leading part among the sixty-two Petitioners. 
 And yet they are to be set down as innovators, lovers of 
 movement, and disturbers of the consecrated institutions of 
 their country ! So far they are men of movement that when 
 they see everything about them stirring they know they 
 cannot remain immovable without being left in helpless 
 solitude. They believe that the scientific character of Cam- 
 bridge is not only its honour but its security. As a great 
 learned and scientific University giving degrees in all the 
 learned faculties incorporated as a lay body, and only 
 regarded as such in the eye of the law of England Cam- 
 bridge may stand firmly.... But if she once be considered as a 
 mere school for the Church Establishment her endowments 
 will be thought out of all reasonable dimensions, and before 
 many years are over we may see our noble edifices beginning 
 to crumble about our ears. 
 
 When the Act of Uniformity was in force, with all its 
 terrific train of penalties, and all who refused the injunctions 
 of the Test and Corporation Acts were excluded from offices 
 of trust and honour, our exclusive system was in harmony 
 with the law. Now it is not so. And we wish to put 
 ourselves right with the actual constitution of our country, 
 so that we may still be the nurseries and fountains not merely 
 of the Church but also of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Pray excuse this formidable visitation ; accept my best 
 thanks for your speech ; and believe me, my Lord, 
 
 Your most faithful servant 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Before long Sedgwick's attention was engaged by another 
 matter arising directly out of the same agitation. The 
 strength of public feeling on the question of tests had mani- 
 
426 MR THIRLWALLS RESIGNATION. 
 
 1834. fested itself in a number of pamphlets, of which Dr Turton's 1 
 JEt. 49. Thoughts on the Admission of Persons, without regard to their 
 Religious Opinions, to certain degrees in the Universities of 
 England, was perhaps the ablest, and certainly the most 
 widely read. It was promptly answered by Connop Thirlwall, 
 at that time an Assistant Tutor of Trinity College. He was 
 one of Sedgwick's intimate friends, and had cordially co- 
 operated with him in the matter of the petition, though there 
 is no evidence that he had taken any very active part in 
 promoting it. In the course of his reply to Dr Turton he was 
 led to inquire whether colleges might be held to be schools 
 of religious instruction; and, having answered this question in 
 the negative, went out of his way to denounce the existing 
 system of compulsory attendance at chapel as a positive 
 evil. Within a week after the appearance of this pamphlet, 
 the Master, Dr Wordsworth, called upon the author to 
 resign his office, and Thirlwall, almost without hesitation, 
 complied. An exercise of authority so despotic, and so 
 unprecedented, added to the unpopularity of the Master 
 with many of the Fellows, was received with a loud out- 
 burst of indignation. Sedgwick, who happened to be in 
 London, was promptly informed by Whewell of what had 
 taken place. After briefly recording the facts, and his own 
 disapproval of the Master's conduct, he went on to say : 
 
 " What will happen next I have no guess, for I have talked with 
 none of Thirlwall's friends about the case, but I much fear they may 
 attempt some violent and rash measure ; and what I wish to beg of 
 you is that you will be our good genius, and moderate instead of 
 sharing in, our violence You have more influence in the College 
 than any other person, and have perhaps the power of prevent- 
 ing our present misfortunes being followed by any fatal conse- 
 quences 2 ...." 
 
 Sedgwick hastened back to Cambridge, and did all that 
 could be done, under the circumstances, in conjunction with 
 
 1 Thomas Turton, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity from 18271845, when 
 he was made Bishop of Ely. 
 
 2 From Rev. W. Whewell, 27 May, 1834. 
 
LETTERS FROM SOUTHEY AND WORDSWORTH. 427 
 
 Musgrave, Sheepshanks, Romilly, and Peacock 1 . But, as i8 34 . 
 Thirlwall had resigned, their efforts could effect nothing '&* 49- 
 except a dignified submission to the inevitable. From our 
 point of view the matter is chiefly interesting, as shewing the 
 position which Sedgwick had attained in College, and which 
 he kept throughout the rest of his long life. 
 
 The following letters furnish an appropriate conclusion 
 to the busy episodes in Sedgwick's life which have just been 
 narrated. 
 
 From Mr Robert Southey. 
 
 KESWICK, 10 February -, 1834. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your discourse, and for 
 the pleasant letter that accompanied it. It is indeed most gratifying 
 to see you employing your sledge-hammer against the Utilitarians ; 
 and counteracting the mischief which has been done by Locke and 
 Paley. Heavy as the hammer strikes, your name and character 
 carry with them equal weight ; and I do not think any other person 
 could at this time have done so much good. 
 
 This too I can truly say, that in these dark times, nothing has 
 cheered me so much as the part which you have thus taken. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours with sincere respect and regard, 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
 
 From Mr William Wordsworth. 
 
 RYDAL MOUNT, 
 
 May i^th, 1834. 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 I am much indebted to you for a Copy of your discourse 
 on the Studies of the University ; and which has been read to me 
 twice. It is written with your usual animation, and I hope will in 
 the course of time prove of beneficial effect, if the Universities are to 
 continue to exist ; which from some late proceedings in your own, I 
 am disposed to doubt. 
 
 In every part of your Discourse I was interested, but was most nearly 
 touched by your observations on Paley's Moral Philosophy, which, 
 
 1 Mr Romilly records in his diary, 29 May, "Sedgwick and Sheepshanks 
 arrived from town to-day to look into Thirlwall's case. Sedgwick and Musgrave 
 drew up a Paper, and took it to the Master : ' We the undersigned resident 
 Seniors request you to call a Seniority to inquire into the proceedings which led 
 to Mr Thirlwall's resignation of the Tuition. ' Signed by Sedgwick, Musgrave, 
 Peacock, Romilly, Sheepshanks." 
 
428 WOODWARDIAN MUSEUM. 
 
 1834. tho' like all his works a Book of unrivalled merit in certain points, is 
 JEt. 49. deplorably wanting in essentials. In fact there is no such thing as 
 Morals as a Science, or even as Philosophy, if Paley's system be 
 right. You and I, I remember, talked upon the subject when I had 
 last the pleasure of seeing you so that I need not say more than 
 that I heartily concur with you in what your Discourse contains 
 upon it. 
 
 Thank you for the drubbing you have given that odious Slanderer, 
 Beverley. I was sorry to learn from those letters that you had had 
 so severe an accident. You have the best wishes of all this family 
 for your entire and speedy recovery. 
 
 Should I be silent upon the part you have taken as the Public 
 Leader of the 62 or 63 Petitioners, I should not be treating you with 
 sincerity, or in the spirit of that friendship which exists between us. 
 This is not the place for me to discuss the subject, and tho' I feel that 
 my opinion, as an opinion merely, may not be entitled to much 
 respect, as your personal friend I cannot hold back the declaration 
 of my conviction that the Petitioners are misguided men, that part 
 of them, at least, who have signed this Petition with a hope, that by 
 so doing, they are contributing to the Support of the Institutions of 
 the Country, the Church included. 
 
 Farewell ! God bless you, and be assured that whatever course 
 you pursue either in public or private life, there is no likelihood that 
 I shall ever have occasion to doubt that you act from pure and con- 
 scientious motives. At the same time allow me to say, that I have 
 no dread of being accused of presumption by you, for not having 
 bowed to the scientific names which stand so conspicuous upon this 
 ill-omened Instrument. 
 
 " Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 " WM. WORDSWORTH." 
 
 The history of the Woodwardian Museum during the four 
 years comprised in the present chapter must now be briefly 
 noticed. The unfitness of the room for the purposes of a 
 Museum, occupies, as heretofore, a considerable space in the 
 reports of the Inspectors. In 1830 they extend their observa- 
 tions to the Professor's college rooms, where they find not 
 only cabinets belonging to the University, but " ten or twelve 
 packing-cases from Germany and other parts of the continent, 
 as yet unopened, for which the Professor cannot find room 
 either in the Museum or in his chambers." In 1833 these 
 defects are remedied to some slight extent by the acquisition 
 of the two rooms at the west end of the Divinity School, 
 (now the Music Room and the Newspaper Room of the 
 
IN SOUTH WALES WITH MURCHISON. 429 
 
 Library) hitherto used by the Registrary ; but Sedgwick " is 1834. 
 compelled to state that this addition is by no means adequate &* 49- 
 for the reception of the present collection, much less for its 
 proper exhibition, or for such augmentations as the present 
 state of geological science requires." Meanwhile, thanks to 
 Sedgwick's own exertions, important additions were being 
 made in nearly every year. We read of casts of Plesiosaurus 
 and Ichthyosaurus presented by Viscount Cole and Mr 
 Chantrey (1832) ; of a collection lately the property of Dr 
 E. D. Clarke, removed from the cellars in the Botanic Garden 
 after his death, and of specimens collected in North and 
 South Wales by the Professor (1833); and lastly, of a bust 
 of Cuvier presented by his widow (1834). 
 
 Sedgwick's plans for the summer had been settled early 
 in the year. " I propose," he wrote in April, " to spend the 
 early part of the Long Vacation in Wales, thence to find my 
 way by steam to Glasgow, to mount up to and batter the 
 Grampians, to descend by the west coast of Ayrshire, and 
 then to thread my way among the hills of the Lammermuir 
 chain, so as to end my work in September in time for the 
 meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh, where I 
 shall have to resign my office of President of the Philosophical 
 
 This programme, in its main outlines at least, was faith- 
 fully carried out. Early in June he started for Wales with 
 Murchison. On this visit he began work on the south side of 
 the Principality, instead of on the north, for the purpose of 
 examining, under his friend's guidance, the ground he had 
 already gone over, and thus, as he said afterwards, learning 
 the alphabet of the Silurian tongue 2 . The excursion was 
 specially gratifying to Murchison, who parted from Sedgwick 
 under the firm conviction that he was fully convinced of the 
 accuracy of his determination of the sequence of the rocks 
 examined. "Although I think and hope," he wrote to 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 2 April, 1834. 
 
 2 Sailer's Catalogue, p. xix. 
 
430 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT EDINBURGH. 
 
 1834. Whewell, "that he endeavoured to pick every hole he could 
 t- 49- in my arrangement, he has confirmed all my views, some of 
 which, from the difficulties which environed me, I was very 
 nervous about until I had such a backer 1 ." After six weeks 
 spent in " marches and countermarches in Hereford, Brecon, 
 Caermarthen, Montgomery, and Salop, 1 ' the friends parted at 
 Ludlow (10 July). Sedgwick hastened back to his old ground 
 in North Wales, where he probably spent most of the time 
 until claimed by the Association. 
 
 Sedgwick has unfortunately left no account of his pro- 
 ceedings at Edinburgh, where he was the guest of Dr Alison, 
 father of the historian. We know from the Report of the 
 Association that he resigned the office of President in an 
 eloquent, though not specially noteworthy speech, but that 
 he did not himself contribute anything to the geological 
 section. Before leaving Edinburgh he had the pleasure of 
 making the acquaintance of Professor Agassiz, who had just 
 come to Great Britain for the first time. A life-long friendship 
 between the two geologists was the result of this interview. 
 
 After the meeting Sedgwick and Murchison, according to 
 previous arrangement, started together for the south. From 
 this point the story can be told in his own words : 
 
 TRIN. COLL., November 15, 1834. 
 My dear Mrs Alison, 
 
 The day I left you I had a delightful drive along 
 the banks of the Esk, which contrast so finely with the 
 country on both sides of them. Straight furrows and rotation 
 crops may gladden the farmer's face, but they had few charms 
 for my companion and myself. We halted, however, at the 
 cliffs of Dunbar (they are very curious and if you have not 
 seen them pray look at them the next time you pass that 
 way), and we were overjoyed at the sight of the noble glen of 
 Dunglass. 
 
 1 Murchison to Whewell, 18 July, 1834, quoted in Geikie's Life of Murchison, 
 i. 223. 
 
EXCURSION TO ST ABB^S HEAD. 431 
 
 Perhaps your brother 1 has told you of our expedition to 1834. 
 St Abb's Head. Nothing could turn out better the geology &* 49- 
 most instructive the scenery grand and varied the sea as 
 smooth as glass the cliffs sublime, and every headland re- 
 flecting the lights of a glowing sun. We were all excited to 
 the highest pitch ; sometimes speculating on the strange 
 frolics dame Nature had loved to play thousands of years 
 before strathspeys were thought of; then talking of Walter 
 Scott, the Master of Ravenswood, and the Middle Ages ; 
 and ever and anon, as conversation seemed to flag, plying 
 Sir John Hall's bottles, not so much from the love of 
 wine, as in the hope of seeing the embers of imagination 
 blaze out afresh. The day after our sea-trip Murchison 
 went helter-skelter after the foxhounds, and had the good 
 luck to come back with a fox's brush, and an unbroken 
 neck. 
 
 On the Saturday we were again under way, and continued 
 together to Newcastle, where we parted ; but I had the good 
 fortune to pick up another friend and knight of the hammer, 
 with whom I struck up a league offensive and defensive, and 
 we forthwith commenced an action of assault and battery 
 against the ribs and shoulders of the mountains which range 
 in a lofty unbroken chain from Stainmoor through Cross Fell 
 to the frontier of Scotland. I will not torment you with any 
 narration of our battles and victories ; sufficient to say that 
 we parted at Carlisle that I found my way to another 
 friend's 2 house near Whitehaven that I joined some young 
 people in a pedestrian tour to the Lakes, and contrived to 
 reap a rich harvest of joy from the exuberant spirits of 
 my youthful companions that I talked a day and a half 
 with Wordsworth, who is the best talker I have the happiness 
 of knowing, and who talked in his best fashion that I found 
 my way to my native valley, which will bear looking at after 
 
 1 Duncan Farquharson Gregory, afterwards Fellow of Trinity College, B.A. 
 1838, M.A. 1841. 
 
 Probably Mr Williamson Peile. See above, p. 409. 
 
432 MADE PREBENDARY OF NORWICH. 
 
 1834. the fairest prospects of the Lake region that my friends 
 /Et. 49. were all well, my nephews and nieces springing like mush- 
 rooms, and the old vicarage house about as noisy as it used 
 to be when I was myself a child. 
 
 But my sheet is ending and it is high time for me to end 
 with it. Give my kindest remembrances to everybody at 
 Woodville and Heriot Row, and to your brothers and sister, 
 and believe me, Dear Mrs Alison, 
 
 Your obliged and affectionate friend, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 By the end of October Sedgwick was back in Cambridge, 
 restored to good health and spirits by his summer in the open 
 air, busy with his lectures, and with preparations for a visit 
 from Professor Agassiz early in November. In order to lay 
 before the " famous foreign fishmonger," the fare he specially 
 fancied, Sedgwick had been for some time in correspond- 
 ence with his friend Gwatkin, through whose good offices his 
 own meagre table was to be garnished with "a dish offish" 
 from Barrow in Leicestershire. " A Yorkshireman hates to 
 buy a pig a poke," he added " but I am sure I may trust my 
 old fellow-hammerer to make a good bargain for me 1 ." The 
 fish in question did justice to Gwatkin's discrimination, and 
 were duly added to the Woodwardian collection ; but, at the 
 last moment, to Sedgwick's great annoyance, Agassiz was 
 prevented from coming. 
 
 Soon afterwards an event occurred which gave Sedgwick 
 a new position, and, for a part of each year at least, 
 diverted the current of his thoughts into a new channel. 
 In the middle of November Lord Melbourne's ministry broke 
 up, and just as Lord Chancellor Brougham was lamenting 
 that Sedgwick and Thirlwall were the only clergymen who 
 had deserved well of the liberal party for whom he had been 
 
 1 To Rev. R. Gwatkin, 3 October, 1834. Mr Gwatkin was then vicar of 
 Barrow on Soar, Mount Sorrel, Leicestershire. 
 
MADE PREBENDARY OF NORWICH. 433 
 
 unable to provide 1 , came the news that a stall at Norwich, and 1834. 
 a rectory in Yorkshire, were vacated by the death of the < Et - 49- 
 gentleman who had held them both. Brougham gave the 
 stall to Sedgwick, and the rectory to Thirlwall. The pre- 
 ferment, as Sedgwick said, " was saved as from the fire," for 
 it was only presented to him formally on the day before 
 Brougham gave up the Great Seal. Sedgwick accepted without 
 a moment's hesitation, and, as the next letter tells us, hurried 
 through the formalities of induction with equal rapidity. 
 
 CLOSE, NORWICH, 
 
 Dec. 15, 1834. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 My poor brain is turned topsy-turvy, and my 
 memory has fled so far from me that I cannot tell to 
 whom I have written, and to whom I have not, since I 
 became Prebendary of Norwich. Here however I am, in 
 my own Residence, as good a Prebendary as you can see 
 on a winter's day, though still without a shovel hat. My 
 friends in College have been putting about a shilling sub- 
 scription to buy me a gorgeous shovel hat. I shall receive 
 it with due gratitude, and hang it on a peg to be looked 
 at, but, as to putting it on my nob, that is another question. 
 I doubt not you have heard of my appointment. Perhaps I 
 informed you of it myself. If I did, I have forgotten it. 
 One of the last acts of the ex-chancellor was to put the 
 great seal to my presentation. The very day I received the 
 notification of this act, I heard from a friend at Norwich 
 who told me that the Chapter had heard of Lord Brougham's 
 intention, and that, if I received the presentation in time, it 
 would be very agreeable to them that I should take my pre- 
 decessor's turn, which commenced on the 1st of December. 
 By so doing I should secure all the domestic arrangements 
 of the Chapter. There are six Prebendaries, and each resides 
 
 
 1 Lord Houghton in The Fortnightly Review, February, 1878. At the end 
 
 of 1833 Lord Brougham had induced Sedgwick to revise the MS. of his 
 Discourse on Natural Theology. 
 
 S. I. 28 
 
434 INSTALLATION AT NORWICH. 
 
 1834. two months. Now December and January just suit me, as 
 JEt. 49. th e greater part of these two months falls in our Christmas 
 vacation. Partly therefore on account of my Brethren of 
 the Chapter, and partly on my own private account, I lent 
 a willing ear to this suggestion went up to Town without 
 an hour's delay procured my presentation from the Chan- 
 cellor's office took an early coach to Norwich arrived on 
 Saturday, November 29, in time for the Dean's breakfast 
 took the oaths and signed* the books presented my deed 
 with the great seal affixed to the Dean after the First Lesson 
 in the morning service was formally installed in the pre- 
 sence of the congregation read in on Sunday the 3Oth 
 and commenced Residence in my own house on Monday, the 
 1st inst. Is not this doing business? My servant arrived 
 after a day or two, Lady Jane Wodehouse (the wife of 
 one of my Brother Prebendaries) provided me two excellent 
 maid servants. I have taken my predecessor's furniture and 
 wines at a valuation, and am gradually settling down into 
 my proper place. Our Residence while it lasts is severe. 
 We are not permitted to be away from our houses for a 
 single night. Attending service regularly, and preaching 
 generally once each Sunday, are duties which are looked for. 
 We have also to give certain dinners of ceremony to the 
 officers of the Cathedral. Giving and receiving dinners con- 
 stitutes a formidable service in a city like this. 
 
 What my stall may do for me in the end I cannot say, 
 but I am quite sure that for the first year it will make me 
 poorer than I have been since I knew how to spell my 
 own name. My fees and furniture will run me into debt 
 to the tune of six hundred pounds at the very least. I 
 wish some good Christian would just now give me a thou- 
 sand pounds, it would just make a poor body comfortable. 
 If my life be spared the stall will I doubt not turn out a 
 very comfortable thing. I hope I may count upon its pro- 
 ducing me nearly 600 a year. This, together with my 
 Senior Fellowship and Professorship, must surely enable me 
 
OLDEST FRIEND IN NORWICH. 435 
 
 soon to lift my head above water. My clerical employ- 1834. 
 ment here is a good thing, and I mean not to flinch from ^ 4 
 it. The preaching I spoke of is not compulsory ; but has 
 been commenced of late years by some of the new comers. 
 Pray write to me soon. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 An amusing incident respecting Sedgwick's first visit to 
 Norwich, deserves to be recorded. He called on Dean Pellew, 
 as the above letter shews, in time for an early breakfast ; and, 
 on being shewn into the drawing-room, found there his 
 daughter Minna, aged three, playing at bricks. Sedgwick 
 at once went down on his knees, and assisted her to build 
 a tower of Babel, in which occupation, the Dean, to his great 
 amusement, found his new Canon busily engaged. Sedgwick 
 never forgot either the child, or the incident, but maintained 
 a close friendship with her until his death, writing to her 
 frequently, and generally sending her a present on her birth- 
 day. These letters invariably contained either some allusion 
 to the " early lessons in architecture which you gave me," or 
 some such passage as the following : " Perhaps you think me 
 wrong in calling you my oldest friend" he says in 1850; "at 
 any rate yours is the oldest friendship which I formed in 
 Norwich ; and it has never been interrupted since I began to 
 build castles with you on your carpet on the 29th November. 
 
 1834'." 
 
 The following letter, though written two months later, 
 completes the history of Sedgwick's first experience of his 
 new dignity. 
 
 1 Among the congratulations, humorous and serious, which were showered 
 thick upon Sedgwick, may be quoted an epigram, by C. V. Le Grice. Lord 
 Brougham is supposed to have presented the Stall with the following couplet : 
 " Dear Adam, if, as I believe, 
 You'll one day wish to have an Eve, 
 Then on the Eve of such event, 
 At Norwich snug I've pitched your tent." 
 
 282 
 
436 NORWICH EXPERIENCES. 
 
 l8 34' SUNDAY EVENING, u P.M. 8 February, 1835. 
 
 i ' 49 ' My dear Ingle 1 , 
 
 After chapel I went to drink tea with Pryme, our 
 City Member, and have had a very long talk with him ; and 
 on returning to my den I just looked in upon Thirlwall, who 
 starts for Yorkshire tomorrow, at an hour when I shall pro- 
 bably be recumbent, and between a pair of sheets. He tells 
 me that he shall halt at York. I am therefore seated at the 
 desk scribbling a page, and perhaps two, which he promises 
 to convey for me as far as York, and perchance to your door. 
 You don't know him, it seems ; but it is clear that you ought 
 to know him ; and I hope this act of great benevolence on his 
 part will move your bowels, and make you friends as long as 
 you both last. 
 
 I only returned to College yesterday. My Cathedral 
 Residence ended indeed on Saturday the 3ist January ; but it 
 took me five days to pay bills, pack up odds and ends, and 
 unhook myself from a hundred little engagements. I, how- 
 ever, moved off the stocks on Thursday night halted a day 
 with Dr Bayne at Bury, arrived in Cambridge yesterday, 
 and here I am to-day (Sunday). Your letter delighted me ; 
 not because of the grease and butter which covered its first 
 page, but because it convinced me that you were enjoying 
 your oldest and best flow of animal spirits, and that you 
 could receive some pleasure from the recollection of old and 
 good days when Charles Ingle was a burly school-boy begging 
 salt at a sizar's door. My residence at Norwich forms a 
 strange episode in my history. Now that I am once again 
 in my old haunts, I can hardly believe that I have not been 
 dreaming. While there, I was in the position of Vice Dean. 
 In the absence of the Dean I was the official representative of 
 the dignity of the Chapter called upon to practice a series of 
 formal hospitalities in a queer, old-fashioned, in-and-out, ugly, 
 old, house. Several times I was afraid of being on my beam 
 
 1 The Rev. Charles Ingle was then vicar of Osbaldwick, near York. 
 
NORWICH EXPERIENCES. 437 
 
 ends ; but by some special providence I was saved from ship- 1834. 
 wreck, and am at last safe in port. Everybody was kind and &* 49- 
 hospitable; indeed I have been almost killed with kindness; 
 and all the good old Tory inhabitants of the rookery seemed 
 mightily anxious to see how such a monster as a Whig 
 Prebendary would behave at meals; and you may depend 
 upon it they have all been much built up with the sight. I 
 did, however, contrive to bring together more heretics and 
 schismatics within my walls than ever had been seen before 
 in a Prebendal house since the foundation of the Cathedral. 
 Independents and Highchurchmen were seen licking out of 
 the same fleshpots, and Quakers crossed my threshold without 
 fear and trembling. By the way some of the Quakers are my 
 delight. J. J. Gurney is an excellent and learned man, 
 brother of Mrs Fry and Mrs F. Buxton, reads Hebrew, and 
 spouts the Greek Fathers by the hour together. I don't 
 believe there is a better man living. Friend Amelia 1 you 
 know well. I like her much ; but I never dared to rumple 
 her cap in the way you mention. I have also been much 
 given to preaching, holding forth twice, and sometimes thrice, 
 on a Sunday. But, if I begin to preach now, Thirlwall will be 
 asleep. So good night and God bless you. 
 
 Yours always 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 Mrs Opie. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 (18351840.) 
 
 CAMBRIDGE OCCUPATIONS. ELECTION AT DENT. PRESENTATION 
 AT COURT. BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. SKELETON 
 OF IRISH ELK. VISIT OF AGASSIZ TO CAMBRIDGE (1835). 
 LECTURES AND SOCIETY AT NORWICH. GEOLOGICAL TOUR 
 IN DEVONSHIRE WITH MURCHISON. DEATH OF MR SIMEON 
 (1836). ILL HEALTH. PAPER ON GEOLOGY OF DEVONSHIRE. 
 CRITICISM OF BABBAGE. DEATH OF BISHOP BATHURST. 
 FOUNDATION OF COWGILL CHAPEL. GEOLOGY IN DEVON- 
 SHIRE. BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT LIVERPOOL. INUNDATION 
 OF THE WORKINGTON COLLIERY (1837). EXPLORATIONS AT 
 BARTLOW. DEVONIAN PAPER. QUEEN'S CORONATION. 
 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT NEWCASTLE. OPEN-AIR LECTURE 
 (1838). THE SILURIAN SYSTEM PUBLISHED. FOREIGN TOUR 
 WITH MURCHISON (1839). ILL HEALTH. CHELTENHAM. 
 PAPER TO GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (1840). 
 
 SEDGWICK was evidently much gratified with his first term 
 of residence at Norwich. He was conscious of having won a 
 dignified piece of preferment by his own merits, without 
 interest or favour ; he was pleased with his new friends, and 
 did not, at first, find his duties irksome. Before long, it 
 must be confessed, as the novelty of the situation wore off, 
 he became less enthusiastic, and for a while was listless and 
 ill at ease. 
 
 This can surprise no one who reflects for a moment on 
 what his previous life had been. When he became a Preben- 
 
NORWICH EXPERIENCES. 439 
 
 dary of Norwich Cathedral he was fortynine years of age, 1835. 
 and had resided in Trinity College for just thirty years. His &*. 50. 
 pursuits, his habits, his affections, were all bound up with the 
 interests of the College and the University. His intimate 
 friends, with the exception of Ainger and Murchison, were all 
 working with the same objects in view. The duties entailed by 
 his position as a Fellow and a Professor were not onerous, 
 even in term-time ; and, had he been a better economist of 
 time, he might have devoted almost as many hours as he 
 pleased in each day to his own pursuits. But at Norwich 
 he could not call a moment his own. He had to lead an 
 essentially public life ; to submit to incessant interruptions ; 
 to be at the beck and call of anybody who chose to ring his 
 bell. Even the services in the Cathedral so different from 
 those to which he had been accustomed in the college chapel- 
 were exceedingly distasteful to him. " These long services," he 
 writes, "cue my time to shreds, and destroy the spirit of 
 labour. We have the shadow of Catholicism without a grain 
 of its substance, for not one of the Chapter thinks himself 
 better for these heartless formalities, or nearer heaven. A 
 cold empty Cathedral, and a set of unwilling hirelings singing 
 prayers for an hour together. The bell tells me I must be 
 off... I am just returned, after a full hour and a half of shiver- 
 ing. And what the congregation ? One single old woman in 
 addition to the officials. As soon as my ringers are warm I 
 have to go a mile to the County Hospital to read morning 
 prayers ; for this month I am chaplain. On my return I 
 shall have time barely for a short walk (or ride if the horrid 
 weather take up) and then another long Cathedral service 
 from which I shall come home dog-tired and unfit for work 1 ." 
 These expressions, and many others that might be quoted 
 from letters written in 1836 and 1837, must not be taken too 
 literally. Still it can hardly be doubted that for some time 
 he was out of his element at Norwich. Gradually, however, 
 like a tree that has been transplanted into genial soil, he 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 25 January, 1837. 
 
