UNDERGRADUATE DAYS.
Lyell matriculated at Exeter College, and appears to have begun
residence in January, 1816--that is, soon after completing his
eighteenth year. At Oxford, though not a "hard reader," he was evidently
far from idle, and wrote for some of the University prizes, though
without success. Several of his letters to his father have been
preserved. In these he talks about his studies, mathematical and
classical; criticises Coleridge's "Christabel," and praises Kirke
White's poetry; describes the fritillaries blossoming in the
Christchurch meadows, and refers occasionally to political matters. The
letters are well expressed, and indicate a thoughtful and observant
mind. While yet a schoolboy he had stumbled upon a copy of Bakewell's
"Geology" in his father's library, which had so far awakened his
interest that in the earlier part of his residence at Oxford he attended
a course of Professor Buckland's lectures, and took careful notes. The
new study is briefly mentioned in a letter, dated July 20th, 1817. This
is written from Yarmouth, where he is visiting Mr. Dawson Turner, the
well-known antiquarian and botanist. He states that, on his way through
London, he went to see the elephant at Exeter Change, Bullock's Museum,
and Francillon's collection of insects. At Norwich also he saw more
insects, the cathedral, and some chalk pits, in which he found an
"immense number of belemnites, echinites, and bivalves." He was also
greatly interested by the fossils in Dr. Arnold's collection at
Yarmouth, particularly by the "alcyonia" found in flints.[4] A few days
later he again dwells on geology, and speculates shrewdly on the
formation of the lowland around Yarmouth and the ancient course of the
river. In one paragraph a germ of the future "Principles" may be
detected. It runs thus:
"Dr. Arnold and I examined yesterday the pit which is dug
out for the foundation of the Nelson monument, and found
that the first bed of shingle is eight feet down. Now this
was the last stratum brought by the sea; all since was
driven up by wind and kept there by the 'Rest-harrow' and
other plants. It is mere sand. Therefore, thirty-five years
ago the Deens were nearly as low as the last stratum left by
the sea; and as the wind would naturally have begun adding
from the very first, it is clear that within fifty years the
sea flowed over that part. This, even Mr. T. allows, is a
strong argument in favour of the recency of the changes. Dr.
Arnold surprised me by telling me that he thought that the
Straits of Dover were formerly joined, and that the great
current and tides of the North Sea being held back, the sea
flowed higher over these parts than now. If he had thought a
little more he would have found no necessity for all this,
for all those towns on this eastern coast, which have no
river god to stand their friend, have necessarily been
losing in the same proportion as Yarmouth gains--viz.
Cromer, Pakefield, Dunwich, Aldborough, etc., etc. With
Dunwich I believe it is _Fuit Ilium_."[5]
Evidently Lyell by this time had become deeply interested in geology,
for his journal contains several notes made on the road from London to
Kinnordy, and records, during his stay there, not only the capture of
insects, but also visits to quarries, and the discovery of crystallised
sulphate of barytes at Kirriemuir and elsewhere.
Towards the end of his first long vacation he travelled, in company with
two friends of his own age, from Forfarshire across by Loch Tay,
Tyndrum, and Loch Awe, to the western coast at Oban, whence they visited
Staffa and Iona. With the caves in the former island he was greatly
impressed; and he noted the columns of basalt, which, he said, were
"pentagonal" in form, quite different from the "four-square" jointing of
the red granite at the south-west end of Mull. With the ruins of Iona he
was a little disappointed, for he wrote in his diary that "they are but
poor after all." The wonders of Fingal's Cave appealed to his poetical
as well as to his geological instincts, for in October, after his return
to Oxford, he sent to his father some stanzas on this subject which are
not without a certain merit. But the covering letter was mostly devoted
to geology.
