aintained his correspondence with his old friend Lyell, and, as we
shall see in the sequel, was able to render him splendid service by the
luminous though discriminating reviews of the _Principles of Geology_ in
the _Quarterly Review_. Throughout his life, however, Scrope preserved a
love of geology, and occasionally contributed to the literature of the
science; and in his closing years, when unable to travel himself, he
gave to others the means of carrying on the researches in which he had
from the first been so deeply interested.

* * * * *

Fortunately for science, Lyell's devotion to geological study was not,
like Scrope's, interrupted by the claims made upon him by social and
political questions. Feeling though he did, with his friend, the deepest
sympathy in all liberal movements, and being especially interested in
the reform of educational methods, his geological work always had the
first claim on his time and attention, and nothing was allowed to
interfere with his scientific labours.

[Illustration: Cha Lyell]

Charles Lyell was the eldest son of a Scottish laird, whose forbears,
after making a fortune in India, had purchased the estate of Kinnordy in
Strathmore, on the borders of the Highlands. Lyell's father was a man
of culture, a good classical scholar, a translator and commentator on
Dante, and a cryptogamic botanist of some reputation.

Lyell's mother, an Englishwoman from Yorkshire, was a person of great
force of character; this she showed when, on coming to Kinnordy, she
found drunkenness so prevalent among the lairds of this part of
Scotland, as to cause a fear on her part, that her husband might be
drawn into the dangerous society: she therefore induced him, when their
son Charles was only three months old, to abandon their Scottish home,
and settle in the New Forest of Hampshire. Thus it came about that the
future geologist, though born in Scotland, became, by education, habits
and association, English.

Charles Lyell's attention was first drawn to geology by seeing the
quartz-crystals and chalcedony exposed in the broken chalk-flints, which
he, as a boy of ten, used to roll down, in company with his
school-fellows, from the walls of Old Sarum. Like Charles Darwin, too,
he became an ardent and enthusiastic collector of insects, and grew to
be a tall and active young fellow, a keen sportsman, with only one
drawback--a weakness of the eyes which troubled him through