440 FIELD LECTURE AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 1835. became thoroughly happy in his new surroundings ; he re- 
 t. 50. g ar ded his old-fashioned house in the Close, especially after 
 it became filled with his nephew's children as a second 
 home ; and probably no member of the Chapter performed 
 his duties, whether public or private, with so much regularity, 
 heartiness, and success. In a subsequent chapter we shall 
 throw together some reminiscences of his life in Norwich 
 which have been collected by those who knew him and loved 
 him well. These, however, will be more intelligible after 
 some of the principal persons with whom he was there 
 associated have appeared in the general narrative of his life. 
 
 Sedgwick was back in Cambridge by the end of January, 
 1835. "Since my return," he writes, "I have been almost 
 driven off my feet : lectures, college business, arrears of 
 correspondence, disagreeable domestic news involving me 
 in the botheration of lawyers' consultations, etc., etc. and 
 more than all together the oppressive consciousness of having 
 more work before me than I have any chance to get through : 
 all these causes have driven me out of my senses 1 ." Of the 
 above-mentioned lectures one, towards the end of the course, 
 was delivered in the field, a mode of instruction which under 
 Sedgwick's guidance became exceedingly popular, even with 
 those who cared nothing for geology. On this occasion a 
 cavalcade of seventy horsemen started from Cambridge, and 
 rode across the fens. Before the day was over Sedgwick had 
 given five distinct lectures; the last, on fen-drainage, from the 
 top of Ely Cathedral 2 . 
 
 In the course of this term the Senate determined upon 
 a step which must have given Sedgwick great satisfaction, 
 inasmuch as it held out a prospect, at last, of providing 
 decent accommodation for the geological collections. A 
 scheme for providing a new Library, with Museums and 
 Lecture-Rooms beneath it, after being under consideration for 
 six years, had been abandoned for want of funds. A Syndicate 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 17 Februaiy, 1835. 
 
 2 Diary of Rev. J. Romilly, 9 April, 1835. 
 
, 
 
 NEW GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM. 441 
 
 was now appointed to do what ought to have been done in 1835. 
 the first instance, namely, to solicit subscriptions. Of this &* 50. 
 Syndicate, which included all the Professors, Sedgwick was 
 a member in virtue of his office. It is hardly likely that he 
 would busy himself very actively in work which would have 
 been singularly uncongenial to a man of his temperament ; 
 but his correspondence shews that he successfully solicited a 
 few of his friends at a distance, while he himself contributed 
 the substantial donation of one hundred guineas. 
 
 Notwithstanding the distraction of these diverse occupa- 
 tions, he found time to prepare one of his most important 
 papers, On the Structure of large Mineral Masses, and to read 
 it to the Geological Society (n March), before he was called 
 to Dent by an election for the West Riding of Yorkshire. The 
 contest ended in the return of the liberal candidates, Viscount 
 Morpeth and Sir G. Strickland, to Sedgwick's great satisfac- 
 tion and amusement. To Dr Ainger, whose son, then at 
 Sedbergh School, was of the same politics as his father, he 
 wrote triumphantly : " Well ! have we not worked the Tory 
 noodles of the West Riding ? Why in the name of wonder 
 have they disturbed our fraction of the county ? I turned 
 mob-orator, and had unbounded success, so that all the music, 
 fun, and noise was on our side ; and in keeping my stiff- 
 necked Dalesmen from drinking and fighting I really think I 
 did something little short of a miracle. Before I came they 
 had (though in a good cause) shewn a little over-zeal ; and 
 your son, who came as flag-bearer of the blues in Fawcett's 
 carriage, went away, I fear, in a rather dirty envelope 1 ." To 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 18 May, 1835. It was on this occasion that Sedgwick 
 was accused of having delivered "a political harangue from the pulpit." The 
 truth was that he had told the congregation that giving a vote was a solemn duty, 
 to be discharged "as unto God and not as unto man;" and that above all they 
 must avoid the sin of intemperance. His brother John writes to a friend (27 
 November, 1835): "I am happy to say his exhortations seemed to produce 
 the effect of raising the standard of morality amongst the people ; for it is 
 a striking fact that not a drunken man was to be seen during the two days' 
 contest, amongst more than 1000 people gathered together, with about two 
 hopeless exceptions." 
 
442 POLITICAL OPINIONS. 
 
 1835. Canon Wodehouse he explained his political opinions in more 
 * 50. sober language : 
 
 " Our party came in at a canter ; and why were the Tories 
 so foolish as to start the race ? If the country is to be saved, 
 it must be by the union of such men as Morpeth and Wortley. 
 Contests such as I have witnessed put off indefinitely any 
 reasonable hopes of a broad and firm coalition of good men. 
 And who is to gain in the mean time ? The tories ? Certainly 
 not The radical party gain a cog at every movement of 
 the state machine. Tory domination, in any sense of the 
 words, is gone for ever. Yet your party can't see that ; and 
 ' think it a goodly triumph if they can ruin a whig in any 
 corner of the land. Do you think it possible that the men 
 who were joined with Sir R. Peel in the late Ministry could 
 go on with him in the measures he contemplated without 
 utterly ruining their characters ? I think not : and this at 
 least we know, that some of them started with a direct viola- 
 tion of pledges that they had given on the hustings. I don't 
 think the Whigs a strong party ; yet I hope they will be strong 
 enough to get through both Houses a good drastic measure 
 respecting the Irish Church. Till that is on some resting 
 place no Ministry can stand six months. After two or three 
 tumbles, we may perhaps live to see a coalition : but it may 
 come too late 1 . 
 
 Early in June he was called to Yorkshire again by the 
 sudden demise of Miss Sill, an old lady of fortune, who had 
 made him her executor, and as it turned out, one of her 
 residuary legatees. " For the first time in my life," he wrote, 
 " I am to be well paid for my work ; " and in fact, when the 
 accounts were made up, he found himself the fortunate 
 possessor of the thousand pounds which a short time before 
 he had wished some good Christian would give him. Before 
 leaving Cambridge he had made up his mind to attend 
 a Levee and a Drawing Room, as in duty bound, but, with 
 characteristic carelessness, he had neglected to take the steps 
 
 1 To Canon Wodehouse, 25 May, 1835. 
 
PRESENTATION AT COURT. 443 
 
 prescribed by etiquette. In this dilemma he made a diverting 1835. 
 appeal to Murchison : "A card, or notification, is to be left ^-5 
 with some person at some place, to convey some information 
 about my courtly intentions, and without these things I cannot 
 be received. Will you then do this unknown operation for 
 me ? As I am coming up partly on purpose, it would be folly 
 to fail in mere forms 1 ." The next letter shews that he did 
 not journey in vain : 
 
 TRIN. COLL., June 30, 1835. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 Now be it known to you that I reached London on 
 Tuesday, that I kissed hands at the Levee on Wednesday, 
 and that I exhibited my handsome face at the Drawing Room 
 on Thursday. In short I am now a finished courtier. 
 
 We are already beginning to hear the cry of the Installa- 
 tion 2 . Four and twenty years since I enjoyed the festivity 
 intensely. My capacity for certain noisy robust enjoyments 
 is certainly less now than it was then ; but on the whole 
 I am full as happy now as I was then ; at least so I think, 
 and I ought to know best. Yet Shakespeare says " past and 
 to come seem best, things present worst," does he not ? and 
 have not poetical generalities, like other generalities, their 
 exceptions ? Let me then remain an exception on the right 
 side. My love to your household. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick had determined to do no field-geology this year 
 until after the meeting of the British Association at Dublin 
 in August, and therefore remained at Cambridge until it was 
 time to start. On reaching Liverpool with the intention of 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 17 June, 1835. He was presented by the Lord 
 Bishop of London. 
 
 2 H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester, Chancellor of the University, had died 
 30 November, 1834; and John Jeffreys, Marquess Camden, had been elected in 
 his room without a contest, 12 December, 1834. 
 
444 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 
 
 1835. crossing by the ordinary night steamer, he found that a special 
 * 5 steamer, the William Penn, had been placed at the disposal 
 of the Association by her owners, and was to start early 
 on the following morning, Sunday, 9 August. He therefore 
 agreed to wait, and to officiate as chaplain. As they pro- 
 ceeded down the Mersey, along a new channel discovered and 
 laid down a short time before by Captain Denham, it was 
 suggested that his infant son, who happened to be on board 
 with his mother, should be baptized by the chaplain before 
 morning service. This was accordingly done; and, says an 
 eye-witness, " by one of those strange and fortuitous accidents 
 which often lend an air of romance to the realities of life, it 
 happened that just as the service began, the vessel arrived 
 close by a newly invented iron boat, bearing an apparatus 
 and a bell, which rings constantly as the boat is rocked by 
 the waves, and warns mariners of their position when fogs are 
 so thick that they cannot discern guides of any other kind ; it 
 now fairly rung the inmates of the William Penn into church, 
 and Annesley Turner Denham, aged three months, was made a 
 Christian almost within its sound." When prayers were over 
 Sedgwick preached on a text from one of the Psalms. The 
 peculiarity of the occasion gave a spur to his eloquence ; and 
 the assembled passengers, together with the crew, listened to 
 him with rapt attention while he enforced the true end of all 
 scientific and philosophical pursuits ; and from the least as well 
 as the greatest discoveries of man, traced the whole to a Being 
 of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness. A Roman Catholic 
 gentleman, who described the scene to Miss Edgeworth, had 
 tears in his eyes as he spoke of the effect the sermon had 
 produced 1 . 
 
 Sedgwick was Vice-President of the Geological Section, 
 and, conjointly with Murchison, read a paper On the Silurian 
 and Cambrian Systems, exhibiting the order in which the older 
 
 1 From Miss Edgeworth, 23 November, 1836. The rest of the account is 
 taken from The Literary Gazette for 1835, p. 513, and from a letter written by 
 Sedgwick to his brother John, 21 August, 1835. 
 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 445 
 
 Sedimentary Strata succeed each other in England and 1835. 
 Wales. The other incidents of the meeting, and Sedgwick's ^ft- 5- 
 proceedings afterwards, are related in the following letters ; 
 but he omits to record that while he was clambering along a 
 steep slope near the Giant's Causeway he lost his head, and 
 nearly fell into the sea 1 . 
 
 To Rev. John Sedgwick. 
 
 FLORENCE COURT, ENNISKILLEN, 
 August 21, 1835. 
 
 " We had a glorious passage, and such a reception 
 as has eclipsed the remembrance of all former meetings. All 
 the public bodies vied with each other in hospitalities. There 
 were no drawbacks ; the week was uninterruptedly fine, and 
 every face seemed to be suffused with happiness. More than 
 all this, all the philosophical sections were most actively and 
 successfully employed in the work for which they were called 
 together. 
 
 Tuesday I left Dublin and went as far as Cavan, through a 
 most wretched and beggarly country. I had no notion of the 
 external misery of this strange people before I saw it with 
 my own eyes ; and it contrasted painfully with the splendour 
 I had witnessed during the preceding week. Wednesday 
 brought me to Lord Enniskillen's, where I am spending the 
 remainder of the week 2 . It is a noble domain, surrounded 
 with mountains, and from the windows we have a view of 
 three magnificent lakes ; but when you quit the confines of the 
 park filth and misery are again seen on the wayside, though 
 certainly in a less offensive form than in the county of 
 Meath." 
 
 1 Geikie's Life of Mure hison, i. 231. 
 
 2 It was on this occasion that Lord Enniskillen ' ' had the satisfaction of seeing 
 Murchison and some other guest glorious, and Sedgwick comfortable." (Lyell to 
 Sedgwick, 25 October, 1835, Lyell's Life, i. 457). Lyell proceeds: "Depend 
 upon it the building of the Museum [by Viscount Cole] and subsidies for what the 
 old Lord once condemned as 'damned nonsense' will go on with good spirit, 
 after his finding that the hammer-bearers are such a jolly set." 
 
446 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 
 
 I835 . To Mr LyelL 
 
 t 50 DENT NEAR KENDAL, September 20, 1835. 
 
 I received your letter 1 in Dublin ; but as for writing, 
 I had not a moment's time ; at least, during the ten days I 
 was there. The hot weather, close packing, and perpetual 
 festivities, not to mention the serious labours of the sections 
 and general meetings, were almost the death of me ; so that 
 during the week after, which I spent with Lord Cole at his 
 father's seat, I was almost confined to the house by English 
 and Irish cholera. 
 
 Let me tell you that I read certain extracts from your 
 letter in one of our sectional meetings, and that the questions 
 you started were discussed, not, however, with much power, 
 as there was no one present, except Phillips, who had a suffi- 
 ciently specific knowledge of the subject. He doubts Des 
 Hayes' conclusion, to say the least of it; and makes fight on 
 the crag species. I was not present when the discussions 
 took place last spring at the Geological Society ; but I do 
 not believe a word about the different epochs of the crag. It 
 is all of one epoch, and, geologically speaking, not a long one, 
 at least so I think. 
 
 I was much amused at your discussions on elevation 
 craters etc. etc. with the geological conclave at Paris. I don't 
 care one fig about the question, and am disposed to think 
 that more fuss is made about it than it deserves. This may, 
 however, only arise from my ignorance of the phenomena 
 exhibited by modern volcanos. I suspect the truth is between 
 the two parties. All the protruded masses of igneous rock 
 (granite, porphyry etc.) constantly produce that collocation 
 of stratified masses which is presented by the so-called craters 
 of elevation. Why should not the local elevatory forces do 
 over again what they have formerly done ? I have of course 
 read your paper 2 published in the Philosophical Transactions, 
 
 1 The letter, printed in Lyell's Life, i. 450, gives an account of some shells 
 from a bed in the Suffolk Crag, supposed of older date than the upper Crag. 
 
 2 On the Proofs of a gradual Rising of the Land in certain parts of Sweden : 
 Phil. Trans. 1835, pp. 138. 
 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 447 
 
 and was by no means surprised at the fact of the travelled 1835. 
 blocks of the north of Europe belonging to a very recent ^- so- 
 period. This is what I should have expected. Your ice 
 theory will, I think, only let you slip into the water, and give 
 you a good ducking. Erratic blocks are diffused in latitudes 
 where there are no icebergs, and never were. How do you 
 get your icebergs to shove the Shap Granite over Stainmoor to 
 the Yorkshire coast ; or the Wastdale Granite across More- 
 cambe Bay, over the plains of Cheshire, to the Derbyshire 
 hills, and the outskirts of the Welsh mountains? I think I 
 have ascertained this summer that the greatest part of the 
 erratic blocks in the south of England have passed over marl 
 beds full of recent marine species. But of this by the way. 
 
 Agassiz joined us at Dublin, and read a long paper at our 
 section. But what think you ? Instead of teaching us what 
 we wanted to know, and giving us of the overflowing of his 
 abundant ichthyological wealth, he read a long stupid hypo- 
 thetical dissertation on geology, drawn from the depths of 
 his ignorance. And among other marvels he told us that 
 each formation (e.g. the lias and the chalk) was formed at 
 one moment by a catastrophe, and that the fossils were by 
 such catastrophes brought from some unknown region, and 
 deposited where we find them. When he sat down I brought 
 him up again by some specific questions about his ichthyo- 
 logical system, and then he both instructed and amused us. 
 I hope we shall before long be able to get this moonshine out 
 of his head, or at least prevent him from publishing it. His 
 great work is going on admirably well, and we voted another 
 hundred pounds in promotion of it. I think it is by far 
 the most important work now on hand in the geological 
 world. 
 
 Griffith 1 exhibited a geological map of the whole of 
 Ireland, coloured from his own observations. It is a thousand 
 pities he did not publish it fourteen years since. As far as I 
 
 1 Mr (afterwards Sir Richard) Griffith. Report of British Association, 1835, 
 p. 56. 
 
448 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT DUBLIN. 
 
 1835. have examined the demarcations, they appear to be very well 
 *- 5- laid down much more correctly I think than in our friend 
 Greenough's first edition 1 . The description and discussion 
 of this map took two mornings. The only new zoological 
 fact brought to light was the existence of fossil fish in the 
 New Red Sandstone of the north of Ireland. Murchison 
 threw off one morning on his Silurian System ; and I followed 
 on the lower division of the Cambrian rocks. Phillips read 
 two elaborate papers on the distribution of the Astacidce and 
 Belemnites in our secondary strata. That on the Astacidce 
 was, as far as I was able to judge, admirable. The paper on 
 Belemnites was not perhaps quite so well worked out. There 
 were several papers on local details connected with Irish 
 Geology some of them good of the kind. We had one 
 ignorant and impudent paper by a Mr Williams on the coal 
 deposits of North Devon 2 , whkh he refers, like De la Beche, 
 to the greywack^. Murchison is gone to have a brush at it, 
 and I suspect strongly will succeed in turning it out of the 
 older system, and putting it where it ought to be. I am the 
 more inclined to this belief now, as he has proved De la 
 Beche to be wrong in a part of Pembrokeshire where he has 
 coloured a part of the undoubted coal-measures as grey- 
 wacke. 
 
 Since I left Florence Court I have had (along with Mr 
 and Mrs Murchison, Lord Cole, Colonel Montgomery, and 
 Mr Griffith) a delightful ramble along the coast of Antrim ; 
 and on my return to this place halted a few days with Sir 
 Philip Egerton 3 . The weather has been glorious though 
 terrifically hot ; but now it is both wet . and cold, and will 
 continue so among the mountains till these equinoctial blasts 
 pass over. 
 
 1 Geological Map of England and Wales, with a Memoir. By G. B. Greenough. 
 Lond. 1819. 
 
 2 On certain Fossil Plants from the opposite Shores of the Bristol Channel. By 
 the Rev. David Williams. Brit. Ass. Report 1835, (Sections) p. 63. 
 
 3 Sir Philip de Malpas Grey-Egerton, Bart. F.R.S., a distinguished geologist, 
 resided at Oulton Park, Tarporley, Cheshire. He died 5 April, 1881. 
 
SKELETON OF IRISH ELK. 449 
 
 In this year Sedgwick succeeded in obtaining for his 1835. 
 Museum an almost complete skeleton of the extinct Elk &* 5<>- 
 (Cervus megaceros) commonly called the Irish Elk. In the 
 autumn of 1834 he had heard, through Lord Cole, of a fine 
 skeleton which had been discovered in a bog near Ennis- 
 corthy. It had passed into the possession of Dr Macartney, 
 a medical man of that town, but it was understood that he 
 might be persuaded to part with it. Sedgwick, who was then 
 at Edinburgh, lost no time in -ascertaining what help he 
 might expect from the Woodwardian trustees, and then wrote 
 to Lord Cole : 
 
 " I have heard from our Vice-Chancellor about the great 
 Irish fossil, and he wishes me to say that he will help me to 
 the tune of ;ioo, provided it be not the skeleton of an Irish 
 Bull. With this encouragement, I wish you to consider me 
 as a customer, but every farthing beyond ^100 will probably 
 have to come out of my own pocket, including expenses and 
 carriage. Therefore pray have mercy on a poor body, and 
 don't screw him to death. If I can do no way else (for by 
 the powers I don't think I can raise the wind myself) I must 
 raise a subscription among my friends to lift me out of the 
 bog. I hope your correspondent will think ;no a good 
 offer. As a good Yorkshireman, I hate to buy a pig in a 
 poke, but I trust to the faithfulness of the account given by a 
 person whom you consider of a respectable character, and 
 incapable of imposing on us by a false description 1 ." 
 
 In the course of 1835 several letters passed between 
 Sedgwick and Dr Macartney, whose reluctance to part with 
 his prize increased as the time for packing it up drew near, 
 and it was finally settled that the price to be paid should be 
 140, inclusive of the cost of packing and carriage to Dublin. 
 In justification of this large sum Dr Macartney urged that the 
 skeleton was an exceptionally fine one, and that as the bones 
 had been found close together there was " reason to conclude 
 
 1 To Viscount Cole, 12 September, 1834. 
 
 s. i. 29 
 
450 SKELETON OF IRISH ELK. 
 
 1835. they all belong to the same individual 1 ." As the Wood- 
 t. 50. W ardian Museum of that day was too small to contain so 
 large a specimen, the bones were confided to the care of 
 Professor Clark. Sedgwick was still absent when the cases 
 arrived at Cambridge, and on his return was horrified to find 
 the animal tailless. On this defect he wrote " a doleful letter 
 of inquiry " 2 to Lord Cole : 
 
 FLORENCE COURT {erased}. 
 TRIN. COLL., CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 October 23^ 1835. 
 Dear Lord Cole, 
 
 What a scatterbrain I must be to begin my date 
 with Florence Court ! Expunge the two first words, and you 
 will find me where I really am, in Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 But why am I troubling your Lordship ? I will tell you. 
 I reached Cambridge yesterday, and went to our Anatomical 
 Professor, to whose care the Enniscorthy Bog beast was 
 committed. It has turned out most beautifully horns, head, 
 legs, and body, but, horrible to tell, the tail is wanting ! The 
 straw in the packing-cases was examined with the utmost 
 care, and not one single caudal vertebra was found skulking 
 in it. This has put me at my wits end. The very sight of 
 my stump-tailed beast has given me a sympathetic sciatica 
 a horrible tic in the regions of the rump which wrings groans 
 from me enough to melt the heart of a flint ! Perhaps 
 Dr Macartney can administer a sedative. In plain English 
 then, had the beast a tail? if so, where is the tail now? 
 When the second question is answered, how am I to get the 
 said tail ? These are grave questions, and I should be greatly 
 obliged to you to put them gravely to the Doctor. His 
 honour is concerned in seeing that my beast is not funda- 
 mentally at fault. If I knew his address I might try to put 
 salt on his tail myself, but he told me he was about to quit 
 
 1 From Dr Macartney, 6 May, 1835. The Woodwardian trustees paid 130 ; 
 the rest was probably paid by Sedgwick. 
 
 2 To Sir Philip Egerton, 23 October, 1835. 
 
VISIT FROM AGASSIZ. 451 
 
 his old den, and I wish not to send my salt to a wrong 1835. 
 market. Do therefore lend me a helping hand in my hour of &* 5o- 
 need. My lectures begin on Monday, so for the next month 
 I shall be fixed down in this place, and shall hope to hear 
 from you, and that you will have the humanity to pity my 
 case, and give me my cue (quetie). 
 
 Present my best remembrances to your father, whose hospi- 
 tality and kindness I must ever remember with gratitude. 
 
 Ever most truly yours, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 In answer to this letter Lord Cole undertook to do what 
 he could ; and, as the skeleton can now boast of a proper tail, 
 it may be concluded that either the requisite number of 
 vertebrae were found in Dr Macartney's possession, or ex- 
 tracted from one of the numerous bogs in Ireland where 
 these gigantic stags are still plentiful. 
 
 Early in the Michaelmas term Sedgwick had the pleasure, 
 so long deferred, of receiving Agassiz in Cambridge. Soon 
 after his return he had written : " I am once more settled 
 in the University, and have buckled on my harness ; and 
 my fish are all gaping in expectation of seeing their great 
 law-giver." At last, 2 November, the famous ichthyologist 
 arrived. No account of the visit has been preserved, but it is 
 interesting to know that the collection of fossil fishes which 
 Sedgwick's energy had got together in the Woodwardian 
 Museum was laid under contribution for the Recherches sur 
 les Poissons fossiles, on which Agassiz was then engaged. 
 That such was the case is evident from a subsequent letter, 
 undated, in which Sedgwick enquires : " When are my fossils 
 to be drawn ? My fish are gaping for the artist, and scolding 
 him for his long neglect of their beauteous faces." 
 
 In December Sedgwick left Cambridge for his second 
 term of residence at Norwich. Some months previously the 
 authorities of the Museum had asked him to deliver a course 
 of geological lectures during the winter, and he had acceded 
 
 292 
 
452 LECTURES AT NORWICH. 
 
 836. to their wishes, without due consideration of the difficulties of 
 * 5 1 - the task. " I wish very much you would come to my first 
 lecture this evening," he writes to Canon Wodehouse, " if you 
 can do so conveniently. I shall want your advice on more 
 points than one ; about the length, topics, points, etc. etc. of 
 my pattern lecture. I don't know my audience, and therefore 
 I want to feel my way. Geology introduces some tender 
 topics which require delicate handling. I must speak truth, 
 but by all means avoid offence if I can. Above all I must 
 try not to make my lecture a bore, which may be done easily 
 in two ways by firing over their heads, or by running out to 
 an unwarrantable length." We shall recur to these lectures 
 in a subsequent chapter ; for the present it is sufficient to say 
 that the dangers enumerated in the above letter were avoided, 
 and that the interest shewn by everybody, and especially 
 by the ladies of Norwich, was so great that at the end 
 of the course he could report : " I have had a merry 
 time of it at Norwich. Among other amusements I gave a 
 course of geological lectures to a class of three or four 
 hundred. Half the stockings in Norwich are turned blue 
 in consequence 1 ." These sentences were written after the 
 event, when distance was lending enchantment to the view 
 of a successful achievement. But, while the course was still 
 proceeding, Sedgwick was in a very different frame of mind. 
 His anxiety may be measured by the ill-humour of the 
 following passages from a letter to Murchison : 
 
 NORWICH, January 15, 1836. 
 
 " I am looking forward to my return to my old den and 
 old habits with some anxiety, as I am almost worked off my 
 legs in this place, and tired of the life I am leading, but it 
 is not a life of mere eating and drinking, as you seem to 
 fancy. Each Sunday I have to attend three services, and to 
 preach twice. My sermons cost me some trouble, and towards 
 the end of the week I have to rise at six in order to find two 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 19 February, 1836. 
 
SOCIETY AT NORWICH. 453 
 
 or three hours I may call my own. Besides, I am giving a 1836. 
 short course of lectures which cost me much trouble. I state ^- 5 X< 
 these things as an explanation why I have not looked over 
 your MS. I have not done your work, solely because I have 
 not had time ; and for the same reason I have not done my 
 own work. I don't think I am a selfish person. Last year I 
 did nothing for myself, but I was working (a considerable 
 part of it) very hard for other people. If you knew the time 
 I had given up to my friends I believe you would be disposed 
 to set me down for a fool. With such convictions on my mind 
 I felt both hurt and angry at some expressions in your letter. 
 You say if I won't do your wishes 'you must pocket the 
 affront'. Now you have no right to talk of being affronted 
 because I have not time to do all you wish. If I am to see 
 this or any other MS. on such conditions, I must formally and 
 positively decline the task. You sent me work enough for 
 three or four entire days. Had they been at my disposal I 
 should have given them to the task with very great pleasure ; 
 but they have not, and so there is an end of the matter. I 
 will look over the preface as soon as I can and return the 
 bundle." 
 
 The hardworked Canon had, however, some compen- 
 sations. About ten days after the above letter was written 
 Mr Romilly spent a week with him, and his diary affords 
 us some charming glimpses of Sedgwick in his lighter 
 moments, when he threw lectures and sermons to the winds, 
 and surrendered himself unreservedly to the company in which 
 he took especial delight that of ladies and young people. 
 We have already heard of his introduction to the Dean's 
 daughter, his " oldest friend in Norwich," and now, thanks to 
 Mr Romilly, we make the acquaintance of Miss Clarke, who, 
 down to nearly the close of Sedgwick's life, held a foremost 
 place among his lady friends. In after years, as Mrs Guthrie, 
 she was widely known for her beauty, her wit, and her active 
 benevolence; but in 1836, when she was barely twenty-one, 
 
454 SOCIETY AT NORWICH. 
 
 1836. with her naturally high spirits unchecked by sorrow or respect 
 Et- 51. for convention, she was evidently the spoilt child of Norwich 
 in general and of Sedgwick in particular. Her sister had 
 married Captain Willoughby Moore of the Enniskillen 
 Dragoons, and when the regiment was quartered at Norwich, 
 Sedgwick, as Canon in residence, called upon the officers. It 
 is conceivable that in Miss Clarke's eyes the Woodwardian 
 Professor might have been more amusing than the Bishop or 
 the Dean ; and that he in his turn found more congenial 
 relaxation in her natural gaiety than in the more artificial 
 courtesies of the matrons of the Cathedral precincts. What- 
 ever their common ground for friendship may have been in 
 the first instance, they were on a footing of close intimacy 
 when Mr Romilly arrived. His first visit was to " Mrs Moore 
 and her charming sister Miss Caroline Clarke (Sedgwick calls 
 her Cara, or Carissima) who is a most fascinating creature. 
 She does not look above eighteen, but she comes of age next 
 February." Presently it was time to go out riding, then a 
 matter of almost daily occurrence, and some officers joined 
 them. " Sedgwick " we read, " was in tearing spirits. By 
 their noise and laughter they attracted a great crowd, who 
 shouted on seeing them charge down the street." During 
 the rest of the visit Miss Clarke's name constantly recurs : 
 in the evening she draws caricatures of Sedgwick's figure 
 on horseback ; next morning she comes to breakfast with 
 him dressed as a Quakeress, and plays her part admirably, 
 to the " infinite delight " of her host and his friend ; on 
 another occasion she dons a gown and cassock, and per- 
 sonates, first Sedgwick, and then an old shuffling canon. 
 " It was vastly comical," says the narrator. Lastly, he 
 describes a gathering in Sedgwick's house, with Lady Jane 
 Wodehouse and her children, who were dressed up as a Turk 
 and his hareem by Miss Clarke, while Sedgwick exhibited 
 a magic lantern. 
 
