tutional in our minds, to feel a morbid sensibility on matters of
religious faith, I conceive that the same right feeling which guards us
from outraging too violently the sentiments of our neighbours in the
ordinary concerns of the world and its customs, should direct us still
more so in this[40].'

In the second place, Lyell was warned by the fate of Hutton's writings
that it was hopeless to look for success in combatting the prevailing
geological theories, unless he cultivated a literary style very
different from that of the _Theory of the Earth_. Lyell's father had to
a great extent guided his son's classical studies, and at Oxford, where
Lyell took a good degree in classics, he practised diligently both prose
and poetic composition. Lyell once told me that his tutor Dalby
(afterwards a Dean) had put Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_ into his hand with certain passages marked as 'not to be read.'
When he had studied the whole work (of course including the marked
passages) he said he conceived a profound admiration for the author's
literary skill--and this feeling he retained throughout his after life.
It is not improbable, indeed, that Lyell learned from Gibbon that a
'frontal attack' on a fortress of error is much less likely to succeed
than one of 'sap and mine.' Lyell was always most careful in the
composition of his works, sparing no pains to make his meaning clear,
while he aimed at elegance of expression and logical sequence in the
presentation of his ideas. The weakness of his eyes was a great
difficulty to him, throughout his life, and, when not employing an
amanuensis, he generally wrote stretched out on the floor or on a sofa,
with his eyes close to the paper.

The relation of Lyell's views to those of Hutton, may best be described
in the words of his contemporary, Whewell, whose remarks written
immediately after the publication of the first volume of the
_Principles_, lose nothing in effectiveness from the evident, if
gentle, note of sarcasm running through them:--

'Hutton for the purpose of getting his continents above water,
or manufacturing a chain of Alps or Andes, did not disdain to
call in something more than common volcanic eruptions which we
read of in newspapers from time to time. He was content to have
a period of paroxysmal action--an extraordinary convulsion in
the bowels of the earth--an epoch of general destruction and
violence, to usher in one of