The next year, 1818, marked an important step in his education as a
geologist, for he accompanied his father, mother, and two eldest sisters
on a Continental tour. Starting early in June, they drove in a
ramshackle carriage, which frequently broke down, from Calais to Paris,
along much the same route as the railway now takes; they visited the
sights of the capital, not forgetting either the artistic treasures of
the Louvre or the collections of the Jardin des Plantes, particularly
the fossils of the "Paris basin." Thence they journeyed by Fontainebleau
and Auxerre to Dole, and he makes careful and shrewd notes on the
geology, for the carriage travelling of those days, though slow, was not
without its advantages--and in crossing the Jura he observes the nodular
flints in a limestone, and the contrast between these mountains and the
Grampians of his native land. As they descended the well-known road
which leads down to Gex in Switzerland, they had the good fortune to
obtain a splendid view of Mont Blanc and the Alps. From Geneva, where he
notes the "most peculiar deep blue colour of the Rhone," they visited
Chamouni by the usual route. At this time the principal glaciers were
advancing rather rapidly. The Glacier des Bossons, he remarks, "has
trodden down the tallest pines with as much ease as an elephant could
the herbage of a meadow. Some trunks are still seen projecting from the
rock of ice, all the heads being embodied in this mass, which shoots out
at the top into tall pyramids and pinnacles of ice, of beautiful shapes
and a very pure white.... It has been pressed on not only through the
forest, but over some cultivated fields, which are utterly lost."[6]
At Chamouni, Lyell made the most of his time, for in three days he
walked up to the Col de Balme, climbed the Brevent, and made his first
glacier expedition, to the well-known oasis among the great fields of
snow and ice which is called the Jardin. Everywhere he notes the
flowers, which at that season were in full beauty; and the insects,
capturing "no less than seven specimens of that rare insect, _Papilio
Apollo_."[7] He feels all the surprise and all the delight which thrills
the entomologist from the British Isles when he first sets foot on the
slopes of the higher Alps, and sees in abundance the rarities of his own
country, besides not a few new species. But Lyell does not neglect the
rocks and minerals, or the red snow, or the wonders of the ice world.
Chamouni, we are told, was then "perfectly inundated with English," for
fifty arrived in one day. The previous year they had numbered one
thousand out of a total of fourteen hundred visitors. Since then, times
and the village have changed.
Returning to Geneva, the party travelled by Lausanne and Neuchatel to
Bale, and then followed the picturesque route along the river, by the
tumultuous rapids of Laufenburg and the grand falls of the Rhine, to
Schaffhausen, whence they turned off to Zurich. Here he writes of the
principal inn that it "partook more than any of a fault too common in
Switzerland. They have their stables and cow-houses under the same roof,
and the unavoidable consequences may be conceived, till they can fall in
with a man as able--as 'Hercules to cleanse a stable.'"
From Zurich they crossed the Albis to Zug. The other members of the
party went direct to Lucerne, but Lyell turned aside to visit the spot
where twelve years previously an enormous mass of pudding-stone had come
crashing down from the Rossberg, had destroyed the village of Goldau,
and had converted a great tract of fertile land into a wilderness of
broken rock. He diagnosed correctly the cause of the catastrophe, and
then ascended the Rigi. Here he spent a flea-bitten night at the Kulm
Hotel, but was rewarded by a fine sunset and a yet finer sunrise.
At Lucerne he rejoined his relatives, and they drove together over the
Bruenig Pass to Meyringen. From this place they made an excursion to the
Giessbach Falls, and saw the Alpbach in flood after a downpour of rain.