 Amid these diversions Sedgwick's residence came to an 
 end, and he soon after returned to his Professorial duties at 
 
JOURNEY TO DENT. 455 
 
 Cambridge. But his lectures had hardly begun before he was 1836. 
 compelled to adjourn them sine die, and hurry down to Dent ^ 5 
 to discharge his duties as executor 1 . 
 
 DENT, February 24^, 1836. 
 My dear Murchison, 
 
 I have been here ever since Saturday week ; up to 
 the ears in papers, and muddling my poor brain in accounts, 
 some of them of thirty years standing. At first I was in 
 despair ; but by working very hard, ten or eleven hours a day, 
 I begin to see light, and to comprehend the nature of the task 
 that has fallen on me. My poor co-executor is on his death- 
 bed, unable to put pen to paper, and may die any hour. I 
 am lingering from day to day, waiting the event which will 
 enable me to transact some very important business by my 
 single signature. My position is most uncomfortable, as my 
 lectures ought at this very time to be going on in Cambridge. 
 Could you send me a single line ? How are you getting on 
 with your book? How did the Anniversary go off? Was 
 our President [LyellJ very eloquent ? etc. etc. 
 
 My adventures during the last stage before I reached Dent 
 were laughable enough. I took a post-chaise from Kirkby 
 Lonsdale and was deluded to attempt the high, rugged, 
 mountain-road ; but it was so dark and misty, accompanied 
 with sleet and wind, that the driver twice got off the road, 
 and the post-chaise was once on its side, though easily 
 righted. This I did not like, so I mounted by the side of my 
 Jehu, and before ten minutes were over we again missed the 
 road, and were within an ace of rolling neck and crop into a 
 hollow made by one of the mountain-streams. With some 
 difficulty we got the horses again into the old wheel-tracks, 
 for there was hardly the appearance of a formed road. I 
 then took out one of the lamps, and walked for seven miles 
 with a hairy cap on my head, and a boa about my neck, 
 all bespattered with sleet and snow, and looking like an old 
 grizzly watchman. The driver followed my light, and I led 
 
 1 See above, p. 442. 
 
456 VISIT FROM MISS CLARKE. 
 
 1836. him safely to the top of the pass which overhangs my native 
 * S 1 - valley. All's well that ends well. My friends gave me a 
 hearty welcome and a blazing fire. With them I have re- 
 mained ever since, with the exception of two walks to Sed- 
 bergh, for the purpose of talking with a solicitor, and bringing 
 home a cart-load of papers. I never thought this calamity 
 would have befallen me. I was intended for the sleeping 
 partner ; all I meant to do was to come down to sign papers 
 
 and receive money. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Early in March Sedgwick was back in Cambridge, and 
 announced the continuation of his lectures ; but before many 
 days were over the gaieties of Norwich were resumed in 
 Trinity College. Here again Mr Romilly is our guide : 
 
 Wednesday, 9 March, 1836. At two o'clock arrived from Norwich 
 Captain Moore and the fascinating Miss Clarke. I was not present 
 at the arrival, but came a few minutes after to Sedgwick's rooms to 
 lunch. I found the brilliant "young person," as she sometimes calls 
 herself, sparkling with joy. After no long time Whewell came in, 
 and we proceeded to the Senate House and King's Chapel. We went 
 to the top of the chapel, and between the roofs. At six we dined with 
 Sedgwick ; a small party of six Sedgwick, Cara, Moore, Whewell, 
 Lodge, and I. It was very delightful. 
 
 Thursday, 10 March. Breakfasted with Whewell to meet Sedg- 
 wick and his guests. Then to our Library, and afterwards to 
 Sedgwick's Museum. At six we dined with Sedgwick to meet a 
 large party. When Sedgwick took the ladies into the drawing-room 
 after dinner they locked the door upon him, and would not let him 
 out till he had sung them a song. He sang an odd one : An 
 Alderman lived in the City ; omitting however the most objectionable 
 verse. Heard afterwards that Carissima, while with the other ladies, 
 won all their admiration by her charming conversation. She sang 
 them two songs. 
 
 Friday, n March. Breakfasted with the Marchesa 1 to meet 
 Sedgwick and his guests; Worsley 2 and Whewell also there. We 
 
 1 The Marquis Spineto was at that time Teacher of the Italian Language to the 
 University. He and his wife, a Scotch lady of good family, were extremely popular 
 at Cambridge fifty years ago. 
 
 2 Thomas Worsley, Trin. Coll. B.A., 1820. In 1824 he became Fellow of 
 Downing, and in 1836 Master, an office which he held till his death in 1885. He 
 was intimate with many of the Fellows of Trinity, but especially with Whewell. 
 
VISIT FROM MISS CLARKE. 457 
 
 then lionized Jesus Chapel, the Mesman 1 and Fitzwilliam 2 galleries. 1836. 
 After this there was a grand cavalcade consisting of Miss C., Moore, ^t. 51. 
 Sedgwick, Whewell and Worsley. On Parker's Piece a dog barked at 
 Miss C.'s horse, and flew up at her habit which was waving in the 
 wind. Moore dismounted, and lashed the poor dog severely, at 
 which our tender-hearted fascination cried bitterly. The party dined 
 with me. 
 
 Saturday ', 12 March. Breakfast with Sedgwick and his two 
 guests a partie quarree. Today Sedgwick had to lecture, so Miss 
 C. spent an hour in the Public Library, and then paid a second visit 
 to the Fitzwilliam Museum to admire Claude's Liber Veritatis under 
 the exhibition of Worsley. Sedgwick joined us on our road to 
 Worsley's, where we all lunched. 
 
 Sunday, 13 March. We breakfasted with Whewell. Sedgwick, 
 Miss C., and Moore went to church at Simeon's, and heard a good 
 and characteristic sermon from him. Dined with Sedgwick at four. 
 Whewell was the fifth person. We went to Chapel, and heard that 
 beautiful anthem Plead thou my cause, from one of Mozart's 
 Masses. After the service Sedgwick had desired Walmisley to play 
 the Dead March in Saul, the Minuet in Ariadne, etc. We, of 
 course, stayed these out. After tea Whewell exhibited some books 
 of the architecture of the Alhambra, and of some churches in 
 Germany, and gave us a capital lecture on Saracenic and Gothic 
 architecture. In spite of this, however, the evening went off languidly, 
 as we knew to-morrow morning came the parting. 
 
 Monday, 14 March. Breakfast with Sedgwick partie carr'ee. 
 Our fair visitor was out of spirits, and we most sorry to lose her. 
 She and Moore went away to London by the Telegraph. The 
 departure of so fascinating a creature has left a sad blank in our 
 existence. 
 
 The next three months were taken up with work which 
 needs no special comment the examination for scholarships 
 in Trinity College, geological business in London, Chapter 
 business at Norwich, and a hasty visit to Dent for the marriage 
 of his sister Margaret. 
 
 Towards the end of June Sedgwick and Murchison broke 
 ground together in a new field of geological exploration. For 
 several seasons in succession they had been at work contem- 
 
 1 A collection of pictures formed by Daniel Mesman, Esq. They came into 
 the possession of the University in 1834, the donor's brother, the Rev. Charles 
 Mesman, having renounced his life-interest in them. They were hung in the 
 large room of the Pitt Press, now the Registry of the University, from 1834 to 
 1848, when they were removed to the Fitzwilliam Museum. 
 
 2 The Fitzwilliam Collections then occupied the old Perse School in Free 
 School Lane. 
 
458 WITH MURCHISON IN DEVONSHIRE. 
 
 1836. poraneously but independently among the older rocks, and 
 Et. 51. though Whewell, when President of the Geological Society, 
 had spoken of their labours as "on all accounts to be considered 
 as a joint undertaking," they had, in fact, started from wholly 
 different points, and employed different methods. Nor is 
 there any evidence that they themselves considered that they 
 were working with a common end in view. Now, however, 
 they combined their forces, and brought them to bear on a 
 disputed question outside the special fields in which each 
 had been engaged. Their labours ended in the establishment 
 of the Devonian System, but, when they began, they had no 
 such ambitious views. They proposed to themselves to settle 
 the age of the carboniferous deposits of central Devon, known 
 as the Culm-Measures. These rocks had been referred to the 
 grey-wacke by Mr De la Beche in 1834, and again by Mr 
 Williams at the Dublin meeting of the British Association 
 in I835 1 . Murchison therefore suggested to Sedgwick, or 
 possibly Sedgwick suggested to Murchison, that they should 
 take this work in hand conjointly, and get the question settled. 
 The matter had probably been often discussed in conversation ; 
 and soon after Sedgwick's return to Cambridge from Norwich 
 in February 1836 he drew out a geological itinerary for the 
 
 next summer : 
 
 TRIN. COLL. 6 February, 1836. 
 
 "I am anxious to talk with you on many things 
 Whewell tells me you have ratted to the iceberg theory. 
 I give you joy of your conversion ; but the sooner you turn 
 back the better ; or rather, scamper round the hypothetical 
 ring and come again to the grand stand, and you will be 
 where you were before. 
 
 " I want to talk about a plan for next summer. What do 
 you say to an early start (middle of May?)? First: Quan- 
 tocks and Horner's country, with plenty of calcareous beds 
 and organics. Secondly: South Devon and a few points in 
 
 1 See above, p. 448. Murchison appears not to have gone to Devonshire in 
 1835 as Sedgwick expected. Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 231. The above 
 account is borrowed from Mr Geikie's work, p. 248. 
 
WITH MURCHISON IN DEVONSHIRE. 459 
 
 Cornwall, working the Plymouth beds well by the way. In 1836. 
 Cornwall I could put you into cover, and we could floor all -^t. 51, 
 the cross points in a week or two, and we might meet De la 
 Beche and Boase at a point or two. Thirdly: return by 
 North Devon, see the Ilfracombe calcareous beds and ... grey- 
 wacke coalfield ... 1 . Fourthly: cross and meet Griffith in 
 the south of Ireland, and touch up a Silurian point or two. 
 Fifthly: make a long scud and go to Scotland about the 
 Mull of Galloway, and run up the west coast examining the 
 coalfield and Red Sandstone, and so working up to the Old 
 Red through the part we left unfinished in 1827. All this we 
 might finish, and find good matter for one or two general 
 papers. I think this a good plan. What say you to it ?" 
 
 It is almost needless to say that this very comprehensive 
 scheme was not carried out. The two friends started in June, 
 and approached their work by way of Somersetshire, Ilfra- 
 combe, and Barnstaple 2 . What had been accomplished up to 
 the middle of July is pleasantly touched upon in the following 
 letter to Canon Wodehouse. 
 
 PLYMOUTH, July 20, 1836. 
 My dear Wodehouse, 
 
 To catch a letter from a geologist when under way 
 is about as easy as to catch a spark from the tail of a rocket. 
 Our lights are, however, quenched by a pelting shower, and 
 here we are in shelter, with a tea urn hissing on the table, 
 and some broiled fish within nostril scent. How long they 
 will remain in their present position before they pass down 
 the Gulf Stream remains to be seen. To leave, however, 
 such sensual, epicurean, topics let me tell you that I have 
 been zigzagging through the N. W. coast of Somerset ; pound- 
 ing the sides of N. Devon, and burrowing through Dartmoor 
 to this place. Murchison, whom you know by name, is my 
 fellow-labourer. As you care less than nothing about things 
 
 1 A piece of the letter has been unfortunately cut out, for the sake of the sig- 
 nature. 
 
 2 Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 250. 
 
460 WITH MURCHISON IN DEVONSHIRE. 
 
 1836. under the earth I will not torment you with any account of 
 Et. 51. our excursions to the earth's centre (a right merry region, for 
 there you know the operations of gravity are suspended), or 
 our traverse to the antipodes. 
 
 Suffice it then to say that on passing through Ilfracombe I 
 tapped at the Post Office window and found a letter from the 
 Dean of Norwich, which told me many things, and among the 
 rest informed me that you were out of health. Now, my dear 
 Brother, though it be quite true that geologists get very crusty 
 on the outside, don't suppose that their bowels are ever petri- 
 fied. I was very sorry to hear the news of your illness, and I 
 avail myself of the first moment of leisure (and it is but a 
 moment) to tell you so, and to beg of you to write to me 
 above all to tell me you are quite well again. Any tit-bit of 
 Norwich news will be delightful, and any fireside news will be 
 most welcome. How is little Boppity ? How is William ? 
 How Mrs Bunch ? and how all the rest in the ascending 
 order, till we mount to Charles the First ? Lady Jane is, I 
 hope, quite well. What a charming thing to have such a 
 kind nurse! If I had a wife I would sham ill now and then 
 in order that she might make a pet of me. 
 
 It is raining worse than ever, but I must finish this sheet 
 in order that I may finish my breakfast, and go with my 
 impatient friend to a Museum, the keeper of which is waiting 
 for us. My kindest remembrances to Lady Jane, and my 
 love to all your children. 
 
 Your affectionate friend 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 No further information respecting their route or their 
 proceedings has been preserved, but when the British Associa- 
 tion met at Bristol in August they were able to present to 
 the Geological Section A classification of the old Slate Rocks 
 of the North of Devonshire, and on the true position of the 
 Culm deposits in the central portion of that County. In this 
 communication they shewed that the Culm-Measures lay at 
 
VISIT TO MR CROSSE. 461 
 
 the top of the rocks afterwards named by them Devonian, 1836. 
 and belonged to the carboniferous system. The work they tm 5I 
 had accomplished so far made them desirous of undertaking 
 a more extended research into the structure of Devonshire; 
 and Murchison being called away by the state of his mother's 
 health, Sedgwick set out for Devonshire alone, much exhausted 
 by the week's work at Bristol, and eager for fresh air 1 . 
 
 On his way from Bristol to Exeter he stayed a night at 
 Broomfield with Mr Andrew Crosse, who had made a com- 
 munication to the Association "on the effect of long-continued 
 galvanic action of low intensity in forming crystals and 
 other substances analogous to natural minerals 2 ." Sedgwick 
 writes of this visit : " Spent the morning in Mr Crosse's 
 laboratory ; splendid experiments ; but in two respects dis- 
 appointed neither the variation in diurnal intensity, nor the 
 effect of light on the galvanic process of making crystals, are 
 I think proven. For the variation of intensity Crosse depends 
 on his sensations a bad mode of measuring, as the effect may 
 depend on a variation of nervous susceptibility. I hope some 
 better test may make the fact out ; but it is not yet proven 3 ." 
 
 After leaving Exeter he was joined by Mr Austen 4 , a young 
 geologist whom he describes as " a clever, good, independent, 
 workman ; " and in his company made further investigations 
 into the extent and relations of the Culm-Measures. This 
 necessary work despatched, Mr Austen returned home, and 
 Sedgwick went alone into Cornwall, chiefly examining the 
 coast-line. The letters in which he informed Murchison of 
 what he was doing are too technical for reproduction here ; 
 and the results will be best noticed when we come to speak 
 of their scientific value. A single letter to Whewell, whom 
 he had met last at Bristol, gives a graphic resumJ of his 
 personal discomforts. 
 
 1 To Canon Wodehouse, 29 August, 1836. 
 
 2 Report of British Association, 1836, p. 47. 
 
 3 To R. I. Murchison, September, 1836. 
 
 4 Robert Alfred Cloyne Austen, afterwards Godwin-Austen. 
 
462 COAST OF CORNWALL. 
 
 1836. CAMELFORD, October ^th, 1836. 
 
 " Here I am on my way homewards ; but I have 
 still much work to do, and I have very little time to effect 
 it. What is worse, I have the prospect of broken weather. 
 Could I engage ten fine days I could then leave the country 
 with clean hands.... Since we parted I have been very busy. 
 One day with that lightning-monger Crosse; a day among 
 the whetstone pits; many days on the east side of Dartmoor, 
 where I traced the Culm-Measures as far as Newton Bushell. 
 Then I passed along the south coast of Devon, retouching 
 points Murchison and I had touched before. From Devon I 
 went to the coast of Cornwall, and paced my way through the 
 wild and rugged cliffs in the old fashion, with horse and 
 
 panniers The rain disagrees with me, and I have twice been 
 
 laid up, and forced to call in a doctor. I traced organic 
 remains almost all the way from Plymouth to the Lizard. 
 They abound on the north coast, and such raised beaches ! 
 they are enough to make your mouth water. The sea has 
 changed its relative level in some places by 30 or 40 feet, and 
 old waterworn strands may be seen up in the cliff as plain as 
 the nose on your face. To-morrow I take a peep at the point 
 on the coast (about five miles from this place) where the 
 Culm-Measures abut against the Cornish slates. Having 
 made good the demarcation in this county I hope to move 
 on to Devonshire, and track my way along the northern 
 skirts of Dartmoor." 
 
 On the day before Sedgwick wrote this letter, Whewell 
 had put to him the important question, Should he, or should 
 he not, agree to become President of the Geological Society ? 
 The question and the answer are as follows : 
 
 LONDON, October 6, 1836. 
 My dear Sedgwick, 
 
 I have just seen Murchison, who has given me such 
 notice of your whereabouts as he thinks will enable me to hit you at 
 a long shot. He tells me that you go on setting the strata of 
 Devonshire to rights, which is good ; but he tells me that you have 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH W HE WELL. 463 
 
 had bad health, which I grieve much to hear. Pray take care of 1836. 
 yourself, and avoid hard work, bad weather, and Dr Sedgwick's ^ t> 5Ii 
 physic. Consider that the two former cannot be expected to agree 
 with a rosy prebendary, as they did with a lean geologist, and that 
 the doctor in question knows too much of other things to make his 
 prescriptions good for anything. 
 
 I want very much to have your advice and opinion on a point on 
 which it will have great weight with everybody, and with me will be 
 decisive. Your leading geologists think they see strong reasons for 
 not taking Buckland for their president next year, and are at a loss 
 whom to pitch upon. Now it appears to me that if, in this embarass- 
 ment, they are tempted to turn their eyes to a person who is not a 
 geologist, and who cannot be supposed, by any one acquainted with 
 the subject, to have any detailed geological knowledge, they will lose 
 that eminence and respect which has hitherto belonged to the office 
 in the geological world of Europe. And, if they were likely to do 
 this, I think that no private regards would prevent your giving your 
 opinion against such a step. The case in short is, that Murchison 
 and Lyell have proposed the office to me ; and the extreme pleasure 
 which I cannot but feel at finding it possible that such a proposition 
 should have entered anybody's head, is dashed by my own conscious- 
 ness of my want of the qualifications which I think are requisite. I 
 am not going to trouble you with disqualifying speeches, nor need I 
 tell you, I think, what I think of the Society and the office. I hold 
 it to be a dignity much superior to that of President of the Royal 
 Society. And I want to fortify myself, by your authority, that it 
 demands a person more professedly and notoriously versed in geology 
 than I am. I should be very much obliged to you to write to me 
 about this as soon as you can ; and if you think, as it appears to me 
 that you must think, that I am not the proper person for your 
 generalissimo, you will of course make no scruple of saying so, and I 
 will then put an end to all further thoughts of this scheme. You need 
 not fear hurting my vanity by telling me that I ought not to have 
 the presidentship ; for I am quite sufficiently gratified by the opinion 
 which the proposal implies in such men as Murchison and Lyell to 
 need no humouring in the mode of telling me what I know to be 
 true. So there is my case for you, and now let me have your 
 advice. 
 
 Always yours truly 
 
 W. WHEWELL. 
 
 LAUNCESTON, October \2th, 1836. 
 My dear Whewell, 
 
 Here I am, and when I shall be able to budge I 
 know not, for the elements are in most dreadful disorder. 
 Thank God ! I am now well, though I have had one or two 
 severe attacks brought on by fatigue and bad weather. By 
 
464 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WHEWELL. 
 
 1836. working hard between showers and storms I have done a great 
 * 5 1 - deal of good work, and fixed many geological land-marks, which 
 will, I hope, stand all weathers. Were the sky to clear I could 
 rub off my score in about three days ; and it would vex me to 
 the very marrow of my bones to quit this country without 
 settling the boundary of the Culm basin. But to business, for it 
 is rather late, and I am very much tired, having been twice 
 half-drowned since I started in the morning. 
 
 Don't hesitate one instant, Mr President elect. Did you 
 not pick geological rubbish out of my eyes in 1820 ? Have 
 you not figured in the mines of Cornwall ? Have you not 
 drawn the granite veins in a way that would do honour to 
 Michael Angelo 1 ? Have you not been Professor of Mineralogy ? 
 Have you not given the only philosophical view of that science 
 that exists in our language 2 ? Have you not written the 
 best review of Lyell's system 3 that has appeared in our 
 language ? etc. etc. ? You are just the man we want. Again, 
 some great questions connected with the theory of electric 
 currents ; the existence of joints in given directions in crystal- 
 line rocks (e.g. the granite of Cornwall and Devon, where also 
 the major axes of the felspar crystals are arranged on given 
 lines, and the master-joints are nearly Mag. N.) ; the mechanics 
 of the theory of elevation; and many etceteras, want your hand 
 to guide them, and your back to bear them. So you must for 
 your own honour and our good stand in the gap for us. In 
 short you are made for the office, and the saddle must be 
 guided to your back. I rejoice much that Lyell and Murchison 
 have turned their thoughts to you. Again, I think it will do 
 us honour to link ourselves with men of exact science, and I 
 dream't last night that I saw you riding into the Geological 
 
 1 See above, pp. 330, 331. 
 
 2 An Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature. By W. 
 Whewell, 8vo. Camb. 1828. He was Professor of Mineralogy 182832. 
 
 3 Whewell reviewed the first volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology in The 
 British Critic, No. 17, publ. in January, 1831; and the second volume in The 
 Quarterly Review, No. 93, publ. in March, 1832. Todhunter's William Whewell, 
 i. 51, 60. 
 

 THE CULM MEASURES. 465 
 
 Society on the back of a great tidal wave as high as the top of 1836. 
 Somerset House. &* Si 
 
 Tell Murchison that in the quarries a mile and a half south 
 of this place there are fossils without number, that the Culm- 
 Measures make a great plunge to the south (I have this day 
 during a most pelting storm traced them to the foot of Brent 
 Tor), and abut against Dartmoor, getting well frizzled at their 
 edges. I can find plenty of Culm beds, but unfortunately not 
 much thicker than this paper just enough to soil the fingers, 
 but not enough to warm the tip of your toe. By the way I 
 saw this morning a quaternary formation of ink. In a yellow 
 pyritous soil, containing sulphate of iron, there was a copious 
 black precipitate, wherever the roots of the oak-tree passed 
 through the soil, and you might have fancied that some one 
 had upset one of Day and Martin's blacking-pots. What 
 shall we call this new geological deposit ? Melanoune ? no, 
 that will not do. What's the Greek for ink ? My best regards 
 to my Cambridge friends. I hope to be trundling in among 
 
 you about the time I mentioned. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 When the observations made hastily in Devonshire in 
 June and July were communicated to the British Association, 
 the authors announced that they proposed to lay a more 
 complete paper before the Geological Society. This had now 
 to be prepared ; but, as might have been expected, the 
 difficulties which had occurred in 1827, and to which col- 
 laboration must be always exposed, were repeated, but in 
 an aggravated form. Sedgwick had now more calls upon 
 his time. At the beginning of this particular term he 
 wrote : " My lectures begin the day after to-morrow, and I 
 have three papers on the stocks. My hands were never so 
 full before. I wish the days were forty-eight hours long, 
 or that I could find some patent mode of getting through 
 the term without eating or sleeping 1 ." In the next place, 
 
 1 To S. Woodward, 26 October, 1836. 
 S. I. 3 
 
466 RAISED BEACH AT BARNSTAPLE. 
 
 1836. he could never count upon being well enough to work, 
 *- 5 1 - especially when under pressure. " Could I command my 
 stomach, I could clear off my work easily enough ; but the 
 moment I try to employ my pen, all the inner man gets out of 
 order, and then, as for brain, my head might just as well be 
 filled with brick-dust 1 ." His position too, as prebendary of 
 Norwich, had given him a new set of duties, and exposed him 
 to be called away from Cambridge when absence might be 
 specially inconvenient. For instance, when Murchison was 
 crying out for substantial help towards his Description of a 
 raised Beach in Barnstaple Bay (read to the Geological 
 Society 14 December) Sedgwick was executing "a shuttle- 
 cock movement" between Cambridge and Norwich, and it 
 was only at the eleventh hour that he could seize a brief 
 interval in which to scribble a peroration, which his friend 
 managed to tack on to his own work. This paper, however, 
 dealt with only a single special point, and Sedgwick's short- 
 comings in the way of collaboration were comparatively 
 unimportant What happened when the general essay on 
 the structure of Devonshire was announced was far more 
 serious, as will be narrated directly. Meanwhile the follow- 
 ing letters, in which the serious and the jocose are blended in 
 Sedgwick's happiest manner, will fitly conclude our account 
 of the year 1836. 
 
 To Canon Wodehouse. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., November 4, 1836. 
 My dear Wodehouse, 
 
 Many thanks for your kind letter, which I should 
 have answered sooner had I not been called up to Town on 
 unexpected business. I am only just returned ; and, as I 
 have much lecture-work on my hands, I will try to come 
 point blank to business. Your orders appear admirable, and 
 I must of course abide by them. Touching the dining-room I 
 will implicitly follow your advice, especially as you say you 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 20 November, 1836. 
 
DOMESTIC PLEASANTRIES. 467 
 
 have consulted the learned Barnesius*. I should have called 1836. 
 her Barnesia; but I dare say you were right, as, in spite ^t- 5 1 - 
 of her petticoats, she is certainly a being of right masculine 
 understanding. In the wake of such a learned upholsteress 
 one cannot go far wrong. Again, what you and she condemn I 
 will execute. As for the spots on the paper, I care naught about 
 them. The only fear I have is, that if they remain, Barnesia 
 may, like Lady Macbeth, become a sleep-walker. What a 
 horrible thing it would be to see her every night about two 
 o'clock sliding into my bed-room, with a lamp in her left hand 
 and a mop in her right, and muttering through her chattering 
 teeth: "Out damned spot! out I say! one, two; why then 
 'tis time to do't. Fie Mr Prebendary ! a Parson and be 
 afear'd ! what need we fear who knows it, when none can call 
 our paper to account ? Wash your hands ; put on your 
 night-gown, look not so pale, I tell you yet again your paper 
 must be cleansed " ! ! ! Repeated scenes like this would be 
 bad discipline for a nervous man like myself. So, having given 
 you such formal and intelligible directions, I may be content to 
 leave the question of paper currency with your wisdom. I can 
 easily bring a Megatherium or Dinotherium to cover the spots. 
 I have had a letter from the Dean, who seems to wish us 
 to begin our residence as if our members were now reduced 
 to four, i.e. each of us to take three months. With my 
 present engagements here such an arrangement would be 
 impossible, at least for this year. It would, I believe, compel 
 me to resign my Professorship a move I am by no means 
 inclined to take. Pray excuse the trouble I am compelled 
 to give you. My kind remembrances to Lady Jane, and to 
 all your children, whom I hope to find at home well and 
 right merry during the Christmas vacation. This fickle 
 weather puts my old crazy machinery a little out of order. 
 Always, my dear Brother, Most truly yours 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 1 Mrs Barnes, Sedgwick's housekeeper. She had been engaged for him by 
 Lady Jane Wodehouse. 
 
 302 
 
4 68 PERSONAL NEWS. 
 
 1836. To Rev. W. D. Conybeare. 
 
 5I> TRIN. COLL. December 5, 1836. 
 
