Sir Charles Lyell, the greatest English geologist, probably the greatest
geologist who ever lived, died at the age of seventy- eight, in Harley Street, on Monday last. He was one of our widest-minded scientific men, keeping his mind open to the very last, and never ceasing to modify his views to meet the new facts brought before him. He had been knighted, and had after- wards received from Lord Palmerston's Government in 1864 a baronetcy, in testimony to the eminence he had gained not merely as a man of science, but as a man of general intellectual eminence. Nay, evidences of admiration had been showered on him in ways much less open to the criticism that those who gave the honour were not the most competent to judge of the merit they recognised. For instance, the Royal Society, of which he was, of course, one of the most honoured members, gave him the Copley medal, their highest honour, in 1858; indeed, no scientific man of our day has received from the whole world of science more cordial acknOwledgments. It has been said of him that his tend- ency as a geologist was too pronounced towards the doctrine of uniform, as distinguished from catastrophic, action. But we be- lieve the truth to be that he only insisted that changes which admit of being explained by the action of causes still in exist- ence should not be attributed, without special evidence, to other and more violent causes of which there is now no trace. This is not a prejudice on behalf of uniformity, it is common-sense. Sir Charles Lyell is to be buried in Westminster Abbey this afternoon, at 1 p.m.
Previous page