This, like some other Alpine streams, becomes at such times a raging
mass of liquid mud and shattered slate, and Lyell carefully notes the
action of the torrent under these novel circumstances, and its increased
power of transport. Parting from his relatives at the Handeck Falls, he
walked up the valley of the Aar to the Grimsel Hospice, where he passed
the night, and the next morning crossed over into the valley of the
Rhone to the foot of its glacier, and then walked back again to
Meyringen. He remarks that on the way to the Hospice "we passed some
extraordinary large bare planks of granite rock above our track, the
appearance of which I could not account for." This is not surprising,
for he had not yet learnt to read the "handwriting on the wall" of a
vanished glacier. Its interpretation was not to come for another twenty
years, when these would be recognised as perhaps the finest examples of
ice-worn rocks in Switzerland. Lyell was evidently a good pedestrian;
for the very next day he walked from Meyringen over the two Scheideggs
to Lauterbrunnen, ultimately joining his relatives at Thun, from which
town they went on to Berne, where they were so fortunate as to see, from
the well-known terrace, the snowy peaks of the Oberland in all the
beauty of the sunset glow.
Then they journeyed over the pleasant uplands to Vevay, and so by the
shore of the Lake of Geneva and the plain of the Rhone valley to
Martigny, turning aside to visit the salt mines near Bex. They reached
Martigny a little more than seven weeks after the lake, formed in the
valley of the Dranse by the forward movement of the Gietroz Glacier, had
burst its icy barrier, and they saw everywhere the ruins left by the
rush of the flood. The road as they approached Martigny was even then,
in some places, under water; in others it was completely buried beneath
sand. The lower storey of the hotel had been filled with mud and debris,
which was still piled up to the courtyard. Lyell went up the valley of
the Dranse to the scene of the catastrophe, and wrote in his journal an
interesting description of both the effects of the flood and the
remnants of the ice-barrier. Before returning to Martigny he also walked
up to the Hospice on the Great St. Bernard, and then the whole party
crossed by the Simplon Pass into Italy, following the accustomed route
and visiting the usual sights till they arrived at Milan.
The next stage on their tour--and this must have been in those days a
little tedious--brought them to Venice. The Campanile Lyell does not
greatly admire, and of St. Mark's he says rather oddly, "The form is
very cheerful and gay"; but on the whole he is much impressed with the
buildings of Venice, and especially with the pictures. On their return
they went to Bologna, and then crossed the Apennines to Florence.
Everywhere little touches in the diary indicate a mind exceptionally
observant--such as notes on the first firefly, the fields of millet, the
festooned vines seen on the plain, or the peculiar sandy zone on the
northern slopes of the hills. He also mentions that shortly after
crossing the frontier of Tuscany they passed near Coviliajo, "a volcanic
fire" which proceeded from a neighbouring mountain.[8] This they
intended to visit on their return. But at Florence the diary ends
abruptly, for the note-book which contained the rest of it was
unfortunately lost.
We have given this summary of Lyell's journal in some detail, but even
thus it barely suffices to convey an adequate idea of the cultured
tastes, wide interests, and habits of close and accurate observation
disclosed by its pages. It shows, better perhaps than any other
documents, the mental development of the future author of the
"Principles of Geology." Few things, as he journeys, escape his notice;
he describes facts carefully and speculates but little. As he wanders
among the Alpine peaks, he makes no reference to convulsions of the
earth's crust; as he views the ruin wrought by the Dranse, he says
naught of deluges.
The travellers got back to England in September, and at the end of the
Long Vacation Lyell returned to Oxford. There he remained till December,
1819, when he proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, obtaining a
second class in Classical Honours. Considering that he had never been a
"hard reader," and that he appears to have spent much of his "longs" in
travel--a practice which, though good for general education, counts for
little in the schools--the position indicates that he possessed rather
exceptional abilities and a good amount of scholarship. Though Oxford
had been unable to bestow upon him a systematic training in science, she
had given a definite bias to his inclination, and had fostered and
cultivated a taste for literature which in the future brought forth a
rich fruitage.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Probably they were fossil sponges.
[5] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 43.
[6] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 69.
[7] Now generally called Parnassius Apollo; but very likely he captured
more than one species of the genus.
[8] Probably it was a bituminous shale which had become ignited, as was
the case at Ringstead Bay, Dorset, with the Kimeridge clay. The same
often happens with the "banks" of coal-pits.