 My dear Conybeare, 
 
 I am trying to steal a few minutes during the 
 intervals of swallowing my breakfast. And why in such an 
 hour? Because my servant is occupied in packing up my 
 outward garniture, not to mention a thousand odds and ends 
 necessary to my comfort during a three months' incubation in 
 the cathedral rookery at Norwich. Because (driving hard, as 
 they say in the north) I am looking out for sections, and other 
 materials, for my concluding lecture at 12 o'clock. Because, 
 after the said lecture, I have to return to the audit ; after the 
 audit to eat a great audit-dinner ; after the dinner to put my- 
 self into a fly, and by aid of its wings to pass Newmarket 
 Heath in time for the night- coach to Norwich. Any one of 
 these reasons would be enough to put me on the move, but all 
 together they make me stir about like Whewell's anemometer 1 
 during the late gales. How deep then must be my regard for 
 my friends at Axminster to think of them and write to them 
 in such a whirlwind ! But it is with memory as with a muddy 
 ditch, and with thought as with air-bubbles rising therefrom. 
 You must stir the water to make them rise rapidly, and poke 
 the mud to have them in plenty. 
 
 Since my return I have often intended to send you my 
 best greetings, but good intentions are often our worst stumb- 
 ling blocks. A thousand times in my life I have broken my 
 shins, and soiled my manners, over them. But I have been 
 very busy with my lectures, and not in very good health. One 
 entire week I was almost laid up with dyspepsia. The dull 
 round of my mill-horse life was broken in upon last week by 
 a trip to London to the anniversary of the Royal Society. 
 Had I time I would tell you all about it, but I have not. 
 During the past term Simeon's death and funeral have been 
 
 1 Mr Whewell described an anemometer invented by himself at the meeting of 
 the British Association held at Dublin in 1835; and more fully at that held at 
 Bristol in 1836. Report of the Association, 1835, p. 29; 1836, p. 39. 
 
SIMEON'S FUNERAL. 469 
 
 by far the most exciting events that have passed amongst us. 1836. 
 The greatest part of the University graduates, and under- ^ l - 5 1 - 
 graduates assembled to do his memory honour, and while 
 the procession moved down the magnificent chapel to the 
 grave, and while its vaulted roof was reverberating the almost 
 supernatural notes of Handel's Dead March, I do not think 
 there was one person (including many hundred spectators) 
 who was not for a while almost carried away by a powerful 
 emotion 1 . William 2 and your friends here are all well. 
 Whewell is printing his great book 3 , which will be out early in 
 the spring, perhaps before I return from Norwich. Among 
 other events, I may mention that last week a lioness had four 
 cubs at Cambridge, and a sensible undergraduate suggested 
 four names for the said cubs which have been adopted, 
 and they are accordingly called, Whewell, Peacock, Sedgwick, 
 and Simeon, to the no small amusement of some people who 
 don't look deep for pleasure. Should " Sedgwick " ever be 
 brought in a cage to Axminster, tell Mary to poke him gently. 
 Buckland's book 4 1 have of course read carefully, and must 
 read again. The natural history is excellent, though of course 
 not equal. But some of the best parts of it ought to have 
 appeared in separate memoirs, and not in a book of Natural 
 Theology, which has to do with laws, and not with minute 
 details. The part on belemnites pleased me most, it is quite 
 perfect. Trilobites very good, and views in part very original. 
 Concamerated shells in general excellent, but he refines too 
 much, and some of the illustrations (e.g. from gothic architec- 
 ture) are false. The siphon theory 5 puzzles me ; it is at least 
 
 1 The Rev. Charles Simeon, Fellow of King's College, died on Sunday, 
 13 November, 1836; and was buried in the College Chapel on the following 
 Saturday. 
 
 2 William John Conybeare, then an undergraduate of Trinity College, B.A. 
 1837, and afterwards Fellow. 
 
 3 History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 vols., 8vo. Camb. 1837. 
 
 4 Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology : the 
 Sixth Bridgewater Treatise, i vols. 8vo. Lond. 1836. 
 
 5 Proofs of design derived from the structure of the siphuncle in Nautilus 
 pompilius. Vol. i. pp. 314 332. 
 
470 BUCKLAN&& BRIDGEWATER TREATISE. 
 
 836. ingenious. The account of the Megatherium disappoints me. 
 
 " 5 1 * Some remarkable peculiarities are overlooked. The account 
 of the teeth, however, is in his best manner. Pentland tells me 
 that he is quite wrong in putting it in armour ; that the coat 
 of mail belongs to another beast. Let them fight it out. 
 
 I wish I had not filled up the first page with mere padding, 
 as I want to tell you more about this book. The moral and 
 theological part is, I think, a great failure. In showing unity 
 of design he is good ; but the argument is broken up too much 
 into fragments. He ought to have had one grand sweeping 
 chapter on that head instead of 500 corollaries ; several direct 
 arguments fail of their aim. They ought to have appeared at 
 the end, by way of removing objections. We can establish 
 wisdom and benevolent design from the happy tendency of 
 laws ; so far the argument is direct. But in the working 
 of the laws we find much particular and individual evil. If 
 we argue directly we lead to the conclusion that God wants 
 benevolence, or wants power. But if we argue indirectly, we 
 show (and this Buckland has done, though he has not put the 
 argument well, and has overstrained it), that much good comes 
 out of apparent ill, and that the evil on the surface of things 
 may be resolved into something connected with our own 
 imperfection and shortsightedness. I have not room or time 
 to explain further. The concluding chapter is not good. 
 Instead of a grand outpouring of his own soul, pregnant with 
 high thoughts and bursting for their delivery, he gives us a 
 mere mosaic, without coherence, and a discontinuous string of 
 quotations. I cannot bear such writing on such a grand 
 occasion. By the way the chapter on Mineralogy is decidedly 
 bad and jejune. Had he read Whewell's philosophical Report^ 
 he must have seen where Mineralogy was among the sciences, 
 and what argument it might supply. Instead of that he has 
 been dabbling among mere chips and fragments. You must 
 not tell Buckland what I am now writing, for he would not 
 
 1 On the recent progress and present state of Mineralogy. Brit. Ass. Report, 
 183132, pp. 322365. 
 
BUCKLANVS BRIDGEWATER TREATISE. 471 
 
 forgive me. As a book of Palaeontology it is very good, in 1836. 
 many parts admirable ; as a book of Natural Theology it is &* 5 1 
 not good. It exhibits a want of power, and a want of skill. 
 The descriptive style is very good, but the moral and didactic 
 parts are sometimes mouthy and turgid. When I read the end 
 of one of his chapters where he compares the footsteps of a 
 tortoise on the Corn Cockle sandstone to the footsteps of a 
 conqueror, I thought the whole passage in such bad taste that 
 I almost threw the book down in a passion 1 . I must, however, 
 have done ; and once more do not tell Buckland one word of 
 what I am writing, I am certain he would not bear it. With 
 all his faults he is most kindhearted, and a most valuable 
 friend ; and in his own way he is perhaps the cleverest man I 
 have had the happiness of knowing. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To Rev. Charles Ingle. 
 
 NORWICH, December 13, 1836. 
 My dear Ingle, 
 
 Another year has rolled away, and I am once 
 again fixed in the monotonous round of a Cathedral residence. 
 One of my brother Prebendaries died since you and I parted, 
 and our respective terms of servitude now extend over one 
 
 1 "The Historian or the Antiquary may have traversed the fields of ancient or 
 of modern battles ; and may have pursued the line of march of triumphant Con- 
 querors, whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world. 
 The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their 
 course. Not a track remains of a single foot, or a single hoof, of all the countless 
 millions of men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But 
 the Reptiles that crawled upon the half-finished surface of our infant planet, have 
 left memorials of their passage, enduring and indelible. No history has recorded 
 their creation or destruction ; their very bones are found no more among the fossil 
 relics of a former world. Centuries, and thousands of years, may have rolled away 
 between the time in which these footsteps were impressed by Tortoises upon the 
 sands of their native Scotland, and the hour when they are again laid bare and 
 exposed to our curious and admiring eyes. Yet we behold them, stamped upon 
 the rock, distinct as the track of the passing animal upon the recent snow ; as if to 
 show that thousands of years are but as nothing amidst Eternity, and, as it were, 
 in mockery of the fleeting perishable course of the mightiest Potentates among 
 mankind." Buckland, ut supra, i. 262. 
 ' 
 
472 PERSONAL NEWS. 
 
 1836. fifth part of the year. The consequence has been, that my 
 t. 51. j- urn commenced this morning instead of the 1st of December, 
 and will end on the 23rd of February instead of the last day 
 of January. You now know the limits within which you may 
 be sure to find me, as far as anything is sure in this world of 
 changes ; for within the limits I have given you I am com- 
 pelled by our Chapter Rules (so far like the Rules of King's 
 Bench) to sleep in my own house every night. Pray then 
 come and see me, and cast a light over the deep shades of our 
 cloisters. Some of the stars that shone last winter are away ; 
 but some are left ; with kind hearts too, and ready to give you 
 a hearty welcome. You owe me a visit ; and, you graceless 
 dog, you have never written to me, as you promised, since your 
 continental tour. Come then, and make us all laugh, as you 
 made Lyttelton, when you spent your last day in Trinity ; or, 
 make us laugh a little less, as he tells me his ribs were sore 
 for a month after he met you, and that his intercostals have 
 not forgotten it to this day. 
 
 As for myself I spent a very laborious, and I hope not an 
 unprofitable, summer, in rambling through the cliffs of Devon- 
 shire, Cornwall, and Pembrokeshire. Eleven packing-cases 
 (heavier far than the gates of Gaza) have been the fruits of 
 this toil ; and from them are to germinate other fruits in the 
 shape of Memoirs for the Geological and Cambridge Philo- 
 sophical Societies. But these are dull things to write about, 
 especially to one, like yourself, who is almost stone-blind to 
 the beauties that lie concealed beneath Dame Nature's outer 
 garments. But the mouth speaketh of the heart's fulness, you 
 know ; so I must needs talk of things inanimate and under- 
 ground. To-morrow is the anniversary of the Norwich 
 Museum ; which finishes, like other good things, with a good 
 dinner, intended to cement friendship, and to set tongues, as 
 well as teeth, in active movement. At this symposium I am 
 to preside ; and before my hinder parts are permitted to reach 
 a position of stable equilibrium on the cushion of an armchair, 
 I am to be presented with a splendid silver inkstand, as a 
 
PERSONAL NEWS. 473 
 
 token of thanks for lectures given, and, I suspect also, as a 1836. 
 retaining- fee for lectures to be given hereafter. You remember ^-.5 * 
 the scene got up last winter after my concluding exhibition, 
 and the formidable mass of melted butter that was spilt on my 
 head by a little dapper gentleman, one of the progeny of 
 yEsculapius. After having stood that, I am prepared j:o stand 
 everything ; but I am resolved to be as informal in my reply 
 as is compatible with the rules of courtesy ; and in telling 
 them that I feel most kindly towards them and heartily wish 
 them well, I shall truly only tell them what I both wish and 
 feel. 
 
 Your friends in Cambridge are all well, and several of them 
 are I hope coming this winter to see me. Peacock is the new 
 Lowndean Professor in the place of Lax ; and promises to do 
 his duty in a less lax manner than his predecessor. He is in 
 great force, and the stars in his astronomical tail shew most 
 gloriously. The Cathedral bell has just tolled midnight, so I 
 must to bed. Good night then, my dear old friend ; write to 
 me by return of post, and tell me you are coming, and believe 
 
 me, 
 
 Affectionately yours 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P.S. So our friend Charles 1 is now the Venerable Arch- 
 deacon of Craven a craven Christian soldier in name only, 
 and not in deed. 
 
 The paper on the raised beach at Barnstaple had contained 
 a sufficient quantity of geological heresy to arouse some slight 
 opposition from the orthodox ; and Murchison began to be 
 exceedingly nervous as to what would happen when the still 
 more heretical views respecting the Culm-Measures were laid 
 before the Society. The correctness of Mr De la Beche's 
 inferences respecting the structure of Devonshire would have 
 to be impugned ; he had, as he told Sedgwick, " toiled day 
 after day for months, in the district, examining every hole and 
 
 1 Rev. Charles Musgrave, whose intimacy with Sedgwick has been frequently 
 mentioned. 
 
474 JOINT PAPER WITH MURCHISON ON DEVON. 
 
 1837. cranny in it 1 /' and was not likely to submit to the exposure 
 * 52- of a serious error without making a vigorous attempt to jus- 
 tify himself; his friends were numerous and powerful, and 
 were certain to rally round him. Sedgwick was away at 
 Norwich, and in his absence a joint paper would be read and 
 discussed at a great disadvantage. For a time Murchison was 
 in favour of an adjournment; but, after discussion with 
 common friends, he concluded that it would on the whole 
 be best to place what he called " our whole view " before the 
 public at once, in order to secure priority for it. So strongly 
 did he feel this, that he persuaded himself that Sedgwick 
 must be of the same opinion, and wrote as follows : 
 
 " I presume you are rapidly preparing the concern. Now what I 
 propose is this. That the present communication be rigorously 
 restricted to a clear general view of the classification and succession 
 which we intend to adhere to 'per fas et nefas? Such a condensed 
 sketch, I mean, as would be fit for publication in the Transactions, 
 and yet such a one as might this very spring be followed by details 
 (pikes justificatives) the production of which would give you an 
 opportunity of coming out viva voce in defence of the grand positions 
 provided they were attacked. Lonsdale and Lyell both agree in the 
 wisdom of this arrangement. Let, therefore, the forthcoming bolt be 
 ringing, clear, and sharp, but not encumbered with the hundred- 
 weight of culm and sandstone which I could ornament it with 2 ." 
 
 Sedgwick was much occupied with clerical and domestic 
 engagements, and unwilling to be disturbed : " My servants 
 are ill of the influenza" he wrote, 23 January 1837, "and for 
 the last ten days I have myself been out of sorts, though 
 never quite laid up, and should I have no new access of the 
 malady, I will do my best during the hours of leisure I have 
 this week to write out something for our meeting on Wednes- 
 day the ist. What we say on that occasion can only be the 
 
 prelude of larger details I have for this week refused every 
 
 engagement, and hope to send my work off about next Friday 
 or Saturday. In the meantime I will think of some materials 
 for the sections south of Dartmoor, and send them when 
 
 1 From H. T. de la Beche, n December, 1834. 
 
 2 From R. 1. Murchison, without date, but evidently written early in January, 
 1837- 
 
SEDGWIC1CS DELAYS. 475 
 
 ready." Two days later he proceeded : " My house is a 1837. 
 hospital ; but, thank God, I am almost well, and yesterday Mit 5 
 made a start. If the influenza don't shed again its baneful 
 influence on me I shall have matter enough for our next 
 meeting. Your book you will find in the parcel. Your maps 
 shall follow soon, but I cannot yet part with them, as I 
 mean to write with the map spread before me, and without 
 consulting my MSS., which in a synopsis would only bother 
 me." But, before the day was over, the draughts in the 
 huge empty cathedral had given him a chill, and he ended 
 with the ominous words : "I will send your book and this 
 note by the mail to-night. I am wretchedly out of sorts, 
 but after tea I hope to write a few pages. I really can't 
 make out a section to-day." On the same day Murchison 
 reported progress, but sent some queries which shewed 
 Sedgwick that his colleague was not yet quite sure of his 
 ground. On the day he received this missive (26 January) 
 he sent three sections roughly coloured, with a few notes, 
 concluding with what he intended to be an intimation, as he 
 said afterwards, that he had ''struck work." "Under all 
 these circumstances we should be mad to bring on our paper 
 before we have made our minds up. Throw the blame on me 
 as much as you like, or blame the influenza. My stomach is 
 sadly out of order, and for the last two days I have been 
 tormented by a palpitation of the heart, which, though not 
 acutely painful, is very distressing.... Though I think we 
 ought not, in our present misty state, to bring on our paper, 
 yet we might put in, along with the sections, a kind of 
 resumt, just enough to explain our views of the classification. 
 This might be done in five or six pages, and best of all vivA 
 voce. I read prayers myself in the Cathedral this morning. 
 All the minor Canons, and most of the singers, are laid 
 up in bed." In the interval between this letter and the 
 meeting Sedgwick's ailments increased. A last appeal from 
 Murchison 1 reached him on Saturday, 28 January, and "then", 
 
 1 This letter has not been preserved. 
 
476 SEDGWICK'S DELAYS. 
 
 1837. he says, " I was unable to work." Finally, on the day before 
 * 5 2 - the paper ought to have been read, he was well enough to send 
 a long letter containing an outline of the speech he wished 
 Murchison to deliver. It is evident that he was conscious 
 that he had used him hardly, for he begins by a confession : 
 " Had I not been in a miserable condition from the effects of 
 this malady which is raging in the heart of Norwich, I should 
 be ashamed of myself for failing you in the hour of need. 
 But the influenza destroys all feeling for others." Murchison, 
 meanwhile, had convinced himself that a paper to be read 
 would accompany the sections to be exhibited. These latter 
 he got ready, and then " waited patiently like a lamb for the 
 sacrifice." The misadventure of the next day, vexatious as 
 it must have been to Sedgwick's unfortunate colleague, wears 
 a comic rather than a tragic aspect. Murchison shall relate 
 it in his own words. All things considered he wrote very 
 good-humouredly : 
 
 3 BRYAN STON PLACE, i February, 1837. 
 My dear Sedgwick, 
 
 The part of Hamlet being omitted, the play was not 
 performed, and all the scenic arrangements which I had laboured at 
 were thrown away, though the room looked splendid. The morn- 
 ing's arrivals certainly surprised me ! ! Ten o'clock brought me your 
 double letter ; eleven o'clock by the same mail the maps, and a little 
 note to Lyell, but in vain I looked through the parcel for the docu- 
 ment to be read. I read and re-read your letter, and still I could 
 not understand it. One thing I clearly perceived, and with great 
 regret, that you were seriously out of sorts, and had been suffering ; 
 so, after waiting till two, I journeyed down to the Society, still 
 thinking that a third package with the paper might be sent to Somer- 
 set House not so however. These things going on ; the whole 
 room decorated for the fight ; Buckland arrived ; Fitton present ; 
 and a large meeting expected ; what was to be done ? Fitton and 
 Lonsdale, considering what had been said and done covertly on 
 the other side, and looking to the fact of the non-arrival of the 
 despatch, counselled me to give up the thing, which I resolved to 
 do, to the very great annoyance of the President 1 , and of all the 
 
 others who came to hear 
 
 I am mortified that the memoir did not come ; of course I blame 
 myself somewhat for having thrown in doubts on some points, 
 
 1 Mr Lyell. 
 
SEDGWICK'S DELAYS. 477 
 
 because I see that ill as you have been and without the power on 1837. 
 my part of talking the case over, we mutually misapprehended each ^t. 52. 
 other. But enough of what is past. The thing now to consider is 
 when to have this paper out. I should certainly not wish to have it 
 done till you were present \ because we must have a fair stand-up 
 fight... 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 ROD. I. MURCHISON. 
 
 Sedgwick's answer gives no hint of contrition. Evidently 
 he had been too ill either to remember what he had written, 
 or to care very much what happened. "Your letter this 
 morning " he writes, " astonished me as much as the want of 
 my paper surprised you. I was very much out of sorts at the 
 time I received your letter (last Wednesday week), and 
 instantly struck work. I thought I had said as much in a P.S. 
 to the letter with the sections. Soon afterwards I was in- 
 capable of writing to any good purpose ; and for the last 
 three days I have been almost confined to my bed. This 
 morning I am beginning to take up, and have taken a short 
 walk in the sunshine. But I have still a pain in my brow, 
 and a swimming in my head, and am still slightly feverish.... 
 On the whole it is well our Devonshire affair stands where it 
 is 1 ." 
 
 Sedgwick had constantly deprecated Murchison's notion of 
 organised opposition to their views respecting Devonshire, and 
 had urged him, on more than one occasion, to avoid any personal 
 controversy with De la Beche. In the interest of peace he 
 now laid the whole matter before Lyell in a letter which 
 contains besides a good deal of valuable information respect- 
 ing himself. 
 
 CLOSE, NORWICH, February $th. 1837. 
 My dear Lyell, 
 
 A long letter I received yesterday morning from 
 Murchison gave me great uneasiness. It seems you had a 
 warm altercation in the Council of Wednesday when our 
 conduct and motives were taxed in no measured terms. I 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 3 February, 1837. 
 
478 MISUNDERSTANDING WITH DE LA BECHE. 
 
 1837. fear these repeated sparring matches will end in ill blood, and 
 Et. 52. ru j n the harmony of our Society. Fortunately I have been 
 away during the late exhibitions of them, and therefore can- 
 not be responsible for their consequences. 
 
 Unfortunately De la Beche has published a map of Devon, 
 bad in its details, (at least bad for an Ordnance survey,) and 
 destitute of any principles of classification. Murchison re- 
 monstrated against some parts of it so loudly, that during my 
 first Residence here (December 1834) De la Beche sent me 
 a caricature of him, in which he was represented as arguing 
 against the existence of his (De la Beche's) nose. The map 
 was, however, published I believe, in spite of Murchison's 
 most urgent remonstrances. Again, I know that Murchison 
 intended over and over again to go to Devonshire and work 
 out the Culm case for himself; and, had the time served, we 
 purposed to have undertaken the task together after our Irish 
 tour in the autumn of 1835. Independently of the Culm 
 question (which was brought before the British Association 
 at Dublin in 1835 by Mr Williams, who treated the Geo- 
 logical Society with very little ceremony), I always intended 
 to spend a summer in Devonshire and Cornwall before I 
 attempted to publish my general views of the relations of our 
 older British formations. My first paper was on the structure 
 of those countries. I read a second paper on the same 
 subject early in 1830 to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 
 which was never published ; and finally I read a supplement 
 to the second paper in November last, which, if I live, will be 
 published this coming spring. Are all these labours to stop, 
 because an official person has had the misfortune to publish 
 a bad map ? The map ought to be withdrawn without loss 
 of time. It cannot, by any tinkering, be brought into order. 
 It must start on new principles. Many of the details no 
 doubt may stand, but even the details are very far indeed 
 from what they ought to be. But is it not a piece of great 
 stupidity to call our memoir on the physical structure of 
 Devonshire an attack on De la Beche ? It might just as well 
 
MISUNDERSTANDING WITH DE LA BECHE. 479 
 
 be called an attack on Greenough, Buckland, and Conybeare. 1837. 
 De la Beche complains that Murchison does not wish to ^ 5*- 
 cooperate with the Trigonometrical Survey. How is it 
 possible to cooperate ? In our opinion Devonshire is radically 
 wrong, as it is now published. Are we to shut our mouths, 
 and let the error continue to be propagated ? 
 
 But you may ask why I did not send up my paper for 
 Wednesday. In truth I was not well when I started with it ; 
 and a letter I received from Murchison on Wednesday week 
 disgusted me with my task, so that I struck work. Two 
 posts after he wished and urged me to go on and finish my 
 work : but I was then so much out of sorts that I was unable 
 to hold up my head, and all the early part of this week I 
 have been almost confined to my bedroom. On the whole I 
 am glad our paper did not come forward. We have a good 
 case, and want to steal a march on no one. In my opinion 
 De la Beche will be disgusted when he hears the paper has 
 been put off, because, when we produce it, in a few weeks, 
 fortified by sections, fossils, and details, no one can then 
 throw out any sneer of indecent hurry, of attacking a man 
 behind his back, etc. etc., and thus turn the attention of the 
 meeting from a geological to a personal question. 
 
 Murchison tells me you mean to allude to the Devonian 
 case in your speech. We could, either of us, easily give you 
 a condensed synopsis of our general idea of the structure of 
 the county so as to bring it into comparison with the other 
 parts of England. But on this matter I can give you no 
 advice; you must act for yourself. Thank God I am now 
 very much better ; two days since I could not have written 
 so long a letter. My best regards to Mrs L. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 P. S. Let me hear from you. My friend R. I. M. was at 
 a white heat on Wednesday, if I mistake not. A very 
 flippant and ill-mannered letter from De la Beche seems to 
 
4 8o ILL HEALTH. 
 
 1837. have nettled him not a little. I was far more amused than 
 Et. 52. vexed with it, when I saw it ; it was so very characteristic of 
 its author. What was the provocation I don't know. 
 
 The difficulties with which the production of this unfor- 
 tunate paper were beset by no means ended with Sedgwick's 
 illness at Norwich. On his return to Cambridge in February 
 he was at first hopeful of being ready by the end of March. 
 Then came " paralysis of one half of the optic nerve of the 
 left eye 1 ," which, though it passed away in a few hours, left 
 the eye weak, and as he said " the loss of one side of my only 
 eye would be no joke." This was succeeded by a fresh attack 
 of influenza with the usual result. Indeed he vowed that he 
 had never been so ill since he was an undergraduate. His 
 spirits, however, survived the general wreck of his intellectual 
 powers, to judge from the letter in which he described his 
 condition to Ingle. 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY EVENING, 24 March, 1837. 
 My dear Ingle, 
 
 Did ever mortal see such a Good Friday? The 
 weather is cold as Christmas, and the Great Court of Trin. 
 Coll. is literally mid-leg deep with snow. That old hoary 
 brute winter has come, like a Proctor, when little looked for 
 and less welcome, with his two bull-dogs Pain and Pestilence ; 
 and many civil gentlemen, besides myself, have been sorely 
 mouthed by them. In plain Yorkshire, I have had a sore 
 relapse of the influenza, and for ten days have been confined 
 to my sittingroom and bedroom ; in both of which, by Havi- 
 land's 2 order, there is, and has been for the last ten days, a 
 great roasting fire. Under such treatment I ought before 
 this to be well done on both sides, and to want nothing but a 
 good kitchen basting to make me fit to serve up. But alas ! 
 instead of a roaster I am still a very starveling, and fit for 
 nothing in the world except to stop a cracked pane of glass. 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 6 March, 1837. 
 
 2 John Haviland, M.D., Regius Professor of Physic. 
 
PROMOTION OF PROFESSOR MUSGRAVE. 481 
 
 Thank God I am a little better than I was. For a whole 1837. 
 week, even old Shakspeare and Walter Scott acted only as ^~ 5 2 - 
 sounding-lines for the depth of my intellectual vacuity. But 
 now I can read them for an hour together, and fancy, at least, 
 that I am refreshed and built up by them. Should Haviland 
 be able to draw me from my hole by Wednesday I shall then 
 have to corroborate my faculties among thousands of scholar- 
 ship examination papers ; and if they won't cure me I must 
 be out of the reach of physic. So much for my case ; having 
 reached the utmost limits of the ablative, it is high time for 
 me to turn back and get into a better case. When I was in 
 the dumps before, you told me I described my symptoms well. 
 Having then a good diagnosis, pray prescribe for me forth- 
 with. A long letter from you will do all my inwards good ; 
 therefore in mercy send me one, and soon. This request is 
 the main object of my handling the pen, while my head is 
 ready to split, and my lungs wheezing like the cracked 
 bellows in the organ of St John's Chapel. A cup of tea has 
 produced and is producing a partial thaw among the hydraulic 
 pipes of my thoracic regions ; and the boheasian vapours 
 have even reached some of the lower organs of my peri- 
 cranium. 
 
 What think you ? Charles Musgrave was here this morn- 
 ing, looking all glorious to behold in a new shovel-hat, and 
 his little sweet-looking boy was with him. He has been 
 brought here by the promotion of his brother 1 , the Bursar, 
 Professor, and Baron. Before long he may become a Baron in 
 more senses than one, for even now he is a Dean Dean of 
 Bristol to wit, with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging. 
 For his sake I rejoice, but for my own, I sorely lament. He 
 is a friend of thirty years standing, for whom I have always 
 felt great kindness ; and I only say the truth when I add that 
 an unkind word, or an unkind thought, never passed between 
 us since we were first acquainted. Such a friend is not to be 
 replaced. Still I rejoice, and so will you. But when are you 
 
 1 Thomas Musgrave. See above, p. 419, note. 
 S. I. 31 
 
482 PAPER ON DEVON READ. 
 
 1837. to mount a shovel ? How well would it set off those vener- 
 t. 52. a bi e locks, and that grave visage of thine. By the way I 
 meant to have asked a question or two at you, as they say 
 over the Tweed, touching that false varlet who gave you such 
 a lying account of my hustings speech at Dent; but I have no 
 room for so big a subject. So I will conclude by telling 
 you a work of supererogation as you know it already that 
 I am your sincere and affectionate friend 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 The influenza cured, and the Scholarship Examination 
 despatched, Sedgwick was beginning to feel in working order, 
 when a fresh mishap occurred. "On Friday" he wrote "I 
 took a short ride ; and though I returned from it much 
 fatigued, I was certainly refreshed by the exercise. Yesterday 
 I again started on my horse ; and unfortunately (whether 
 from my own fault or not I hardly know) he fell with me. My 
 face is a good deal cut, and much disfigured, and my knee 
 received a severe contusion. Two University men were near at 
 the time, and one of them very kindly galloped to Cambridge, 
 and sent a fly to bring me home. My bruises were severe, 
 and I was much shaken by the shock of the fall. Last night 
 I was very miserable, and did not close my eyes in sound 
 sleep. But to-day, thank God, I am much better ; all fever 
 has left me... You never saw a more extraordinary phiz than 
 mine is at this moment. I have a great black patch running 
 horizontally across my face under my eyes, and my nose 
 is as red as flame, and my chin and cheeks scarified 1 ." 
 
