hing is
Hooker's tribute of affection on the death of his friend, 'My loved, my
best friend, for well nigh forty years of my life. To me the blank is
fearful, for it never will, never can be filled up. The most generous
sharer of my own and my family's hopes, joys, and sorrows, whose
affection for me was truly that of a father and brother combined[76].'

And Huxley speaking of Lyell, the day after his death said, 'Sir Charles
Lyell would be known in history as the greatest geologist of his time.
Some days ago I went to my venerable friend, and put before him the
results of the _Challenger_ expedition. Nothing could then have been
more touching than the conflict between the mind and the material body,
the brain clear and comprehending all; while the lips could hardly
express the views which the busy mind formed[77].'

How well do I recollect my last visit to Lyell a day or two after this
farewell interview with Huxley, the glow of gratitude which lighted up
the noble features as with trembling lips he told me how 'Huxley had
repeated his whole Royal Institution lecture at his bedside.'

Huxley was a most devoted student of Lyell. Speaking to his fellow
geologists in 1869 he said, 'Which of us has not thumbed every page of
the _Principles of Geology_[78]?' and writing in 1887 on the reception
of the _Origin of Species_, he said:--

'I have recently read afresh the first edition of the
_Principles of Geology_; and when I consider that this
remarkable book had been nearly thirty years in everybody's
hands, and that it brings home to any reader of ordinary
intelligence a great principle and a great fact--the principle,
that the past must be explained by the present, unless good
cause be shown to the contrary; and the fact, that, so far as
our knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no
such cause can be shown--I cannot but believe that Lyell, for
others, as for myself, was the chief agent in smoothing the road
for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism postulates
evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The
origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be
a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell
successfully eliminated from sober geological speculation[79].'

How strongly Lyell had become convinced, as early as 1832, of the truth
and importance of the doctrine of Evolution--in the _organic