 Towards the end of May, after a week at the seaside, 
 he was able to announce : " I am almost myself again ; " the 
 finishing touches were put to the long-expected paper, On the 
 Physical Structure of Devonshire, and on the Subdivisions and 
 Geological Relations of its older stratified Deposits, and it was 
 read to the Geological Society, 31 May and 14 June. It was 
 followed by a discussion which was evidently lively, but the 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 16 April, 1837. 
 
CRITICISM OF B ABB AGE. 483 
 
 few words that Sedgwick wrote about it do not convey the 1837. 
 impression that it was at all hostile. On the following iEt - 5 2 - 
 day he told Canon Wodehouse: "We had a grand battle 
 at the Geological Society last night, in which I bore the 
 brunt on our side ; but, though well banged, I was not 
 beaten 1 ." 
 
 A few words must be bestowed on the pains with which 
 Sedgwick criticised Mr Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise 
 in the spring of this year. The proofs had been shown to Mr 
 Lyell and Dr Fitton, who both praised the work generally 
 but advised the omission of certain passages. To this the 
 author would not consent, and when other friends were 
 suggested as referees, he objected to all except Sedgwick 2 . 
 The proofs were accordingly sent, and Sedgwick who 
 appears to have had a genuine regard for the eccentric 
 inventor of the calculating machine went through them 
 carefully, and returned them to Lyell with the following 
 criticism : " I have gone over the slips, except the last page, 
 with some care ; and I think what I have thrown out may 
 be of some use. Don't show the paper to Babbage if you 
 think he will be offended at my freedom. But he ought 
 not, I am sure ; for I do to his sheets precisely what I do to 
 Whewell's, or those of any other friend, whenever they fall in 
 my way. If I can be a means of preventing Babbage from 
 publishing any of the expunged passages I shall have helped 
 you in doing him a service. The whole is too ambitious 
 in its style of writing, and the condemned passages I think 
 in dreadful taste, and also quite out of place. In the whole 
 there is too much attempt at swell and amplification. But 
 in that respect the author must of course have his own way. 
 Only his proof-men must try to make him reef a few of 
 his studding sails, spankers, and sky scrapers" 
 
 LyelPs next letter shows that Babbage had the good 
 sense to take Sedgwick's advice : 
 
 1 To Canon Wodehouse, 15 June, 1837. 
 
 2 From Charles Lyell, 5 April, 1837. 
 
 312 
 
484 CRITICISM OF B ABB AGE. 
 
 l8 37- My dear Sedgwick, 
 
 When I saw the outside of your letter, I said at once, 
 that I ought before to have thanked you for having so immediately, 
 and when out of sorts, complied with my wishes. Had I not fully 
 expected to see you last meeting I really should have written to say 
 that Babbage had prized the two capital pages of critique as they 
 deserved, and I hardly know anything else which would have induced 
 him to leave out the most offensive passages, on which you, Fitton, 
 and myself had vented our chief displeasure. The coincidence 
 outweighed the flattery of a certain popular preacher, I forget his 
 name, and some others (John Murray ! included), who thought those 
 very flights the finest things in the whole. Samuel Rogers, at whose 
 house we were last night, told us he had kept back the said 
 Bridgewater two months, and observed that, as usual, the author was 
 most attached to the most far-fetched and extravagant parts in the 
 whole. I told Babbage the critique was by you. He took it all in 
 excellent part, and had you been much more severe, as Fitton was, 
 he would not have been out of humour, though it would have 
 influenced him less. B. told me that when he had left out much of 
 what you had cut out all he could get from Fitton was, that "he 
 then believed the book would not disgrace him;" which B. thought a 
 marvellous relaxation of his former sentence. It has been a great 
 want of tact in Fitton that he has been so unmerciful, and has 
 scarcely done justice to the good parts which preceded what you saw. 
 If your letter had come two months earlier, before Fitton's, every 
 sentence struck out by you would have been omitted, but I dread 
 still to see the thing in print, as he has grown obstinate by too much 
 sweeping contradiction. 
 
 I suppose you read my Anniversary Address, and I hope you 
 approved of what I said of the Devon affair....! wish much you were 
 more and oftener in town. It is rare even in one's own pursuits to 
 meet with congenial souls, and Darwin is a glorious addition to my 
 society of geologists, and is working hard and making way, both in 
 his book and in our discussions. I really never saw that bore - so 
 successfully silenced, or such a bucket of cold water so dexterously 
 poured down his back, as when Darwin answered some impertinent 
 and irrelevant questions about S. America. We escaped fifteen 
 minutes of a vulgar harangue in consequence. Whewell does 
 famously in the chair. He will tell you of Owen's paper on Darwin's 
 Toxodon ____ 
 
 We were very sorry to hear of your fall, and have every day since 
 had news of you from Whewell, Murchison, and others. Pray write 
 again if disposed, and believe me, Yours most truly, 
 
 CHA. LYELL. 
 
 Another, and a very different, matter, which occurred at 
 about the same time, gave Sedgwick no little anxiety. When 
 he first went to Norwich the see was occupied by Bishop 
 
DEATH OF BISHOP BATHURST. 485 
 
 Bathurst. He was then ninety years of age, and could have 1837. 
 taken but little part in the affairs of the city or diocese. &* 5 2 - 
 Moreover, for some time before his death he had resided 
 almost continuously in London. In fact, though much 
 respected for his personal character and amiable disposition, 
 Bishop Bathurst had been throughout life a Bishop of the old 
 school, a man of letters and a politician rather than a church- 
 man, and a devoted whist-player. A good story is still 
 current respecting Sedgwick's first dinner with his diocesan. 
 The whist-table was set out as usual in the drawing-room, and 
 Sedgwick was asked to take a hand. He regretted his 
 inability to do so, protesting his complete ignorance of the 
 game. The Bishop said nothing, but afterwards lamented 
 his melancholy position in the following pathetic words : " I 
 have consistently supported the Whigs all my life I believe 
 I am called the only liberal Bishop and now in my old age 
 they have sent me a canon who does not know spades from 
 clubs !" The Bishop died in April 1837, an< ^ some of Sedg- 
 wick's friends were anxious that he should be his successor. 
 One gentleman let him know that he had pressed upon the 
 government " the benefits which would accrue to this diocese, 
 the Church at large, and the Ministry, by appointing you" 
 Sedgwick was much annoyed. "I found by a letter yester- 
 day " he said, " that a friend of mine had made a move as he 
 supposed in my behalf. But, unknown to himself, he was 
 trying to do me as great an injury as he could inflict upon 
 me 1 ." Before a week was over he was relieved by the news 
 that his friend had failed, and that the Rev. Edward Stanley 
 had accepted the Bishopric. He was not at first quite 
 satisfied with the appointment; but, before many months 
 were over, the Bishop and all his family became his most 
 intimate friends, and the palace was quite as much his home 
 in Norwich as his own residence. 
 
 By the middle of May Sedgwick had left Cambridge, and 
 for the next five months led an unusually wandering life. 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, 9 April, 1837. 
 
486 PLANS FOR THE SUMMER. 
 
 1837. When he was back again at the end of October, he wrote: 
 t. 5 2 - " Since I last saw you I have had no resting-place for my feet. 
 From Norwich to London, from London to Westmoreland, 
 from Westmoreland to Cornwall, from Cornwall back again 
 to Westmoreland, from Westmoreland to Yorkshire, from 
 Yorkshire to Cumberland, from Cumberland to Liverpool 
 (where I halted one week among the flesh-pots and sections 
 of the British Association), from Liverpool to the Warwick- 
 shire and Leicestershire coal-fields, out of which I finally 
 emerged, and once again am enjoying the light of the sun in 
 the atmosphere of Cambridge. Is not this enough to make a 
 man's head turn round 1 ?" These journeyings to and fro are 
 further described in the following letters : 
 
 To Canon Wodehouse. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., July 8, 1837. 
 My dear Wodehouse, 
 
 I only reached Cambridge (on my way back from 
 Dent) about the middle of the day yesterday ; and I should 
 endeavour to leave it this afternoon were it not for the King's 
 funeral, which prevents all work from being done. Now a 
 man starting on a tour in Cornwall has need of certain 
 sartorial and sutorial helps, which put me in some perplexity, 
 and the end of it will be that I shall not be off the stocks 
 before Monday. Should you ask why I am in such a hurry, 
 I should reply that I have much work to do, and little time to 
 do it in. I have to examine a corner of Cornwall, and to be 
 in Yorkshire in time for the contest for the West Riding. In 
 short I have to do things which require a 4O-horse steam- 
 power to be done well. This is a power much beyond my 
 muster ; but I must do my best, and many a time and oft 
 shall I have to wipe my brow if I do all I hope for during the 
 next three weeks. 
 
 I left you in a very husky condition, and I continued so 
 till the weather fairly changed, when my sweet voice came 
 
 1 To S. Woodward, 26 October, 1837. 
 
FOUNDATION OF COW GILL CHAPEL. 487 
 
 back again. After attending the Geological and Royal 1837. 
 Societies, I scampered down to Manchester by the break-neck &* 5*- 
 day-coach in eighteen hours, and the day following found my 
 way to Dent. The country on the way looked most charm- 
 ingly, and the crops among my native mountains were 
 almost as forward as I had left them near London. This 
 never happens except when a very severe spring destroys the 
 difference of climates, and makes them all start together. 
 You would have laughed at my solemnity had you seen me 
 for three days looking over papers, casting up accounts, 
 and making dividends among a set of legatees who were 
 anxiously waiting my arrival, and meanwhile solacing them- 
 selves by deep and long potations in the beershops. After 
 emancipating myself from this bondage, I was detained a 
 great part of another week in order that I might have the 
 happiness of laying the foundation-stone of a little chapel in 
 the upper part of the valley of Dent. The day was glorious, 
 the face of nature beautiful, and all parties in good humour 
 and charity. About seven hundred mountaineers, including 
 nearly two hundred Sunday-school children and about one 
 hundred strangers, some of whom came from the distance of 
 twenty miles, made a curious mixed procession in the wild 
 glen where the little chapel is now rising from the ground. 
 It is built upon the solid rock which forms the bed of a 
 mountain stream that washes the churchyard side, and over 
 which the waters descend in a long succession of rapids and 
 falls ; and it will be surrounded by birch, mountain-ash, and 
 other wild trees of the country. I trust God will bless the 
 undertaking which begins so smilingly. We began by making 
 the rocks echo back the old hundredth Psalm ; my brother 
 read one or two short prayers from our liturgy ; Mr Wilson 
 of Casterton made a short address ; I handled the trowel, and 
 laid the stone, and then addressed my countrymen, after 
 which we again uncoiled ourselves into a long string to the 
 tune of God save the King; and the strangers, school-children, 
 and some others went down to Dent and had cold meat and 
 
488 FOUNDATION OF COWGILL CHAPEL. 
 
 1837. coffee at the old parsonage. My sister made thirty-six gallons 
 Et. 52. o f C offee in a brewing-vessel. Among the unexpected 
 strangers was that strange, wild, but very clever person 
 Hartley Coleridge. I must honestly say that I was a little 
 afraid of him, for he not only possesses the poetic powers of 
 his father, but he is an incomparable mimic. I believe, 
 however, the impression produced on him by the whole scene 
 was such as to save us from all risk of mockery. With all his 
 faults, and strange wild habits, he is a kind-hearted man, and 
 I believe by no means devoid of religious feeling, however 
 imperfectly it may in some instances have influenced his life. 
 
 On Monday I hope to be. in town, and in two days more 
 to be set down in Cornwall. My best address for the next 
 fortnight will be Launceston, and if you or any of your 
 young people would only take up the pen, it would be 
 charity. About the end of this month I shall probably be 
 facing about to the north again. The British Association 
 meets this year at Liverpool on the nth of September. 
 When the hurly-burly is over I hope to spend a week or two 
 
 in Cumberland. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To Mrs Lyell. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 October ibth, 1837. 
 My dear Mrs Lyell, 
 
 I returned to my den this day week ; having been 
 absent (with the exception of one day in passing from 
 Yorkshire towards Cornwall) ever since the middle of May... 
 In June I ran down to Yorkshire and paid away ;8ooo one 
 morning among some countrymen of mine for whom I have 
 been made trustee. I also laid the foundation-stone of a little 
 chapel in a wild part of my native valley, and for the first 
 time in my life turned field-preacher, as I addressed about 
 eight hundred wild people for more than an hour, having a 
 large rock of mountain-limestone for my pulpit, and the vault 
 
BRENNAWS GALLANTRY. 
 
 of heaven for my sounding board. Then I turned my face to 1837. 
 the south, halted in London just long enough to take in water &* 5 2 - 
 and get up my steam, whence by another move I was trans- 
 ported to the eastern flank of Dartmoor. I spent a delightful 
 week or two in battering its sides and cracking its crown, and 
 then I made an attack on Rough Tor and Brown Willy, and 
 might, for aught I can tell, have reached Land's End but for 
 the abominable election. But I had promised to return, and 
 head my radical countrymen against a combination of the 
 rural squires. So I packed up bags and hammers, and 
 (halting only one day with Conybeare) went back almost with 
 the speed of the wind to my native valley. A few hours after 
 myself arrived a cousin of mine at my brother's house, bent on 
 the same purpose. He heard of the election while in the 
 northern extremity of the Highlands, and moved southward 
 with the same speed as I had done northwards. Does not 
 this prove a little good whig leaven to be lodged in the blood 
 of the Sedgwicks ? 
 
 Having done the Squires to their hearts content, I went to 
 Cumberland a country of charms to every one who has a 
 germ of feeling, and a thousand times more charming to me 
 from being associated with the recollections of early life. I 
 dare say you have heard of the incursion old ocean made last 
 summer into Mr Curwen's collieries. He became indignant at 
 the thought of their lighting fires under his lower extremities ; 
 so he took a most effectual way of putting them out for ever. 
 By the way an old Irishman, ycleped Dan Brennan, acted a 
 most gallant part during the rush of waters, and saved the lives 
 of four fellow-labourers. I told the story in the geological 
 section at Liverpool in so moving a way that I brought a 
 shower, not of tears, but of half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences 
 amounting to 37, which I sent as a solace to the old hero. I 
 should never have succeeded so well, but for my previous 
 lesson in field-preaching. But I will not torment you any 
 more with the dismal atmosphere of a coal-pit. Let me then 
 transport you to Liverpool, among mountains of venison and 
 
490 FIELD GEOLOGY. 
 
 1837. oceans of turtle. Were ever philosophers so fed before? 
 
 Et. 52. Twenty hundred-weight of turtle were sent to fructify in the 
 hungry stomachs of the sons of science ! Well may they body 
 forth, before another returning festival, the forms of things 
 unknown ! but I will not anticipate the monsters of philosophy 
 which such a seed-time portends. The crop no doubt will be 
 of vast dimensions. 
 
 After a very laborious week, a large party adjourned to 
 Sir Philip Egerton's. We had one glorious day in one of the 
 Northwich salt-mines. Conceive a chamber of twenty-six 
 acres, with a flat roof supported by rows of rude pillars of salt 
 arranged in perfect symmetry; conceive this monstrous and 
 almost interminable perspective traced by 2500 candles ; 
 conceive all this represented to the sense of sight by a kind 
 of darkness visible, converted, ever and anon, into actual light 
 by the coruscations of fireworks; lastly conceive my attempting 
 to get upon stilts to describe such wonders, and then falling flat 
 on my face and breaking the nose of my imagination. When 
 you have done all this you will know so little about the 
 matter that it will be better for us both to shift the subject. 
 
 I have only time to say that I started with Greenough 1 and 
 two Cambridge 2 friends for the Warwickshire coal-field. G. B. 
 G.'s paces and mine did not suit ; so we parted with mutual 
 good-will, after going one day in the same harness. Tell 
 Mr Lyell that I have also been working in the Leicestershire 
 coal-pits and in Charnwood Forest. The poor miners are 
 really to be pitied. At one place they are soused in old 
 Ocean's watering-pots ; at another they are broiled by Pluto's 
 kitchen-fires. I descended one pit about uoo feet deep, and 
 in two hours was baked to the very marrow of my bones. 
 N'importe ! here I am, with vigour enough to torment you 
 with a very long rambling letter. I have just room for my 
 
 1 George Bellas Greenough, one of the founders and first President of the 
 Geological Society. 
 
 2 Sedgwick tells Murchison, 9 February, 1838, that one of these friends was 
 Mr J. B. Jukes, of St John's College, B.A. 1836. He was one of Sedgwick 's 
 geological pupils. 
 
LEICESTERSHIRE COAL-FIELD. 491 
 
 kind remembrances to all your family and to assure you, with 1837. 
 a long face, and a penitent heart *, that I am most truly &* 5 2 - 
 
 yours 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To R. I. MurchisoHy Esq. 
 
 TRIN. COLL., Oct. 29, 1837. 
 
 "Pray what news? where are you in your book ? 
 I think I told you that Greenough and I separated amicably 
 after the first day. His paces, and mode of working, did not 
 suit me. I made out all the tricks of the Nuneaton field. 
 The coal-field passes into the New Red series ; has beds of 
 limestone (fresh-water I suppose) near the separation; and the 
 lower part of the New Red has calcareous portions that are 
 burnt for lime. 
 
 The Leicestershire coal-field astonished me, but it is very 
 obscure. By the way, we found the Warwickshire coal-field 
 brought out by a synclinal dip several miles to the S. W. of 
 the line marked on the maps. Greenough, by his precipita- 
 tion, overran this phenomenon. And, what delighted us, we 
 found a single patch of the old slate rock tangling out by a 
 riverside to the west of this western flap ; and just where it 
 showed itself it set the coal strata so much on edge that in one 
 place they had been worked in a vertical position by gallery 
 under gallery, like a lead vein. Charnwood Forest I knew 
 before ; but was delighted with a second visit. 
 
 They got up a dinner for me at Leicester 2 , and I tried to 
 pay them by a kind of evening lecture on the structure of the 
 neighbourhood, endeavouring to prove that the money they 
 are spending near the town in sinking for coal is so much 
 thrown away. Some of them did not thank me for this 
 damper ; but honesty is the best policy in geology as in every 
 other thing." 
 
 The chapel of which Sedgwick joyfully records the foun- 
 
 1 Mrs Lyell's last letter was dated 21 April, and had lain unanswered in a 
 drawer during Sedgwick's summer excursion. 
 
 2 The dinner was given by the Philosophical Society. 
 
492 FOUNDATION OF COWGILL CHAPEL. 
 
 1837. elation, and in which he ever afterwards took the liveliest 
 * 52. interest, is situated in the upper and contracted part of the dale 
 of Dent called Kirthwaite. The ancient name was Cogill or 
 Coegill, but this, by long usage, has become Cowgill, though 
 the correct pronunciation still survives. The circumstances 
 which led to the building of the chapel, have been narrated 
 by Sedgwick in the Memorial from which we have already 
 made long quotations. After describing how it had come to 
 pass that the inhabitants of Dent had sunk into "a state of 
 comparative poverty/' he proceeds : " the hamlet of Kirthwaite 
 partook of this change, and of the unhappy moral consequences 
 which gradually followed. In the first quarter of this century 
 many of the poorer inhabitants of the hamlet, especially those 
 in the remoter parts of it, were without instruction, of reckless 
 life, and without the common comfort and guidance of social 
 worship in the house of God. To meet these evils Mrs John 
 Sedgwick, the wife of the incumbent of Dent, personally 
 devoted the best efforts of her life. Year after year she worked 
 on in good hope ; and her pious work had its blessing. For 
 she gradually drew together an united body of Christians, 
 who were ready to sink out of memory all points of dissent or 
 difference, and with true hearts to join in common worship, 
 and in prayer for the erection of a chapel .to be lawfully 
 consecrated to the services of the Church of England. 
 
 " A site for a chapel and a chapel-yard was the first object 
 of inquiry ; and Mr Bannister of Cowgill gave generous help in 
 the hour of need. For he offered to convey to trustees the 
 materials of an old chapel 1 , with such addition from his family 
 freehold as would form a beautiful and convenient site and 
 burial-ground for a new chapel, which might become for ever a 
 
 1 Sedgwick says in a note (Memorial, p. 34) that the older chapel had been 
 built, so far as he had been able to ascertain by tradition, "by a member of the 
 family of Cowgill, who had while in Scotland adopted the doctrine and discipline 
 of the Presbyterian Church. For some years, while he lived, the chapel was 
 zealously attended, and the yard in which it stood was used as a burial-ground for 
 the congregation." After his death the congregation melted away, and the chapel 
 became a ruin. 
 
IN WORKINGTON COLLIERY. 493 
 
 chapel-of-ease to the old church of Dent. This offer was met 1837. 
 with heartfelt gratulations on the part of the inhabitants of &* 5 2 - 
 Dent. In conformity with such feelings, and in good hope, a 
 circular letter was published in July, 1836, calling upon all 
 who had a pious interest in the spiritual and temporal well- 
 being of the valley of Dent, to subscribe for the erection of a 
 chapel, to be called Cowgill Chapel. The public generously re- 
 sponded to the call, and on June 3Oth, 1837, the foundation 
 stone was laid amidst demonstrations of joy, which everyone 
 in Dent, whatever might be his name or form of worship, 
 seemed with a full heart to share 1 ." 
 
 At the Liverpool meeting of the British association Sedg- 
 wick was President of the Geological Section. He protested 
 that he was almost worked to death, but his various letters 
 show that he did not find the work disagreeable. His only 
 paper was a Notice of an Incursion of the Sea into the collieries 
 at Workington. It was at the close of this paper that he 
 told the tale of Brennan's intrepidity. His narrative is said 
 to have been extraordinarily dramatic a happy combination 
 of humour and pathos often expressed in the language of 
 the man himself 2 . A few days afterwards he sent the money 
 subscribed to Mr Williamson Peile, Lord Lonsdale's agent, 
 with the following letter 3 ; 
 
 LIVERPOOL, September i8//fc, 1837. 
 My dear Peile, 
 
 We have had a glorious week at Liverpool. On 
 Wednesday last I described before the Geological Section the 
 geological position of the great main band in the sub-marine 
 portion of the Workington colliery, and the circumstances 
 that led to its submersion. Before I sat down I also stated 
 
 1 A Memorial by the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel, pp. 46. Sedgwick sent 
 one hundred guineas to the building-fund. 
 
 2 Report of the British Association, 1837, p. 75. The Athenaum, p. 697. 
 
 3 This letter, of which the original cannot now be traced, was fortunately printed 
 in The Cumberland Pacquet, for 26 September, 1837. Our copy is due to the 
 kindness of J. H. Kendall, Civil Engineer, of Whitehaven. 
 
494 SUBSCRIPTION FOR BRENNAN. 
 
 1837. the facts you and I heard from the mouth of Daniel Brennan. 
 
 Et. 52. The account produced such a sensation in the room that a 
 subscription was instantly set on foot, and hats were handed 
 round for the brave fellow, who, under Providence, has been 
 the means of saving the lives of four of his fellow-creatures. 
 The fact of his turning back to save the old man in the stable 
 (after he himself and the three others whom he had conducted 
 safely through the air-course were out of danger) excited a 
 loud burst of admiration. I now enclose a bill for the sum of 
 37. 2. o, which I request you to pay over to Daniel Brennan, 
 being (with the exception of 2 or 3 since received) the 
 amount of the subscription raised on the spot, and handed 
 over to me in the Chair. 
 
 I am sorry to write in such a hurry, but the glad tidings I 
 send you, with my own hearty good wishes, are better things 
 by far than a more formal letter. I should have written to the 
 man himself had I known how to address him. Pray give him 
 good advice ; tell him to do again what I hope he has done 
 already, to thank God for the deliverance, and for this further 
 good that has come to him. Tell him also that those who 
 subscribed hope he will not spend on folly and sin this over- 
 flow of Christian charity on his behalf. 
 
 Make what use of this letter you please. The substance of 
 it should appear in the papers, as the fact it states is a lesson 
 of kindness, and may do good. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Peile, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Mr Peile lost no time in assembling his workmen, and 
 informed Brennan of his good fortune in their presence, " to 
 his great joy and indescribable astonishment 1 ." The money 
 was not wasted, as such gifts too often are ; it was prudently 
 given to Brennan as he wanted it, so that his debts were paid, 
 and his position substantially bettered. Six months afterwards 
 
 1 To Professor Agassiz, 5 March, 1838. 
 

 LEICESTERSHIRE COAL-FIELD. 495 
 
 Sedgwick could write: " I am happy to hear that the gift has 1837. 
 improved both his fortune and his morals. How much good &* 5 2 - 
 may be done by kindness ! and alas ! how seldom men even 
 think of it. 1 " 
 
 In a summer so fully occupied there was but little time 
 left for geology. In Devon Sedgwick was joined by Mr 
 Austen, but they did not complete any part of their survey, 
 both being unexpectedly called away. In Cumberland we do 
 not know that he did more than examine the drowned shafts at 
 Workington. The explorations in Leicestershire are described 
 with some detail in a letter to his brother. From Coventry, 
 he writes, "I walked to a small village near Bedworth, and next 
 morning commenced work along with three companions. In 
 the course of five days we worked our way, through a very 
 interesting country, as far as Tamworth. It is highly beautiful 
 to look upon ; and we did not shut our eyes to its loveliness ; 
 but the vast beds of coal underneath the surface (some of 
 them 12 feet thick) occupied the greater share of our attention. 
 From Tamworth we removed our head-quarters to Ashby de 
 la Zouche in Leicestershire ; and again began to dive under- 
 ground, descending one pit more than 350 yards deep. The 
 temperature at the bottom made the perspiration run off in 
 streams. To reward our toil we found them working a magni- 
 ficent coal-bed full 12 feet thick. After experiencing much 
 kindness at Ashby, we again removed our quarters to the 
 skirts of Charnwood Forest, and gradually worked our way 
 to Leicester. Finally we reached Cambridge on Monday 
 the Qth October 2 . 
 
 During the summer of 1837 the condition of Sedgwick's 
 house at Norwich had given him much trouble. The drains 
 had made themselves so unpleasant that he declared : "People 
 cross the street to avoid me, and hold their noses when I pass 
 them." In consequence certain indispensable alterations 
 
 1 Ibid. Mr Peile wrote, 17 February. 1838: "The poor fellow is extremely 
 grateful, and frequently asks after the Purfessor. He is sober and industrious." 
 
 2 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 16 October, 1837. 
 
496 SERMONS AT NORWICH. 
 
 1837. were carried out under the direction of Canon Wodehouse, 
 Et. 52. and many letters passed between him and Sedgwick re- 
 specting them. The first paragraph of the next letter refers 
 to this subject ; the rest, on a more delicate matter, explains 
 itself. Sedgwick's reply reads like a fragment of an autobio- 
 graphy, and explains much that without it appears contra- 
 dictory and almost unintelligible in the detailed history of 
 his life. 
 
 Prom Canon Wodehouse. 
 
 NORWICH, October lotA, 1837. 
 My dear Sedgwick, 
 
 I had better tell you at first, for fear of forgetting it at 
 last, that your house is well nigh finished in every respect : that it 
 looks respectable, if not beautiful, without, and promises much 
 comfort within. 
 
 I hope you will open this letter in a quiet, sit-still, leisurely, 
 contemplative mood, because I want you not only to read patiently, 
 but to digest it properly, not like a Heron with an Eel (as the fable 
 goes) but " more ruminantium" I have not forgotten a conversation 
 we had in this house somewhere about midnight, on the subject 
 of some sermons. You gave me a sketch, or rather a bold clear 
 outline, of a short course, which was to be printed, and preached at 
 Norwich Cathedral. Now I have strongly set my mind upon your 
 realizing this excellent scheme, and in your approaching Residence, 
 and the only object of this letter is earnestly to beg you not to 
 disappoint me. You have now time before you to do this in a 
 manner worthy of yourself. Your lectures exact no toil as to 
 preparation, you have only therefore to throw aside other matters for 
 a few weeks, and devote some spare hours to this, and the thing is 
 done. I have many reasons to urge in behalf of this proposition. I 
 persuade myself that you are not only a lover of truth, but will give 
 me credit for being the same, and that, when I assure you that I 
 write very much from a jealous regard for your reputation here, you 
 will not find fault with me for speaking openly. You have done 
 much for us here as a Geologist. I am now most anxious you should 
 give us some good, well-considered Theology from the Prebendal 
 Chair. " Sedgwick won't take the trouble to compose sermons," say 
 some. "He can't", say others. "He gives us nothing but a few 
 scraps of paper written with a pencil in church, and he'll teach 
 all the young ones to do the same." " If he really has not time 
 to prepare properly a few sermons, why was he made a Prebendary?" 
 " How much good might he do if he would turn his talents this way, 
 and give us every Residence a good course of good sermons ? " 
 
 Now I should not detail these waspish speeches to you, but that, 
 professing to have within me a few sparks of friendship, never, I 
 
SERMONS AT NORWICH. 497 
 
 trust, to be extinguished, I am considerably nettled by them, and 1837. 
 want you to furnish me with the best answer to such of them as may yt. 2 
 be in any degree true. It is not however merely on such grounds 
 that I write. " How much good might he do &>c." is a motive of a very 
 different kind ; one which you, I am assured, will not refuse seriously 
 to consider and respond to. ... 
 
 I will not add any apologies or explanations to what I have 
 written, because I am assured that to you any such expletives are 
 unnecessary. I rather expect to be called to London for a few days 
 before very long, and shall try to look in upon you going or returning. 
 All here are well, and Alice has not forgotten you. With every kind 
 wish from the whole party, always most sincerely yours, 
 
 CHARLES N. WODEHOUSE. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. October \2th, 1837. 
 My dear Wodehouse, 
 
 I have to thank you for the letter which reached me 
 yesterday morning, though some of its sentences made me 
 wince a little. As to the waspish speeches you mention I care 
 not for them ; but the other remark How much good might he 
 do &c. &c. &c. I agree with you, I ought to respond to as far 
 as I am able. And were I to give myself up to theological 
 studies exclusively no doubt I might do more than I have 
 done. But it is at present impossible for me to do so. And 
 were the alternative given me this day of resigning my pro- 
 fessorship or my stall, because I could not do the duties of 
 both properly, I should instantly give up the latter, and not 
 the former. For I have a great accumulation of original 
 matter piled up during observations directed to one main 
 point, and not to turn this to use and profit would I think be 
 a shame and a sin. In a few years I may perhaps be eman- 
 cipated from the rubbish which surrounds me. A museum is 
 rising from the ground *; were my collection once arranged, 
 and my geological books and papers written, I should wash 
 my hands, and try to pass my office to a younger and lustier 
 person. And when is this to be done ? Perhaps in three or 
 four years, if it please God to spare my life and faculties. At 
 this very moment I have no less than five papers on the stocks: 
 
 1 The present Geological Museum, part of the new Library begun 1837. 
 S. I. 32 
 
49 8 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 
 
 1837. two f r th e Cambridge Philosophical Society, and three for 
 * 5 2 - the Geological ; and of these, three are joint works in which 
 the reputation of others is concerned. These arrears arise 
 partly from my own procrastinating temper, and partly from 
 last year's long-continued indisposition, which prevented me 
 from putting pen to paper during the spring months. Under 
 these circumstances I have assuredly no time to prepare a 
 course of sermons for the press during the coming winter. 
 But pray come here, and talk over this and a hundred other 
 things. Illnatured things are seldom said without some 
 semblance of foundation. Have I then neglected my clerical 
 duties at Norwich ? In answering this question I ought to be 
 the last person appealed to. But in my first year's Residence 
 I had during the greater part of the time a double duty in the 
 Cathedral, and during three or four successive Sundays I did 
 duty thrice, which was fair hack work. During my second 
 Residence I worked hard at the Museum lectures, and preached 
 on every occasion on which I was apparently called on. The 
 Dean was away, and I was called on at least six or seven times. 
 Last winter I was direly out of sorts for six or seven weeks, 
 and utterly incapable of much intellectual labour. This is all 
 the apologetic matter I dare muster in my defence. My en- 
 deavour always was to avoid everything like rhetoric or fine 
 writing, and above all to fly from that which always tempts 
 me metaphysical disquisition, of which I was passionately 
 fond when a young man. In short I tried to be off the stilts, 
 and to speak truth plainly and practically. Whether I hit the 
 mark I aimed at I hardly know ; but I used to think that the 
 people listened well to what I said. As to tickling people's 
 ears with fine sermons, I never could condescend to do it were 
 it in my power. Some of my friends expect more from me 
 than I can do. Because on some occasions I speak fluently, 
 it by no means follows that I write readily. Experience tells 
 me the very contrary. I write with pain to myself in every 
 sense of the word, for a very few hours' writing will generally 
 bring on a fit of indigestion and swimming in the head, which 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 499 
 
 puts an end to all rational continuity of thought. I was, ever 1837. 
 since my childhood, utterly incapable of doing more than one -^t. 5 
 thing at a time to any purpose. To pass from one thing to 
 another frequently makes me utterly worthless. This peculia- 
 rity of my mind (and I believe it is what I might almost call 
 an organic peculiarity) has sometimes led me into dire mis- 
 conduct, and once or twice in my life brought me nearly into 
 a condition of monomania. I think I have more than once 
 hinted to you about the melancholy depression of my mind 
 before I was appointed to the Woodwardian Chair. My 
 summers' rambles, more than any other thing, brought me 
 round ; and I very much doubt whether even now I could 
 long hold my head up without them. This consideration has 
 naturally had some influence with me in determining my choice 
 in one or two rather trying occasions. But, after all, many of 
 my friends expect more from me than I have the power of 
 doing were I to try. I know that much of my life has been 
 dreamy and worthless ; but I am constitutionally incapable of 
 much sedentary exertion. My friends also think me a thou- 
 sand times better than I am. For my conscience tells me, in 
 language my soul cannot misinterpret, that in the hourly 
 conduct of my thoughts, and in the daily actions of my life I 
 have not only much to repent of, but that which ought to sink 
 me to the earth, and fill me with humiliation and shame. I 
 am now, at least, writing seriously. And, if it torments you, 
 you must blame yourself for writing so frankly to me ; and I 
 am sure I am, and ought to be, deeply thankful to you for what 
 you have done. How different the tone of your letter from the 
 doses of nauseous flattery I received at some of the public 
 meetings this summer ! Their quantity was an antidote to 
 their quality, as no human stomach would hold them, and 
 they acted as an emetic. I bear that about with me which 
 ought to make me humble, whatever persons may say flatter- 
 ing to my face, or waspish behind my back. This letter is not- 
 fit to be seen. Therefore after reading it (and I don't call on 
 you, as you do on me, to ruminate on it) pray burn it. First, 
 
 322 
 
500 REVISES MURCHISON'S SILURIA. 
 
 1837. however, give my kind remembrances to your family, begin- 
 /t. 52. nm g w ith Lady Jane, and ending with Boppity. My dear 
 
 Wodehouse, 
 
 affectionately yours 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 During the Michaelmas term Sedgwick tried the experi- 
 ment " for the first time in my Professorial life," of giving six 
 lectures in each week but the strain was too great, and brought 
 on palpitation of the heart, and sleepless nights. In addition 
 to this labour he was reprinting his Syllabus, and bringing it 
 up to date. " I want to be correct in my synopsis of the 
 Silurian System," he writes to Murchison, " have you one of 
 your printed outlines or synopses ? If you have such a paper, 
 don't fail to send it me by return of Post; for remember I am 
 in the Press." The following letter shows that Murchison 
 was asking his advice on the elaborate description of his own 
 peculiar domain which he was now beginning to print. In the 
 previous year Sedgwick had criticised the Introduction with 
 some severity, but his opinion on the body of the work was 
 evidently far more favourable. 
 
 My dear Murchison, 
 
 I send you the three sheets, which I looked over last 
 night as carefully as I could. It is a good joke for you to tell 
 me to just give half an hour to your three sheets. Three sheets 
 like yours are three honest hours' work, and so I found them 
 last night. I have altered as little as possible. One or two 
 sentences I did not understand. After all, your revises seem 
 to want no rasping. My suggestions, small as they are, are 
 perhaps changes for the worse, and I will venture to say that 
 not one man in a thousand would mark any difference. After 
 all your book is only a book for geologists. Natives of the 
 country will read and pick out parts of it, as Jack Horner ate 
 Christmas pies ; but, as a whole, it is far too good and deep 
 for any but a true geologist. And what geologist will care, 
 
HOUSEHOLD AT NORWICH. 501 
 
 one grain of trap, how a sentence is written provided he un- 1838. 
 derstands it. Yours in a hurry, ^t. 53. 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Many thanks for your Silurian papers 1 . 
 
 Sedgwick's occupations at the beginning of 1838 are 
 described in the following letters : 
 
 To the Rev. John Sedgwick. 
 
 NORWICH, January 6th, 1838. 
 My dear John, 
 
 It is too late for this day's post, but still I will try 
 to put myself out of your debt before to-morrow.... 
 
 On the 1st of December I began my Residence, and a day 
 or two afterwards I was elected President of the Norwich 
 Museum for the next two years. At the time of my appoint- 
 ment I undertook to give a few public lectures. My second 
 was given on Thursday to an audience of about 400, and 
 I hope to give two more. My friends here received me with 
 their usual kindness, and I was delighted to come again 
 among them ; and really my new house is quite charming. I 
 have one very good bed-room fit for a married couple ; and 
 three spare beds for bachelors. One Cambridge friend is with 
 me now; and before long I am expecting three more. I have 
 a capital housekeeper who provides and cooks for me the 
 same person whom Lady Jane Wodehouse recommended to 
 me a housemaid, and a young lass to help her. My own 
 servant comes and acts as my butler and waiter and factotum ; 
 
 1 This letter is undated, but docketed by Murchison, "November, 1837." 
 He further notes : " Revision of the three sheets (the only ones) of my work 
 which he undertook. R. I. M." This statement, as Mr Geikie observes in a 
 pencilled sentence appended to the above note, "is not quite accurate. Sedgwick 
 revised the Introduction to the Silurian System, and expressed great dissatisfaction 
 with the original, making many alterations and suggestions, most or all of which 
 Murchison seems to have adopted. Probably the three sheets above referred to 
 were the only three in the body of the work." To this may be added the fact that 
 in the spring of the following year (7 March, 1838) Murchison writes to Sedgwick : 
 " I send you the concluding chapter of my Part I., and a portion of the opening 
 chapter of Part II., which must be seen by you before they see the light." It is 
 of course possible that Sedgwick returned these proofs without looking at them. 
 
502 BISHOP STANLEY. 
 
 1838. and I have an assistant and occasional waiter to rub down my 
 t. 53. horse. Such is my establishment. Before long I hope some 
 of your family will come to see me. When Isabella and 
 Emma are out, they must come their first winter and keep 
 house for me during a two months' Residence. It will be 
 a good start for them : and I shall be able to show 
 them excellent society. Indeed I have more of it than I like. 
 The Bishop's family is an admirable addition to us. The 
 Bishop I knew before I came hither. His wife is a charming 
 and sensible woman. His eldest son was frozen up in the 
 North Sea with Captain Back, and is just appointed com- 
 mander of a gun-brig going out to the South Seas. The 
 second son took a very distinguished degree at Oxford, and 
 the youngest son has just joined the Engineers at Woolwich 
 all of them have been here. The two daughters are also very 
 clever and agreeable young ladies. One of them is not yet 
 come out. The whole family dined with me one day. But 
 the most noisy party I have had consisted of about twenty 
 children, whom I made very happy for a few hours. Don't 
 suppose that I have been quite idle in my profession. I have 
 been preaching almost every Friday, and often sitting up very 
 late at night, and rising very early in the morning, to write 
 my sermons. I preached last Sunday week in the Cathedral 
 for the benefit of the County Hospital. I rise very early, 
 and read prayers to my servants frequently by candle-light. 
 I then breakfast about eight... A happy new year to your 
 wife and children. 
 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 To Professor Agassis. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 March $tk, 1838. 
 My dear friend, 
 
 After an absence of three months I only returned 
 to Cambridge last week. My winter has been spent in 
 Norwich ; and many of my letters were detained in Cam- 
 
THEORY OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. 503 
 
 bridge for a long time, and yours among the rest. This will 1838. 
 explain my long delay in replying to your very kind and &*. 53. 
 delightful letter. In one respect, however, it gave me pain, as 
 it deprived me of the hope of seeing you in England next 
 summer. But I rejoice that Mr Dinkel is coming, as he is a 
 very kind-hearted man, as well as a very accomplished artist, 
 and will I believe do your work better than any other person. 
 I will give him every facility in my power in making drawings 
 from the specimens in the Cambridge Museum. Some I will 
 with great pleasure convey to town for him ; others he will 
 have to copy at this place, and I will procure lodgings for his 
 use. In short I will assist him, and you, in every way I can, 
 and more I cannot promise. The specimens of Agostino 
 Scilla shall also be put at his disposal. 
 
 I only reached Cambridge on Friday, when I found your 
 eighth and ninth Livraisons on my table, and I cannot tell you 
 how much I am delighted with them. The engravings speak 
 to the senses like the originals; and they have a great 
 additional interest to an English geologist, in being chiefly 
 derived from the formations with which he is familiar in his 
 own country. Pray put me down as a subscriber to your 
 work on Echinoderms, the successive parts of which may 
 be sent me through Bailliere along with the Livraisons of 
 your great work on fossil fish. 
 
 Till I see your memoir on the erratic blocks of the Alps I 
 don't know how I can offer any opinion, as I don't at present 
 know exactly what is your hypothesis. Where has it been 
 printed ?...On the subject of the erratic blocks of Switzerland 
 it strikes me that no one can possibly account for them 
 without the aid of the carrying power of ice. Without 
 knowing what it is, I am, therefore, favourably disposed 
 towards at least a part of your hypothesis. A great deal of 
 evidence, both positive and negative, has been advanced 
 in favour of the iceberg theory. For example, Mr Darwin 
 has shown that throughout South America erratic blocks are 
 found within the limits of latitude where glaciers are, or may 
 
504 
 
 THEORY OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. 
 
 1838. have been, down to the level of the sea ; and that they are 
 t- 53- wanting in the tropical latitudes, where ice could never have 
 existed near the sea level. In England (where everything is 
 on so small a scale, yet where we have such a fine succession 
 of phenomena, illustrating almost every important point in 
 the geological history of the earth), we have a most interesting 
 series of erratic blocks. I don't think the iceberg theory can 
 be applied to them, because they go in almost all directions, 
 and not towards any prevailing point of the compass, and 
 because they follow the exact line of waterworn detritus and 
 comminuted gravel. Such blocks I attribute to currents 
 produced during periods of elevation and unusual violence. 
 There are many instances of rocks grooved deeply, and 
 partially rubbed down, by the currents of what we formerly 
 called diluvium, a word which is passing in some measure out 
 of use in consequence of the hypothetical abuse of the term 
 by one school of geologists. There are very fine examples of 
 this kind near Edinburgh. Stones transported in this way 
 are always rounded by attrition, and in every question about 
 the origin of erratic blocks we ought to regard their condition 
 (viz. whether rounded or not), as well as their geographical 
 relation to the parent rock. 
 
 Since I had the pleasure of meeting you in Ireland I have 
 not published any memoirs. In the spring of 1836 I was out 
 of health and spirits. In the summer of 1836 I had a 
 laborious and successful tour in Devonshire, Cornwall, and 
 South Wales, partly with my friend Murchison, and we tried 
 to reduce the stubborn old formations to some order, and 
 I think they were a little more obedient when we left them. 
 Our labours have caused much discussion in the Geological 
 Society. The winter and spring of 1837 I was again sadly 
 out of health, and literally confined to my chamber for more 
 than a quarter of a year. The sad consequence was that all 
 my intellectual labours were suspended. I turned out, how- 
 ever, again last summer, finished my observations on the S.W. 
 counties of England, and ended the vacation in a survey 
 
THEORY OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. 505 
 
 of the coal-field of Cumberland. Thank God I am now well, 1838. 
 and before my summer's tour hope to pass four memoirs ^ t - 53- 
 through the press. All this will, however, depend on my 
 health, which generally gives way under sedentary labour. 
 We had a glorious meeting of the British Association at 
 Liverpool, and did ourselves the great pleasure of voting 
 a hundred pounds in aid of your work. I wish other 
 societies would follow so good an example. 
 
 So now, my dear Professor, I have sent you a very long 
 letter, which I hope you will be able to read. Most heartily 
 do I wish you health and happiness, and a rich harvest of 
 honour. 
 
 Believe me, your sincere and affectionate friend, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 We see from this letter that Sedgwick accepts the theory 
 of transport by ice to account for the position of erratic 
 blocks. At the same time, like many geologists at the 
 present day, he doubted whether the ice in question was 
 floating-ice, or land-ice (except in certain particular cases) ; 
 and further, whether stranding icebergs, or the passage of 
 glacier-ice, ought to be invoked as the cause of the striation 
 of rocks. Agassiz had stated his own views on the subject of 
 erratic blocks in the following passage : 
 
 NEUCHATEL, 30 November, 1837. 
 
 " II est une autre question sur laquelle je desirerais ardemment 
 connaitre votre opinion. C'est la question des blocs erratiques 
 repandus sur les flancs du Jura. Depuis plusieurs annees je me 
 suis applique a observer avec le plus d'exactitude possible ce 
 phenomena si remarquable, et si diversement explique par les 
 geologues. Aucune des explications qui en ont ete donnees jusqu'a 
 ce jour ne me parait resoudre le probleme, les unes e'tant en 
 contradiction avec une foule de phenomenes non moins gene'raux 
 et importants que les blocs eux-memes, les autres les passant sous 
 silence. Au nombre de ces phenomenes il en est un surtout dont on 
 n'a tenu aucun compte dans toutes les theories, et dont vous avez 
 constate la presence dans le nord de 1'Angleterre ; je veux parler des 
 surfaces polies sur lesquelles reposent en partie les blocs erratiques. 
 J'ai tache de rattacher ce phenomene ainsi que plusieurs autres, au 
 
5o6 OPENING OF THE BARTLOW BARROWS. 
 
 1838. transport des blocs, en supposant qu'ils sont le resultat de masses de 
 &. 53. gj ace q u j auraient comble a une certaine epoque la grande vallee de 
 la Suisse, et sur lesquelles les blocs auraient ete charries, depuis le 
 sommet des Alpes jusque sur les flancs de nos montagnes. Je fis de 
 cette question le sujet de mon discours d'ouverture au congres des 
 naturalistes Suisses a Neuchatel. Mon opinion fut vivement combattue 
 par MM. de Buch et Elie de Beaumont, qui assistaient k notre re'union, 
 et je ne doute pas qu'elle ne sera encore plus amerement critiquee 
 lorsqu'elle sera livree au public. J'attendrai votre reponse avec 
 impatience, heureux si je puis voir mon opinion appuye'e par le 
 geologue illustre en la science duquel j'ai le plus de confiance." 
 
 In April we find Sedgwick on a visit to Lord Braybrooke, 
 at Audley End, to witness the opening of one of the four 
 large barrows situated on the estate of Viscount Maynard, 
 near Bartlow in Essex. Popular belief had ascribed the 
 erection of these conspicuous artificial mounds to the Danes, 
 in commemoration of a battle ; but when three smaller 
 mounds, distant about eighty feet from the former, were 
 opened in 1832, the discovery of Roman antiquities, with a 
 coin of the Emperor Hadrian, shewed that they at least 
 belonged to the Roman period. In 1835 the largest and 
 loftiest barrow was explored under the superintendence of 
 Mr John Gage, Director of the Society of Antiquaries. As the 
 sepulchral chamber was probably in the centre of the mound, 
 which was 144 feet in diameter, and formed of chalk and soil 
 in alternate layers, of the firmest consistency, it was pierced 
 by a gallery. After ten days labour, the central chamber was 
 reached, and a large party of visitors from the neighbourhood 
 and friends from Cambridge, among whom were Sedgwick, 
 Lodge, and Whewell, assembled to see the contents removed. 
 They proved to be Roman, like those of the smaller mounds, 
 and were presumably of the same period. On this occasion 
 Whewell wrote An Eclogue, in which Sedgwick is supposed 
 to maintain that the tumuli were due to natural causes, 
 
 April 2ist, 1835. 
 
 Mr. Gage. MY antiquarian bosom burns to explore 
 These relics of the art of men of yore. 
 
 Professor Sedgwick. Stay, my good sir ; control your zeal, or lose it. 
 This is no work of art ; 'tis a deposit. 
 
OPENING OF THE BARTLOW BARROWS. 507 
 
 Gage. Geologist, avaunt ! and hide your head : 1838. 
 
 Ne'er was deposit thus deposited. ^ 
 
 Sedgwick. I hold, despite your antiquarian pride, 
 That Bartlow's tallest hill is stratified. 
 
 Gage. Your theory of strata, sir, is rickety : 
 'Tis a Romano-Dano-Celt antiquity. 
 
 Sedgwick. Sir, your antiquity's a joke to me : 
 'Twas left here by " the last catastrophe." 
 
 Gage. I tell you, sir, that Queen Boadicea 
 Killed fifty thousand men, and put them here. 
 
 Sedgwick. Sir, throw your queens and battles to the dogs : 
 'Twas when the Deluge made the Gogmagogs. 
 
 Lady Braybrooke. O gentle swains ! be for a moment mute, 
 For here is that will settle your dispute. 
 The spade proceeds, the earth is outward thrown, 
 And now at last we find a bit of bone. 
 
 Gage. Ha! give it me. It is, upon my word, 
 A British heel chopped by a Roman sword. 
 
 Sedgwick. No ; with your idle tales no longer weary 'em : 
 'Tis a new fossil beast the Bartlotherium. 
 
 Dr. X. Now, gentlemen, since bones are my affair, 
 I, as anatomist, the truth declare : 
 The bone is a heel-bone observe it thus 
 The beast, the Asinus domesticus. 
 No theorist is safe from trifling ills : 
 So to the Lord and Lady of these hills 
 Pay, as becomes you, thanks and reverence due, 
 And then proceed to theorize anew. 
 
 In 1838 the explorations were resumed, and a second 
 barrow, situated next to the largest on the south, was investi- 
 gated in the presence of the same party, with the addition of 
 Professor Henslow. Mr Romilly has preserved an account of 
 what then took place : 
 
 "19 April. Sat a long while with Lady Cotton, hearing Lodge's 
 account of the opening of the second of the Bartlow Barrows, which 
 took place last Tuesday. He, Sedgwick, Whewell, and Henslow went 
 from Audley End with a large party. They found a box (some four 
 feet long, three broad, and three high) in which were sundry Roman 
 glass bottles, pateras, bronze jugs, and a lamp ; also some small 
 bones (supposed to be chicken bones). The urn containing the 
 dead man's bones was not yet found. Sedgwick exhibited to the 
 mob a pot, which he declared had belonged to Julius Caesar. 
 Whewell wrote a copy of humorous verses on the occasion, viz. a 
 complaint of the dead man for being disturbed." 
 
 Whewell's verses have no special connexion, with Sedg- 
 wick's life ; still, as they are amusing in themselves, and 
 
5o8 OPENING OF THE BARTLOW BARROWS. 
 
 
 1838. besides were written to commemorate an exploration in 
 t. 53. which Sedgwick took an active part, we may be excused for 
 printing them. 
 
 April i^th, 1838. 
 
 WHERE Bartlow's barrows of wondrous size 
 
 Stand side by side to puzzle the wise, 
 
 In a certain year, on a certain day, 
 
 A voice was heard in the morning grey: 
 
 'Twas a grumbling, growling, muttering din, 
 
 Like a man who talks a box within ; 
 
 And it seemed to come, to the standers by, 
 
 From the center of one of the tumuli. 
 
 The language, as well as the ear could take it, 
 
 Was Latin, but such as a Briton would make it. 
 
 And this is a close translation, penn'd 
 
 For Carolus Neville of Audley End : 
 
 " Brother Icenius Crispus Caius ! 
 Close together our friends did lay us, 
 Seventeen hundred years ago, 
 And our two cousins, all in a row : 
 Tell me Caius, how do you lie? 
 Do you find any change as the years go by? 
 Are you still in your quarters narrow, 
 Snug in the mould of the tall green barrow, 
 With the tears of your friends around you lying 
 In tiny jars, to console you for dying? 
 I've an awkward feel that the outward air 
 Is making its way to my bones so bare ; 
 It seems as if the sharp north-west 
 Were somehow getting within my chest: 
 And, if the cold very much increases, 
 I shall sneeze my barrow all to pieces. 
 Are you cold too ? I feel, by Bacchus ! 
 An epidemic disease attack us : 
 And I really fear, as learned men say, 
 ' A touch of a tumular influenza.' " 
 
 And another voice, from another hill, 
 Replied in a hoarser grumble still : 
 
 "What! O Jupiter! cousin Verus, 
 Haven't you heard what pass'd so near us? 
 Poor Icenius ! don't you know 
 They carried him off three years ago? 
 Certain robbers, call'd antiquaries, 
 Came and disturbed his quiet Lares; 
 Bored his barrow, and stole, alas ! 
 His urns and bottles, his bronze and glass: 
 
OPENING OF THE BARTLOW BARROWS. 509 
 
 His worship's chair, that he used to sit in 1838. 
 
 At the quarter-sessions for Eastern Britain; ;Et. 53. 
 
 His handsome funeral prcefericulum ; 
 
 His wife's new-fashion'd enamel ridiculunt ; 
 
 Bagg'd the whole ! it did not matter a 
 
 Pin whether vase, or lamp, or patera. 
 
 Even his bones, though stript of their clothing, 
 
 They took away, and left him nothing. 
 
 All are gone, and the world may see 'em 
 
 Making a show in the Maynard Museum. 
 
 " And now I fear these folks intend 
 To rob you too, my respected friend ; 
 And, following up their barbarous custom, 
 They've dug a hole to your very bustum ; 
 And that's the reason, or I'm mistaken, 
 You feel so bored, and so sadly shaken. 
 
 " It is really hard that one's very great age 
 Can't save one from prying Fellows like Gage 2 ; 
 When one comes to ones teens of centuries, clearly 
 One should not be treated so cavalierly. 
 
 " But since it is so, and the move's begun, 
 I trust we shall meet when all is done. 
 So, when near Caius you're set on the shelf, 
 Tell him I hope to be there myself; 
 And say the thing which I doubt the least on 
 Is our coming together again at Easter?" 
 
 Before starting on his summer excursion Sedgwick read a 
 very elaborate paper to the Geological Society (23 May) 
 entitled A Synopsis of the English Series of Stratified Rocks 
 inferior to the Old Red Sandstone, with an attempt to determine 
 the successive natural groups and formations. In this communi- 
 cation he linked together most of his previous work, in 
 the Lakes, in Wales, in Devonshire, and in Cornwall, and 
 ended with a tabular arrangement of the classes and sub- 
 divisions into which the rocks might be conveniently sorted. 
 
 1 Resembling the modern reticule. 
 
 2 John Gage, Esq. F.S.A. 
 
 3 Easton Lodge, the seat of Viscount Maynard, the proprietor of the Bartlow 
 Hills. [These poems are printed in Sunday Thoughts and other Verses, a 
 collection of poems on various subjects printed for private circulation in 1847, 
 according to Mr Todhunter (William Whewell, p. 167). The successive explora- 
 tions of the Bartlow tumuli are described in Archcsologia, xxv, xxvi, xxviii.] 
 
510 DINNER TO SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. 
 
 1838. The occupations of the summer are described in the next 
 
 t- 53- letters. The first was written from Mr Conybeare's house. 
 
 To Miss Emma Sedgwick. 
 
 AXMINSTER, July 6th, 1838. 
 My dear Emma, 
 
 I sent a short note to your father a day or two 
 since ; but had no time to tell him what I had been about 
 for the last month. Nor indeed have I time now ; but I will 
 do my best before the dinner-bell rings to give you a kind of 
 outline of my movements. 
 
 On the I4th of last month I left Cambridge, and the day 
 following attended a great public dinner given to Sir John 
 Herschel on his return from the Cape. He has been spending 
 five years there, making discoveries in the southern hemisphere, 
 and has returned laden with astronomical treasures. I was 
 called on to make a speech, a rather nervous business among 
 so many distinguished strangers 1 . The day following (i6th) 
 I went with Professor Henslow to St Albans to visit his 
 father's family. It was a long-promised visit, made partly for 
 the purpose of seeing my friends, and partly for the purpose 
 of examining the interesting antiquities of the neighbourhood. 
 On the outskirts of the town is a pretty little church with the 
 vault of the Verulam family, and the statue of Lord Bacon. 
 Tradition says that it is an admirable likeness, and assuredly 
 it is an exquisite work of art ; indeed it was this monument 
 (of which I had seen a drawing) which first induced me to 
 think of visiting St Albans. I also, during this pilgrimage, 
 visited, as you may well suppose, the ruins of Lord Bacon's 
 house, among which I rambled for an hour " chewing the cud 
 of sweet and bitter fancy," as Shakspeare says in quaint 
 phrase, pregnant however with meaning. 
 
 After this charming visit I returned to town in time to 
 attend the Queen's levee on Wednesday the iQth. It was a 
 
 1 Sedgwick proposed the health of the chairman, H. R. H.the Duke of Sussex. 
 There is a full account of the dinner in The Athenceum, 16 July, 1838. 
 
PRESENTATION TO THE QUEEN. 511 
 
 splendid show, as all the foreign ambassadors, who had come 1838. 
 to grace the Coronation, were present. When it was over, ^ l - 53- 
 a party of the Royal Society were introduced to the Queen 
 in her private closet. We had an excellent opportunity of 
 seeing her, and hearing her speak, as she received the Duke of 
 Sussex without any of the formality of a Court, and seemed 
 only to remember that he was her uncle. After presenting the 
 Statutes of the Royal Society, and obtaining her signature to 
 the book, he offered to bend his knee and kiss her hand (which 
 is the regular form on such occasions) ; but she immediately 
 stopped him, put her arm round his neck, and kissed his 
 cheek. He afterwards presented us all in turn, and we had a 
 most gracious reception. So, my dear Emma, when I next 
 give you a kiss I dare say you will find my lips all the 
 sweeter for having touched our youthful Queen's hand. 
 
 The day following (the 2ist) I went to Oxford to stand 
 godfather to Dr Buckland's youngest son. He was christened 
 Adam Sedgwick ; so you see my name is to be perpetuated, 
 though as yet I have no child of my own. My visit to my 
 friends at Christ Church was delightful ; and though I have 
 now seen Oxford so very often, yet I think I can say that I 
 see it each succeeding time with renewed and increasing 
 pleasure. It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, 
 and so full of historical interest. The whole party one day 
 made a trip of about six or seven miles down the Thames, and 
 then had an al fresco dinner in the park of the Archbishop of 
 York. 
 
 On Monday the 26th I returned to London by the line of 
 the Birmingham railroad; and such streams of population 
 were floating into London along the lines of all the great roads, 
 to see the festivities of the Coronation, that even the steam- 
 engines could hardly drag them along the tram-roads. The 
 train by which I reached town conveyed numerous carriages 
 and horses besides 900 passengers, and was dragged along 
 the rails by three engines which puffed and groaned most 
 piteously under their extraordinary load. But what can I 
 
512 THE CORONATION. 
 
 1838. say of the Coronation week ? The papers are all full of it, 
 53- and the accounts you have been able to read are infinitely 
 more in detail than anything I can tell you. All London 
 seemed to be mad, and half of England seemed to be packed 
 in the streets of London. I was in the Abbey during the 
 grand and solemn ceremonial ; and in what place think you ? 
 In the Queen's private box. I know Colonel and Lady Isa- 
 bella Wemyss very intimately, and one of them is Queen's 
 Equerry, and the other a Lady of the Bedchamber. So the night 
 before the Coronation they sent me a Queen's private ticket. 
 I wish you and your sister could have been with me. It was 
 the best place in the whole Abbey, just on one side of and 
 overlooking the two thrones. I certainly never saw before 
 so grand, dazzling, and solemn a ceremonial, and I trust in 
 Providence that I shall never have an opportunity of seeing it 
 repeated. The little Queen performed her part with grace, 
 dignity, and good feeling ; and all hearts seemed to swell with 
 delight. In the evening there was in the parks the finest 
 display of fireworks I ever beheld. You may judge of the 
 scale when I tell you that 850 large rockets were shot 
 vertically into the air at one single explosion. When they 
 began to burst it seemed as if a regiment was giving a platoon 
 fire a quarter of a mile above our heads ; and the instant after, 
 the whole sky was lighted up with red, green, and blue lights ; 
 which gradually descended in the form of a gorgeous canopy 
 towards the surface of the earth. There were seven other 
 discharges of 300 or 400 rockets at a time, besides many other 
 gorgeous displays of different kinds. 
 
 The Sunday after the Coronation I went with the Sub- 
 Dean to the Chapel Royal. He introduced me through the 
 vestry, so I got in without any press. Hundreds were waiting 
 at the door without being able to find a place. The chapel is 
 small and plain. The Bishop of London preached a good 
 plain sermon ; and the young Queen, the Queen Dowager, 
 and the Duchess of Kent sat in front of the Royal pew. They 
 were all dressed as plain as plain could be, stopped to receive 
 
SUMMER JOURNEY. 513 
 
 the Sacrament together, and seemed anxious to throw away 1838. 
 all the pomp and pride of greatness as much as they could. &*. 53- 
 I was now anxious to get away from London. But how was 
 this to be effected ? Every coach and means of conveyance 
 were engaged for several days to come. Last Wednesday 
 evening, however, I succeeded in securing a place in one of the 
 night coaches, and in course of the following day found my 
 way to this place, where I am halting a day or two before I 
 fairly set to work upon the rocks. Mr Conybeare's family, 
 whom you have often heard me speak of, now live at this 
 place. The country is delightful. Now have I not sent you 
 a long gossiping letter, my dear Emma ? I seldom have time 
 to write such. Ever my best love to my brother and sister 
 and your sister. Believe me, with prayers for your health 
 and happiness, your most affectionate uncle 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 ALNWICK CASTLE, September 4^, 1838. 
 My dear Isabella, 
 
 I am beginning a letter which I fear I shall not 
 have time to finish, as I expect to be called off by a party 
 going to start for Chillingham Castle ; but I will do my best 
 during the few minutes they allow me. 
 
 Since the letter I sent to Emma I have been in almost 
 continual movement First I went round the greater part of 
 the south coast of Devonshire. It is a most smiling and 
 lovely country, and full of interest connected with my own 
 favourite pursuits. I then cut through the eastern extremity of 
 Cornwall and passed along the north coast of Devon. The 
 cliffs along that part of the coast are perhaps the finest in all 
 England, reaching in some places the height of eight or nine 
 hundred feet, and they are here and there ornamented with 
 foliage among all the broken ledges, which gives great richness 
 and picturesque effect to the rugged elevations. From North 
 Devon I tracked my way through some exquisite country in 
 Somersetshire, and from thence went up the Bristol Channel 
 
 s- i. 33 
 
5 i4 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT NEWCASTLE. 
 
 1838. to Clifton, where I met my friend Professor Whewell. We 
 Et. 53. S pent the Sunday there with a Cambridge friend, and then went 
 through a most delicious country to Gloucester, Cheltenham, 
 and Tewkesbury. The last place was very famous during the 
 wars of York and Lancaster ; and you may perhaps remember 
 that the battle which finally decided the fortunes of Queen 
 Margaret and her son was fought close to the town. Among 
 some exquisite monuments of the Middle Age, is a small 
 marble slab to the memory of the unfortunate young Prince 
 who was murdered soon after the battle ; and a shrine of 
 exquisite tabernacle-work to the memory of Clarence, who was 
 buried there after his murder by Richard the Third. Every 
 house, and every field, seems to savour of the poetry of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Tuesday Evening. Let me see. I left off at Tewkesbury 
 and Shakspeare, but let them pass, and in imagination travel 
 with me first to Birmingham, and thence by the railroad to 
 Liverpool, where I arrived almost in the dark, and while the 
 rain was descending in torrents. But for these unfortunate 
 circumstances I should have gone across to Woodside 1 on the 
 chance of seeing you, though I had not heard of your return 
 from Dent. Next day at 7 a.m. I started by coach for 
 Preston, and thence by the canal-boat to Burton in Kendal, 
 from which I posted to Dent. They were all excellently well, 
 and very happy to see me. After remaining in Dent about a 
 week, I went over Stainmoor to Newcastle, where I arrived 
 last Saturday fortnight, to attend the meeting of the British 
 Association. Our reception was truly noble, and our numbers 
 have increased enormously, so that I fear before long no place 
 will be able to hold us. The Duke of Northumberland was 
 President, and went through all the formal business with great 
 dignity and good temper, keeping a rather ungovernable body 
 in excellent order, without seeming to press hard on any one. 
 I had no office this year ; at which I greatly rejoiced, as 
 it left me free to amuse myself. I found a nice quiet lodging 
 
 ] Sedgwick's nieces were at school at Woodside. 
 
SPEECH AT TYNEMOUTH. 515 
 
 in a good central situation, and my landlady procured cold 1838. 
 fowls, tongue, and two or three bottles of white wine for me ; ^- 53 
 so I became a snug housekeeper, and had several parties 
 to eat luncheon with me during the intervals of the week's 
 turmoil. On the Friday of the Association week I went 
 to the mouth of the Tyne with a geological class of several 
 hundreds, and nearly all the population of Tynemouth turned 
 out to join us. You would have been amused at the pictu- 
 resque group, clustering among the rugged precipices of a 
 noble sea-cliff, or congregating on the sand below, while I 
 addressed them at the utmost stretch of my voice six different 
 times, from some projecting ledge that served as a natural 
 pulpit. Every one was in high spirits, the day was glorious, 
 and we all returned up the river in steam-boats, so as to join 
 in the work of the evening meetings. I must conclude the 
 bell has rung five minutes since. 
 
 Ever, my dear Isabella, 
 most affectionately yours 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick would have us believe that he played a very 
 subordinate part at Newcastle; but Sir John Herschel, in a 
 letter to his wife, gives a vivid impression of his eloquence : 
 
 NEWCASTLE, Atigust 7, 1838. 
 
 " All the show here is over. It has been by far the most brilliant 
 meeting of the Association, and in all the public proceedings perfect 
 good taste has reigned. Sedgwick wound up on Saturday with a 
 burst of eloquence (something in the way of a sermon) of astonishing 
 beauty and grandeur. 
 
 "But this, I am told, was nothing compared to an out-of-door 
 speech, address, or lecture, which he read on the sea-beach at 
 Tynemouth to some 3000 or 4000 colliers and rabble (mixed with 
 a sprinkling of their employers), which has produced a sensation 
 such as is not likely to die away for years. I am told by ear and eye 
 witnesses that it is impossible to conceive the sublimity of the scene, 
 as he stood on the point of a rock a little raised, to which he rushed 
 as if by a sudden impulse, and led them on from the scene around 
 them to the wonders of the coal-country below them, thence to the 
 economy of a coal-field, then to their relations to the coal-owners and 
 
 332 
 
5 i6 ALNWICK CASTLE. 
 
 1838. capitalists, then to the great principles of morality and happiness, and 
 t> 5 o. last to their relation to God, and their own future prospects.... 
 
 "And, by the bye, though one should not tell one's own good 
 things, here is one so good, that you must have it ! Sedgwick, in his 
 talk on Saturday, said that the ladies present were so numerous and 
 so beautiful that it seemed to him as if every sunbeam that had 
 entered the windows in the roof (it is all windows) had deposited 
 there an angel. Babbage, who was sitting by me, began counting 
 the panes, but, his calculation failing, he asked me for an estimate of 
 the numbers. * I can't guess ' was my answer, ' but, if what Sedgwick 
 says be true, you will admit that for every little pane there is a great 
 pleasure ! ' ' : 
 
 The next three letters carry us to the end of 1838 : 
 
 To Rev. John Sedgwick. 
 
 ST BEES, September itfh, 1838. 
 
 I remained at Newcastle over Monday the 26th to attend 
 the anniversary dinner of the Natural History Society, of 
 which I am a member, and the day following went to Belsay 
 Castle to meet a son of Sir Charles Monk, who was an old 
 pupil of mine ; after remaining two nights I moved on to 
 Sir John Trevelyan's, and thence to Alnwick Castle, where I 
 remained till Thursday the 6th of this month. Nothing could 
 be more kind than the reception I had from the Duke and 
 Duchess, who live in their magnificent old feudal fortress 
 in almost regal state. It stands on nearly six acres, in 
 the centre of which rise the clustering towers of the great 
 keep, in which are the family apartments. They form two 
 circular suites, arranged one above the other, round the central 
 court ; and you approach them through three great gothic 
 portals, each communicating with a separate court ; and you 
 emerge into the streets by a vast gateway, imposing from 
 its mass, and in ancient days most formidable for its 
 defences. 
 
 While I was at Alnwick Whewell joined the party, and we 
 made a day's expedition to Lord Tankerville's Castle, mainly 
 for the purpose of seeing his celebrated wild bulls the 
 legitimate descendants of the old inhabitants of the Cale- 
 donian forests. Like all wild animals, they are all exactly 
 
THE CHILLINGHAM HERD. 517 
 
 alike ; they are white as snow, with black hoofs, and black 1838. 
 eye-lashes, and horns tipped with black. We approached &*- 53- 
 very near them by the shelter of a wood which was to 
 leeward ; had it been to windward they would have smelt us, 
 and been off long before we came in sight. On leaving 
 Alnwick I returned by coach to Newcastle, and from thence 
 found my way to the house of my old pupil Mr Wharton, who 
 lives close to Durham. The weather was so dreadful that for 
 two days I could not stir from his door. Sunday was fine, 
 and on Monday and Tuesday we effected our purpose of 
 visiting the new harbours of Hartlepool and Seaham, and of 
 examining some coal-works in the southern part of the 
 county of Durham. On Wednesday I left Wharton's, and 
 yesterday worked my way to Whitehaven, passing from 
 Newcastle to Carlisle by the railroad in two hours and fifty 
 minutes. We came the first four miles in six minutes exactly 
 by my watch. The country was lovely, especially along the 
 Tyne; but the objects seemed literally to fly past us. Ainger 
 is not looking well, though better than he was last year. 
 
 To R. /. Murchison, Esq. 
 
 DENT, October nth, 1838. 
 
 I spent several days delightfully with my friend Wharton, 
 in rambling along the coast of Durham, and examining the 
 enormous excavations which have been made through the 
 magnesian limestone since my former visits to the county. 
 Nothing can be more beautiful than the sections made by 
 the railroads, laying bare the Lower New Red and the fish- 
 beds, which in some places are mineralogically identical with 
 the copper-slate of Germany. The want of conformity be- 
 tween the coal-measures and the overlying series is also 
 most strikingly exhibited in several of the new sections. 
 
 From Durham I went to Whitehaven, where I spent ten 
 days in collecting materials for the Whitehaven paper. They 
 accumulate so much upon me that I am afraid of being 
 overlaid by them.... 
 
5i8 COMPLETION OF COWGILL CHAPEL. 
 
 1838. From Whitehaven I went by Lowther Castle (where I 
 
 Et - 53- halted two days) to Kendal, and there I collected some mag- 
 nificent mountain-limestone fossils. 
 
 To Rev. W. Ainger. 
 
 TRIN. COLL. October 17 th, 1838. 
 My dear Ainger, 
 
 I only reached this place on Wednesday evening. 
 The day following I met George 1 in the street. This morning 
 I have been calling on him, and giving him good advice to 
 read hard and walk hard. There is no fear about the former ; 
 and I hope, for health's sake, he will follow the latter. If 
 there were any meaning in the proverb about cutting the coat 
 to the cloth (a proverb by the way quite a propos to a tailor's 
 box) I ought to send you a very long epistle, but, to tell the 
 truth, I don't use scribbling-paper because of my fulness of 
 matter, but because I have no other just now in my room. 
 George tells me he is going to send off a box to St Bees with 
 furniture for your outer man. So I mean to instruct him to 
 stuff this sheet into the pocket of your new pair of breeches ; 
 and scribbling-paper will do quite well enough for such a 
 roosting-place. 
 
 We parted, if I remember right, at Shap Wells 2 ; and soon 
 after I started with a batch of the Kendal magistrates. The 
 following morning was spent in packing fossils. They ought 
 to be precious things, as the carriage of the box comes to 
 more than two pounds sterling. I then went on to Dent and 
 found them all quite well. Jane talks of nothing but Cowgill 
 Chapel. I think she has a right to be proud of it. It is a 
 very pretty, correct, building, and admirably fitted for its 
 purpose. The consecration is to take place on Tuesday next, 
 a day unfortunately too late to allow of my being present. I 
 
 1 George Henry Ainger, of St John's College, B.A. 1842, afterwards Fellow. 
 
 2 Dr Ainger had accompanied Sedgwick to Lowther Castle, on leaving which 
 they went together to Shap Wells "to take another look at the granite hills." 
 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 26 September, 1838. 
 
EXPLORATION OF INGLEBOROUGH. 519 
 
 spent a day or two with Mr Farrer of Clapham, who has been 1838. 
 making great discoveries under Ingleborough. He has blown &* 53- 
 away a great deal of rock with gunpowder, and so formed 
 communications between a succession of very beautiful caverns 
 richly adorned with stalactites, some of which reach the ground, 
 and form beautiful white pillars. We endeavoured (at the 
 distance of about three-quarters of a mile from the entrance of 
 the cave), to make some new advances. But to effect this we 
 were forced to use our abdominal muscles as sledges, and our 
 mouths as candlesticks. On, however, we went (serpent-wise, 
 though not perhaps wise as serpents), and wriggled our way 
 about two hundred yards, when the roof became more lofty, 
 and the water more deep. We were provided with a cork 
 jacket, which one of the party mounted, anxious, like Hotspur, 
 " to pluck up drowned honour by the locks ; " and so equipt 
 (and over and above provided with a long cord fixed to said 
 jacket) ventured on a voyage v/here man had never before 
 floated. Meanwhile we sat on a low ledge of rock, each of us 
 in the very position of Law's man when he was stitching, on 
 his board, the back-seam of your new breeches ; and we solaced 
 ourselves with a cigar, a luxury our floating friend could not 
 enjoy while he held a large candle in his mouth to light his 
 way over the waters. After running out 100 yards of rope 
 the chamber closed, and the water seemed to escape through 
 many narrow sink-holes. So the voyager came back, and we 
 all returned as we could, with our clothes almost peeled off 
 our bodies, and our knees and elbows the colour of damaged 
 indigo. I halted a day or two on my way back with our old 
 school-fellow Welsh. He gave a sort of al fresco party one 
 day in Ingleton fells ; which I enjoyed much, for its own sake, 
 and from the remembrance of past days that it stirred up. 
 After halting a few days more at Dent I was at length forced 
 to run away by my Cambridge engagements ; but I halted a 
 day at Liverpool, partly to see my nieces, and partly to see 
 the footsteps of a preadamite beast that used to walk over 
 the sands of Cheshire between high and low water mark. The 
 
520 
 
 THE SILURIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 1838. rock with the impressions is as old as St Bees Head. By the 
 Et- 53- way, next year the lasses will have left school, and I will try 
 to give them a run through the Lakes, and bring them as far 
 as St Bees. Will you take us in ? If so, Done ! And the 
 word * Done ' is a propos ; for my sheet is done, and I have 
 done wonders, considering that this is the 28th letter I have 
 scrawled since my return. Thank God I have now broken 
 the neck of my arrears in the way of letter-writing. It always 
 takes me a good part of a week to work myself right after my 
 return, as no one knows my address while I am away for the 
 summer. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Sedgwick's enforced absence from the consecration of 
 Cowgill Chapel gave him much annoyance. " Is it not a 
 pity," he wrote to his brother, " after being so often dragged 
 to the North by odious money transactions, that I cannot 
 now attend when it would gladden my heart to be with you ? 
 But it would not do for me to be away from College at this 
 time of year 1 ." It was some consolation to him to learn that 
 the ceremony was favoured by fine weather; that the congre- 
 gation was large and sympathetic ; and that his own absence 
 had been generally regretted. He testified his unabated 
 interest in the good work by a further donation, by which 
 the whole amount of his subscriptions was raised to two 
 hundred guineas. 
 
 Murchison's great work The Silurian System^ on which 
 he had been so long engaged, was published in the first days 
 of 1839. It was dedicated in the most cordial terms to 
 Sedgwick, and one of the first copies was sent to him at 
 Norwich. The gift was promptly followed by a request that 
 he would write a <! little article, if only half a column," in The 
 Times, to which he returned the following decisive answer : 
 
 1 To Rev. John Sedgwick, 24 October, 1838. 
 
THE SILURIAN SYSTEM. 521 
 
 8 a.m. January 10, 1839. l839 ' 
 
 My dear Murchison, ^- 54- 
 
 I am very deeply in your debt. First, your 
 magnificent present, for which I know not how to thank you. 
 Then two letters to answer, and no time to answer them at 
 any length. Accept, however, my best thanks, and warmest 
 congratulations on the new birth, full-grown and strong, as 
 it ought to be, after so long a period of gestation. And now 
 I hope you are doing as well as can be expected ! 
 
 In regard to your second letter and its request, I cannot 
 comply with it, for two or three reasons. First, I have not 
 time to write to newspaper editors any letters fit to be read. 
 Secondly, I have not time (while here) even to skim the book, 
 and yet I ought to do that if I dare to sit in the reviewer's 
 chair. Thirdly, I will not condescend to write in a paper 
 which I think calumnious and dishonest, though very clever. 
 Fourthly, you have the assistance of Mantell, who having a 
 little followed the trade of puffing can blow a better blast than 
 myself. Fifthly, because I think your work of such solid 
 merit as not to need any artifice of publication ; and in my 
 own case I had much rather the means you point out were not 
 used at all. Reasons ! why, I have sent you reasons enough 
 to sink a three-decker ! 
 
 I am very busy as usual, and in addition to a great many 
 gastronomic labours, I have day after day been sitting on 
 committees of the Norwich Museum. After morning service I 
 have one to attend to-day, so I now am writing by candle- 
 light. Pray how are you all going on in London ? Have 
 you heard anything about Jukes, who is willing to go to 
 Newfoundland as surveyor ? I think he will do the work very 
 well, and that we are fortunate in having so good an offer. 
 Pray give him a shove if you can. I have written about him 
 to Lonsdale and Darwin. Yours always, 
 
 A. SEDGWICK. 
 But, though Sedgwick declined to take up his pen in 
 
522 JOINT PAPER ON DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
 
 1839. commendation of The Silurian System, his admiration of it 
 Et. 54. was cordial and sincere. Even at the close of his life, after long 
 estrangement from the author, he could say that this year 
 " formed an epoch in the history of European Geology ; " and 
 that whatever assistance might have been rendered by others, 
 " the chief honour will ever be given to the author of the 
 System, who brought the materials together and arranged 
 them in that manner in which they are seen in his splendid 
 work. Under his hands the older Palaeozoic Geology had 
 assumed a new and a nobler type 1 ." 
 
 During the winter and early spring Sedgwick and Murchi- 
 son were busy with a second joint paper on Devonshire and 
 Cornwall. On this occasion, though Sedgwick's working-days 
 were clouded, as usual, by business, lectures, and illness, the 
 work proceeded more smoothly than might have been 
 expected, and just before the date appointed for the reading 
 of the paper (24 April) the weather cleared up, if we may 
 use such a metaphor, and he could write : " Yesterday 
 I had my field-lecture, and a scamper (often at full gallop) of 
 thirty five miles did me a great deal of good, so that my head 
 is clearer, and my gouty symptoms are, for the nonce, almost 
 gone 2 ." The paper, when read, "excited some pugnacity, 
 and we had a debate upon it that lasted nearly to midnight 3 ; " 
 but the result was evidently satisfactory, for Sedgwick good- 
 humouredly passes on in the next sentence to lighter topics. 
 The passage is interesting as shewing the affection he had 
 already begun to feel for the Stanley family : 
 
 "On Friday morning I called at Brook Street on the 
 Bishop. All well. K. T. [Miss Catherine Stanley] all 
 glorious to behold, with a gorgeous plume, just going to be 
 presented at the Drawing-room. So she is now fairly out 
 no longer a mere chrysalis, a creature without sensibility, 
 having neither organs of nutrition, nor wings, nor legs. But, 
 
 1 Preface to Sailer's Catalogue, etc. p. xxii. 
 
 2 To R. I, Murchison, 20 April, 1839. 
 
 3 To Canon Wodehouse, 30 April, 1839. 
 
THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 523 
 
 on the contrary, she has glorious antennae waving over her 1839. 
 head, organs of sense to discourse sweet music, arms for offence ^ 54- 
 and defence, and wings glittering like sunbeams on a May 
 morning. I hope in this transformation she has not acquired 
 a sting, as some winged creatures have. Be this as it may, I 
 shall hereafter treat her with great deference, now that she 
 is transformed, by the magical touch of the royal hand, into 
 a young lady." 
 
 We have in the next place to speak of Sedgwick's joint 
 labours with Murchison on the Continent, which occupied four 
 months of the summer and autumn of 1839. Their object in 
 undertaking this tour can fortunately be stated in a passage 
 from their subsequent paper, read to the Geological Society 
 in May, 1840 a passage which, from internal evidence, we 
 feel inclined to ascribe to Sedgwick : 
 
 "When we entered, during the summer of 1836, upon an exami- 
 nation of the structure of North Devon, our sole aim was to determine 
 the position and relations of the culmiferous strata, about which 
 there had been much controversy. Before our task could be com-: 
 pleted, we were led to an examination of the lower groups of strata 
 both in North and South Devon, and to follow them in their prolon- 
 gation into Cornwall ; and we at length arrived at the conclusion 
 that nearly all the older stratified rocks of both counties belonged to 
 one epoch, and must be included under one common designation. 
 We proposed the name of Devonian System for this great series of 
 deposits, and we placed it in a position intermediate between the 
 Lower Carboniferous and the Upper Silurian groups ; and therefore on 
 the exact parallel of the Old Red Sandstone, of which it was assumed 
 to be the equivalent under a new mineral type. We need not 
 inform the Society that this classification was strenuously opposed at 
 the time it was first brought forward, and that it has been combated 
 in some public journals since the appearance of our abstracts; nor do 
 we now deny that it was encumbered with great difficulties. To 
 believe that a limestone (like that of South Devon) overlaid by many 
 thousand feet of slate rocks almost devoid of fossils, was of the date 
 of the Old Red Sandstone, and that the greater part of the slates of 
 Cornwall (heretofore regarded, from their crystalline structure, as 
 primary formations of great antiquity), also belonged to the same 
 epoch, required no common confidence in the weight of evidence 
 offered by groups of fossils. With good hopes, but not without 
 considerable anxiety, we therefore resolved to examine some of the 
 continental localities which seemed likely to throw light on our 
 proposed classification ; conscious that it could never meet with 
 
524 CONTINENTAL PLANS. 
 
 1839. general acceptance unless confirmed by some analogous development 
 Et. 54. f tne upper transition rocks of France and Germany 1 ." 
 
 It was at first intended to begin with Brittany, "which 
 from its geographical position, might be expected to offer 
 some analogies of structure with Devonshire and Cornwall." 
 In consequence we* find Sedgwick corresponding with M. Elie 
 de Beaumont and other French geologists, with the result 
 that Brittany was presently abandoned, on learning from 
 them " that the connexion between the carboniferous system 
 and the inferior strata was obscurely exhibited in that region, 
 and that the evidence offered by the fossils of the lower groups 
 was meagre and unsatisfactory 2 ." 
 
 Murchison, meanwhile, was suggesting more distant fields 
 of exploration ; and urged Sedgwick "to shake off Norwichian 
 trammels," and start with him for Norway about the middle of 
 May. To this tempting proposal Sedgwick replied : " I 
 should delight in a tour in Norway and the country round the 
 Baltic. My only fear is, that my engagements in our Chapter 
 (and remember I am junior) may make the tour impossible at 
 the early time you fix on. The tour you mention, and 
 another tour among the old rocks of France and the corre- 
 sponding rocks of the South of Ireland, I am very anxious to 
 effect ; and then, as far as hard-working geology is concerned, 
 I will shut up shop 3 ." Finally, they tell us, " We resolved to 
 begin with the transition rocks of the Rhenish provinces, 
 knowing that on both banks of the Rhine we should be 
 conducted through a true carboniferous series, based on 
 mountain limestone, into still lower groups of strata." 
 
 Murchison, eager to begin his holiday as soon as possible, 
 started alone at about the time originally suggested. His 
 colleague departed, Sedgwick set to work to prepare their 
 joint papers on Devonshire for the press. This labour 
 brought on "gout, mental prostration, and entire loss of 
 
 1 Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, vi. 222. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 223. 
 
 3 To R. I. Murchison, 4 February, 1839. 
 
WITH MURCHISON IN GERMANY. 525 
 
 intellect," a condition which Chapter business did not im- 1839. 
 prove. At last, however, in the middle of June, he too &* 54- 
 effected his escape, and joined Murchison at Bonn. They set 
 to work at once, ailments vanished, and before a fortnight was 
 over Murchison could report that " Sedgwick is as well as 
 ever I knew him eats, drinks, and digests like a Hercules, 
 and is in great force 1 ." If he wrote letters during his long 
 exploration of Rhineland and its neighbourhood, they have 
 not been preserved ; and for the route followed we must 
 content ourselves with a brief summary sent to Ainger after 
 his return. 
 
 "We threaded our way through all the country on the 
 right bank of the Rhine between Westphalia and the Taunus 
 inclusive, then we crossed the plains of Hessia to the Hartz, 
 where we disported ourselves as in duty bound among 
 goblins and witches, with whom you know all that region is 
 peopled. Afterwards we crossed through the dominions of 
 the Prince of Sondershausen (did you ever hear of him 
 before ?), and so to Gotha and Weimar. From the latter 
 place we plunged into the vast forests of Thuringia, and so 
 through Coburg (the breeding-ground of kings) and on by 
 the Franken Wald to Hof and Bayreuth, the old capital of the 
 Margraves of Anspach. From the last-named place we 
 doubled back to the Rhine by the great road of Bamberg and 
 Wartzburg, halting a day or two at Frankfort. What I have 
 written, though you trace my route on a map, will give you a 
 very inadequate notion of the extent of our tour, as all our 
 way was made in traverses and zigzags after the manner of 
 geologists. After we reached the Rhine again, we performed 
 similar evolutions on its left bank, working all the country 
 between the Hundsruck and the southern portion of Belgium ; 
 and, while my companion was away for a month in England 2 , 
 I extended my traverses to the very limit of the forest of the 
 
 1 Geikie's Life of Murchison , i. 276. 
 
 2 Murchison went to England to attend the Meeting of the British Association 
 at Birmingham. 
 
526 DEVONIAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 1839. Ardennes, and threaded my way, partly on foot, through the 
 * 54- gorges of the Meuse between Mezieres and Namur. When 
 Murchison rejoined me we had a second run through West- 
 phalia, and finally crossed from Dusseldorf to Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 and so to Liege. We then went on a visit of three days to 
 Baron d'Halloy, a geological friend in Belgium. From his 
 house we found our way to Brussels, where we sold our 
 carriage. A railroad gave us a ready run to Antwerp, and a 
 steamer conveyed us to Tower Stairs about the end of 
 October 1 ." 
 
 These laborious investigations did not at first lead to any 
 clear result. In fact Sedgwick felt inclined to doubt whether 
 the rocks he had been studying on the Continent could be 
 classed as Devonian at all. " To-day," he wrote, soon after his 
 return to Cambridge, " I began my lectures ; and as I had 
 last year stated my views of the Devonian case to my pupils, 
 and told them that I was going to join you in Brittany (for so 
 I thought), to put our new views to the test, I felt obliged to 
 explain to them the results of our summer's work, of which I 
 gave them a brief abstract. This was quite necessary, and it 
 can do no harm, as there is no report of what I say in my 
 lecture-room. I told them plainly that I gave up the 
 Devonian case, and that I considered the whole of the old 
 rocks of Devon and Cornwall (excepting the Culms) as inferior 
 to the Derby limestone ; but I added that the matter was still 
 sub jtidice, and that our fossils had not been examined. My 
 class was a good one ; two Heads of colleges, many Masters 
 of Arts, and about sixty undergraduates ; and many who 
 attend me are not yet come up for the term 2 ." 
 
 While Sedgwick was lecturing at Cambridge, Murchison 
 was examining with Sowerby and Lonsdale the fossils 
 collected on their tour, and corresponding with M. de 
 Verneuil, who had accompanied them for a portion of their 
 journey. Fortified by these authorities, he made up his mind 
 
 1 To Rev. W. Ainger, 18 February, 1840. 
 
 2 To R. I. Murchison, 28 October, 1839. 
 
DEVONIAN DIFFICULTIES. 527 
 
 more rapidly than Sedgwick, and before the end of January, 1839. 
 1840, we find him pleading for an interview with his collabo- ^ 54- 
 rator, " when I might explain in words what it would require 
 volumes to write 1 ." Soon after this the interview took place, 
 and in February he was able to announce " the identity of the 
 uppermost greywacke" of the Continent and the Devonian as 
 defined by Sedgwick and myself. I have arrived at this 
 conclusion for many months, and only waited the coming to 
 town of my colleague to open the campaign. Now that he has 
 been here, and that we are all agreed, the course is clear, and 
 we shall soon give a grand memoir to shew, etc. 2 " The 
 production of this memoir was, however, retarded, as usual, 
 by Sedgwick's ailments, the catalogue of which we know by 
 heart. This year he had more than common difficulty in 
 shaking them off, and during the early months of the year 
 was quite unable to work. He could still, however, joke over 
 his sufferings. Writing to Mrs Lyell he says : 
 
 " Should you think it worth while to ask me what I am 
 doing, I can describe all my most active employments by the 
 word grumbling. All winter I have been a cross, crusty, 
 crabbed, careworn, caitiff. In outer looks I am sour, and 
 ill-favoured ; and, as I used to be rather vain of my person, I 
 have been ashamed of my ill-looks, and have not called on 
 any one, otherwise I might before this have tapped at your 
 door. My daily bread is made of calomel and colchicum ; and, 
 besides Medea's drugs, they have given me every day a stew in 
 her caldron. It would melt your heart, could you see me sitting 
 for half an hour each day in brimstone vapour at a tempera- 
 ture of 1 10 ! And to crown all my misfortunes I have lost my 
 favourite dog 3 . The very beasts you see run away from me ! " 
 
 Towards the end of April he was ordered to Cheltenham. 
 The waters agreed with him, and he was soon able to report 
 some slight improvement. 
 
 1 From R. I. Murchison, 23 January, 1840. 
 
 2 Geikie's Life of Murchison, i. 286. 
 
 3 Enclosed is a hand-bill offering ,\. os. od. for the restoration of Shindy, a 
 Spitzhund brought from Germany. 
 
528 JOINT PAPER READ. 
 
 1839. "I am better than I was," he writes, "but far from 
 
 *- 54- good working condition. All I can say is, I will do my 
 best. Alas ! during this winter and spring, my best has 
 been bad indeed. I have lately been taking a shower-bath 
 against some very uncomfortable symptoms in the nerves 
 of my left side ; but on this subject muw?" 
 
 Meanwhile Murchison was preparing to start for Russia, 
 and could only be present on the evening when their paper 
 was begun (13 May). It fell to Sedgwick's share to complete 
 it. This he did, coming up from Cheltenham on purpose 
 (27 May). The interest shewn when the new classification 
 was first propounded had now died away, and all that he had 
 to tell Murchison was, " Our paper went off well. Nobody 
 made any fight." A summary of the conclusions arrived at 
 will fitly close this chapter: 
 
 "An examination of our fossil evidence has now led to a 
 satisfactory conclusion, viz. that there is a group of rocks, charac- 
 terized by an appropriate group of fossils, in a position, geologically 
 as well as zoologically, intermediate between the Carboniferous and 
 Silurian systems. The supposed ' Ludlow rock ' of Belgium passes 
 into the mountain limestone, and even in its lower portions does not, 
 as far as we know, contain a single Silurian fossil : and our Eifel 
 mollusca (about which we were most anxious, and of which we had 
 procured a fine series) were pronounced by Mr Sowerby, the moment 
 he saw them, to form a group analogous to that of South Devon.... 
 At the same time we submitted the Eifel corals to Mr Lonsdale, who 
 with equal confidence pronounced them Devonian 2 ." 
 
 In the next chapter we shall review the geological work 
 accomplished by Sedgwick between the year 1828 and the 
 year which we have now reached. 
 
 1 To R. I. Murchison, i May, 1840. . 
 
 ' 2 Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, vi. 226. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 GEOLOGICAL WORK ACCOMPLISHED BETWEEN 1828 AND 1838. 
 THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 WHEN we last interrupted the general narrative of 
 Sedgwick's life to discuss the value of his geological work 1 , 
 it happened that the papers reviewed had appeared during 
 the ten years which succeeded his election to the Wood- 
 wardian Chair in 1818. In the present chapter it will be 
 convenient to consider in the first place those covering the 
 next decade, from 1828 to 1838. 
 
 This second decade is certainly not the least important in 
 the history of Sedgwick's work. In the first he had travelled 
 far, and often ; had examined on the ground the work of 
 many of the pioneers of geology; had discussed the inter- 
 pretation of many difficult structures with the leading 
 physicists of the age ; had made excursions with Conybeare 
 and Murchison, of whom the first taught him much, the 
 second learnt much from him ; and had met many good 
 local observers who one and all record the keenness of his 
 observation, the shrewdness of his generalisation, and the 
 inspiring charm of his enthusiasm. 
 
 His first syllabus, drawn up early in his first decade, shows 
 how clearly he realised even then the problems to be solved. 
 His second syllabus, published at the beginning of his second 
 decade, has on it the impress of his own observations made in 
 the interval. 
 
 1 See above, pp. 284297 ; 325 328. 
 S. I. 34 
 
530 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18281; 
 
 
 
 jit one great 
 / Magnesian 
 
 In the same way we find in the first decade but one great 
 original paper, that on the Lower New Red and Magnesian 
 Limestone Series, with several notes of less importance, such 
 as those on Devon and Cornwall, the Isle of Wight 1 , the 
 Trap dykes of the north of England, Alluvial and Diluvial 
 deposits, and the strata of the Yorkshire coast. The larger 
 papers of this period are those which give an account of his 
 tours with Murchison in Scotland and its Western Islands, 
 and in the Alps. These, as we have seen, were important 
 contributions in their way, and added much to what was 
 already known of the structure of the districts examined. 
 When, however, these papers are carefully analysed it will 
 be found that the chief value of those on Scotland consists in 
 the development and extension of the work of Macculloch ; 
 of that on the Alps that it brings to the notice of English 
 geologists for the first time the work of Boue, criticised and 
 epitomized by two such skilful handlers of the hammer and 
 the pen as Sedgwick and Murchison. But, after all, the 
 principal result of all this exploration is to be sought in its 
 effect upon Sedgwick's own subsequent work. 
 
 At the commencement of the second decade we find him 
 President of the Geological Society, and his two addresses 
 tell us what new matter he thought of greatest importance 
 and interest to bring before the Fellows at their anniversary 
 meetings in 1830 and 1831. But he was now taking in 
 hand a far larger task, and within the next ten years he 
 had laid before the world sketches of the structure of the 
 Cumbrian and Cambrian mountains which have formed the 
 foundation of all subsequent work, not only in those districts, 
 but wherever Cambrian rocks occur throughout the world. 
 
 1 His observations in the Isle of Wight were of considerable value, though he 
 did not himself fully realise their bearing till some years afterwards. We know 
 from the collection of fossils made by him in 1820, and still preserved in the 
 Woodwardian Museum, that he had discovered the marine beds at the top of the 
 Hampstead Cliff which are characterised by Valuta geminata Sow. [ V. Rathieri, 
 Heb.], Potamiles plicatus Sow. \_Cerithium plicatum Sow.]. Corbtda rugosa Lam. 
 [ Corbula pisum Sow.]. 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18281838. 531 
 
 Although it might appear from a glance down the list of 
 papers written by Sedgwick in his second decade that his 
 work was very desultory, closer examination reveals that 
 there was method in it, and that he was grappling with some 
 of the greatest problems of stratigraphical and dynamical 
 geology. The older rocks, among which nestle most of the 
 lakes of the north-west of England and which form the central 
 part of the Lake District, are wrapped round by newer 
 deposits, and stand out like a huge boss protruding through a 
 lawn. Sedgwick set himself to work to make out, first, what 
 were the outside newer rocks, and how they behaved with 
 regard to the ancient central mass round which and over which 
 they had been thrown down as shingle and sand upon the 
 shore of an encroaching sea. All the while he was watching 
 the fragment of a still more ancient world which is revealed in 
 the central part of the district, after having been buried up for 
 ages, and comparing the character and structure of the older 
 rocks with those observed in the newer beds ; and in fact we 
 find his papers on the North of England of this date beginning 
 with an Introduction to the General Structure of the Cumbrian 
 Mountains. In this there is a short sketch of the ancient 
 central mass, but the principal part of the paper is taken up 
 with a description of the great dislocations by which the 
 surrounding Carboniferous rocks are now separated from it. 
 Then, to make sure that the character and succession of the 
 newer rocks was clearly established, in order to understand 
 how they behaved when they crept up to and round the 
 central mass, he made traverses across them in various direc- 
 tions, and published the results in a paper read before the 
 Geological Society in March, 1831. In this he gave sections 
 across the highest mountains of the Yorkshire moorlands, 
 :arrying them over Penyghent to the Craven district, and 
 )ver the Pennine Range into the Eden Valley near Kirkby 
 Stephen. 
 
 In the Eden Valley, however, there was evidence of another 
 ;reat interruption in the continuity of deposit. As the 
 
532 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18281838. 
 
 Carboniferous rocks had been thrown down upon the ancient 
 land-surface seen in the central Lake District, so here in the 
 valleys that surround it there is clear evidence that the 
 Carboniferous Series in its turn had been uplifted from the 
 depths, and moulded by rain and rivers into an irregular 
 land-surface, which had again in its turn 'gone down to 
 receive the debris of the wasted land, the shingle-beach made 
 up of pebbles from the coast, and the sand 'and mud with 
 drifted plants which we see along the river-cliffs and hillsides 
 of the beautiful Eden Valley. This called for a separate paper, 
 which was read before the Geological Society on Feb. ist, 1832. 
 Sedgwick was here on the equivalents of the Lower New Red 
 Sandstone which he had so well worked out on the other side 
 of the backbone of England and described six years before. 
 In the same year, 1832, he read before the Society a paper 
 on the Geological Relations of the Stratified and Unstratified 
 groups of Rocks composing the Cumbrian Mountains. This was 
 a further step in the prosecution of the work of which he had 
 given what he called the introduction in January 1831. In 
 this there is more about the pre-Carboniferous rocks. He 
 describes the structure of the district more in detail, and, 
 with full acknowledgment of the excellent work done by 
 the local guide and fossil-collector Jonathan Otley, gives 
 a general classification of the rocks composing the central 
 mass. The opening words of the introduction explain the 
 place of this paper in his great plan for working out the 
 district. In it he 
 
 " first shews that the limits of the region to be described are 
 defined by a zone of Carboniferous limestone based here and there 
 upon masses of old red conglomerate. This zone is described as 
 entirely uncon form able to the central system, and for the phenomena 
 presented at the junction of the two great classes of rocks, he refers 
 to previous memoirs read before the Society." 
 
 In 1832, the 4th year of his second decade, he had given 
 a very good sketch of the sequence of rocks in and around the 
 Lake district. 
 
 Seeing the advantages of this mode of treatment, Sedgwick 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18281838. 533 
 
 now worked out more of the details and subdivisions of the 
 newer series as they approached close up to the Lake district, 
 and described the rocks which generally lie at the base of the 
 Carboniferous Series in that country, immediately above the 
 old shingle which is found collected in the deeper hollows all 
 round the ancient pre-Carboniferous mountain-land. In the 
 same paper, which was read before the Geological Society 
 10 November, 1835, he gave a description of some of the 
 coal-bearing strata on the N.W. coast of Cumberland, having 
 been assisted in the examination of that district by Mr 
 Williamson Peile. This, however, required further working 
 out, so they returned to it, and in June of the following year 
 Sedgwick read another paper giving the results of their work. 
 As soon as he had touched any district he was of course 
 likely to feel an interest in all scientific questions connected 
 with it, whether they bore directly upon the original object of 
 his investigation or not; and so we find him in 1837 reading 
 a note before the British Association on the incursion of the 
 sea into the colleries of Workington. 
 
 In the midst of all this work in the North of England, and 
 well prepared by it to grapple with the difficulties of a compli- 
 cated district, Sedgwick plunged into the heart of North Wales 
 in 1831. We have seen that in 1821 he had sketched out in 
 his first syllabus how he would set to work on the classification 
 of the Transition Rocks, or Greywacke. He had done much 
 among them during the ten years that had elapsed since 
 that was printed, so it was as no novice that he undertook the 
 task of disentangling the folded and crumpled masses that lie 
 in the wild mountain region of North Wales, where he set to 
 work in such a masterly manner that, " before the working- 
 season was over (in 1831)" he had " completed an approximate 
 Geological Map from actual survey of the whole of Caernarvon- 
 shire 1 ." In the following year, 1832, he returned to the district, 
 and undertook what proved to be, in his own words, "the 
 severest summer's task of my Geological life, namely, the 
 
 1 Preface to Salter's Catalogue, 410. Camb. 1873, p. xvi. 
 
534 GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 18281838. 
 
 interpretation and partial delineation of the order and principal 
 flexures of all the older deposits of the counties of Merioneth, 
 Montgomery, and Denbigh 1 ." Nothwithstanding the diffi- 
 culties of the task, he was prepared with "a brief synopsis, 
 illustrated by sections," of what he " had effected in Caernar- 
 vonshire," by the time the British Association met at Oxford 
 in June, 1832. The meagre account of this synopsis in the 
 Report of the Association does not enable us to understand 
 his mode of procedure, or what were the results arrived at, 
 but fortunately we are not dependent upon that alone for 
 our information. He constantly wrote long letters when out 
 on such excursions, put down his first impressions, and dis- 
 cussed all his difficulties. " I never had a geological secret in 
 my life " he once exclaimed in his later years. He very often 
 made a rough sketch of what he saw, sometimes to amuse a 
 child, sometimes to explain a point to a scientific friend, and, 
 though he much decried his own sections, they always give a 
 very good notion of the really important features in the 
 structure of the country. So we learn from his letters to 
 Murchison, and from Darwin's all too short recollections of 
 the trip, how Sedgwick tackled a new bit of country in those 
 days. From peak to peak, in traverse after traverse, he 
 always sought some more easily recognised strata as base 
 lines on which to build up the succession, and with which to 
 correlate adjoining sections. The amount of work he did was- 
 marvellous. 
 
 Even the unscientific reader will see that if Sedgwick is 
 right in the sketch of what he afterwards called the Cambrian 
 System which he made in 1832, and sent to the British 
 Association and to Murchison in the same year, the question 
 of priority of discovery of the succession of the rocks of North 
 Wales is very much simplified. So, with the view of fixing 
 the date upon the minds of our readers, we have already 
 printed the letter which Sedgwick wrote to Murchison from 
 North Wales, soon after he had begun work there, together 
 
 1 Preface to Sailer's Catalogue, 4to. Camb. 1873, p. xvii. 
 
!^\>;M ''""^SfeMlil 
 
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 iy e Urn ver si ty Press . f_ J ^ , ,__..__j^ 
 
 Scale:ona In,- 
 
 To face page w, Vol. I. MAP OF PART OF NORTH WALES SHEWING L 
 
' Sta-tu-te Mile* 
 
 JS OF SECTION DRAWN BY SEDGWICK IN 1832. 
 
 . , , - 
 
GEOLOGICAL PAPERS, 1828^-1838. 535 
 
 with a reproduction in facsimile of the pen-and-ink section 
 across the district which accompanies it 1 , and in this chapter 
 we give a part of the index-map of the Geological Survey, 
 which happens to be on about the same scale of distances as 
 Sedgwick's section. From this it will be seen that the Survey 
 thirty years afterwards gave no more subdivisions of the 
 stratified rocks of this area than Sedgwick had made in 1832, 
 and that their principal sections were drawn approximately 
 along the very same lines as Sedgwick had then suggested to 
 Murchison. 
 
 Though Sedgwick did not dwell much upon Cosmogonies 
 and Theories of the Earth, except so far as they had to be 
 explained in his educational work, yet such enquiries as those 
 upon which he was engaged forced him to give attention 
 to some of the important questions of dynamical geology. 
 He could hardly have passed years in endeavouring to unravel 
 the gnarled and twisted Cambrian rocks, and in trying to 
 make out the dip where there were all sorts of divisional planes, 
 and the bedding turned out to be the least obvious, without 
 enquiring into the causes of those superinduced structures 
 which obscured the original simplicity of the sedimentary 
 rocks. Hence we find him towards the end of his second 
 decade putting together his notes On the Structure of large 
 Mineral Masses, and especially on the chemical changes 
 produced in the aggregation of stratified rocks during dif- 
 ferent periods after their deposition. The explanations given 
 of these obscure phenomena were considered of such im- 
 portance for the right understanding of Sedgwick's paper on 
 the origin and structure of the older stratified rocks, that the 
 Council of the Geological Society wisely decided to publish 
 this memoir before its turn, because they considered it to 
 be introductory to other papers by Sedgwick, some of 
 which were already printed. In this paper Sedgwick was 
 evidently drawing upon his own original observations, for we 
 find many references to districts on which we know he had 
 1 See above, pp. 391394. 
 
53 6 THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 been at work, as for instance to the concretions in the 
 Magnesian Limestone of Durham, and the nodular felsites 
 of North Wales, while in illustration of the cleavage and 
 other divisional planes his sections are all taken from North 
 Wales. New and better theories as to the cause of cleavage 
 may have been put forward, but the facts connected with its 
 mode of occurrence were once for all clearly established by 
 Sedgwick, whatever he may have understood by the polar 
 forces which, according to him, played so large a part in the 
 production of the phenomena. The columnar structure of 
 basalt he rightly referred to shrinkage, and showed that some 
 of the curious forms produced among the Granite Tors 
 should be referred, not to concretionary action, but to the 
 peeling off of the exposed surfaces, urging in illustration the 
 fact that "ancient pillars of granite have been known to ex- 
 foliate in cylindrical crusts, parallel to the axes of the pillars ; 
 and even pillars of oolitic limestone, which unquestionably 
 have no spheroidal structure, sometimes exfoliate (e. g. in 
 the second court of Trinity College, Cambridge) in crusts 
 parallel to the axes of the several pillars." There is no 
 doubt that this paper of Sedgwick's is a grand classic work, 
 treating of questions which must be grappled with by any one 
 who would work profitably among the older and altered rocks. 
 
 About the close of this p'eriod (1828 38), Sedgwick, in 
 conjunction with Murchison, commenced those investigations 
 in England and on the continent which resulted in the estab- 
 lishment of the Devonian System. The course of Sedgwick's 
 biography has already indicated the steps by which they 
 were gradually led to lines of enquiry beyond their first 
 intentions, and to inferences, very different from their first 
 impressions ; but, as even those conversant with the history of 
 geology have probably forgotten the details of the subject, 
 and the controversy which arose over it, some further ex- 
 planation is necessary. 
 
 Looking back it does not seem difficult to explain how such 
 men as Sedgwick and Murchison on the one hand, and De la 
 
THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 537 
 
 Beche on the other, should have so long differed as to the inter- 
 pretation of the geology of a district like 'Devon and Cornwall. 
 Neither side had as yet all the data, and the facts which 
 had been forced on the notice of one, were not the same 
 as those that had come under the observation of the other. 
 It is a controversy very characteristic of a certain stage 
 of geological enquiry. In the crumplings that have been 
 going on in the crust of the earth, large areas that were once 
 uneven land-surfaces have been submerged, and, more than 
 that, one side of a country has often gone down sooner, or 
 more rapidly, than another; so that, although the debris of 
 the land may have been continuously deposited all the while 
 it of course gathered more quickly and more thickly in the 
 hollows, and formed vast accumulations in one place, while, 
 not far off, it may not have begun to be laid down at all. 
 So the basement-bed in one district is much newer than the 
 basement-bed of what seems to belong to the same age of 
 submergence and deposition in an adjoining area. Sand and 
 shingle gathered in one place, silt in another ; here the water 
 was turbid, and creatures that loved the mud enjoyed their 
 life ; while round the headland there was clear and perhaps 
 deep water, and creatures abounded that loved the deep blue 
 sea, or the crisp white breakers. If in after-ages we were to 
 come upon isolated patches of deposits accumulated under 
 such various conditions it is obvious that there might be 
 great difficulty in placing them in chronological order. This 
 is the difficulty which lies at the bottom of the Devonian 
 Question. 
 
 The rocks of the northern part of the Devon promontory 
 lie in a trough-like fold running east and west, so that the 
 older rocks turn up along the Bristol Channel, and again on 
 the south along a line running roughly west from Exeter to 
 the sea. The newer rocks, therefore, lie in the middle of this 
 trough. Neither of these two series was found to be exactly 
 like the rocks which occurred on the other side of the channel 
 about the horizon where these might be expected. The older 
 S. i. 35 
 
53 8 THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 and the newer were supposed at first to be of the age of some 
 part of the Cambrian or Silurian of Wales deposited under 
 somewhat different conditions, and like them were spoken of 
 as greywacke ; yet they were different from the greywacke of 
 Wales. Moreover the upper series contained plants and coal, 
 but was not like the rocks of the South Wales coal-field, nor 
 was the lower series like what was there found below the coal. 
 It therefore became necessary to consider whether any of 
 these Devon beds were the geological equivalents of deposits 
 thrown down under different conditions in the adjoining area 
 of Wales, and, when there was a likeness, whether some of 
 them might after all have only an accidental resemblance to 
 the strata with which they had been hitherto identified. 
 
 Sedgwick and Murchison first removed the upper series 
 from the greywacke, and identified it with the coal-measures. 
 At this stage De la Beche objected, as he could not see such 
 a strong line of separation between the upper and lower series 
 of Devon as this implied, either palaeontological or strati- 
 graphical. Sedgwick and Murchison urged the similarity of 
 the fossils of the Culm beds to those of the Carboniferous 
 Rocks, and showed how the coal-measures of South Wales 
 changed as they were traced west, and the coal of the South 
 Wales Field passed into the Culm of Pembrokeshire ; while 
 De la Beche pointed out that plants similar to those of the 
 culmiferous beds are found also in the subjacent rocks into 
 which the Culm Measures passed down in Devonshire. 
 Whewell in his presidential address to the Geological Society 
 (1838) states the case very fairly, and expresses the opinion 
 that, whatever views with regard to the correlation of the 
 rocks of Devonshire might eventually prevail, they had 
 then sufficient clear and positive knowledge to separate the 
 culmiferous from the subjacent strata in their lists and on 
 their geological maps. 
 
 But there was something in De la Beche's contention 
 that the lower set of beds in Devonshire also contained some 
 plant remains, and that the newer beds were for various 
 
THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 539 
 
 reasons more closely connected with them than the true coal 
 measures were known to be with the greywacke in any area 
 which had been worked out. The next step in the enquiry 
 therefore was to make out whether even the lower set of beds 
 of Devonshire were greywacke ; and when they had been 
 re-examined, and their fossils had been submitted to Lindley, 
 Sowerby, and Lonsdale, and the Devon rocks and fossils had 
 been compared with those which occurred on the continent in 
 a corresponding position, it was found that the lower series 
 of Devon rocks must also be taken out of the greywacke, 
 and considered as something older than the carboniferous 
 beds, but much newer than any beds of greywacke age. 
 When this view had been clearly formulated, and Murchison 
 had given up his identification of part of the Devonian with 
 the Caradoc sandstone, no further serious opposition was 
 offered. The work had grown gradually. De la Beche, 
 Austen, Weaver, and Williams had helped with facts or 
 useful criticism ; and, as far as the points then in dispute 
 are concerned, the question was finally settled, and the 
 now received classification of the Devon rocks remains as 
 Sedgwick and Murchison left it : Culm Measures above, 
 and Devonian below : the base of the Devonian being there 
 unknown. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY c. j. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
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 The life and letters 
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