t that their real motive in
refusing the task was a disinclination to attack--as they would
doubtless have felt themselves compelled to do--a valued personal
friend. Conybeare was, fortunately, thought to be out of the question,
as Lockhart said he 'promises and does not perform in the reviewing
line.'

Very fortunately at this juncture, Lockhart, who was in the habit of
attending the Geological Society and listening to the debates (for as he
used to say to his friends whom he took with him from the Athenaeum,
'though I don't care for geology, yet I _do_ like to see the fellows
fight') thought of Scrope. Although he had practically retired from the
active work of the Geological Society at this time, Scrope was known as
an effective writer, and, happily for the progress of science, he
undertook the review of Lyell's book.

Although, of course, Lyell had no voice in the choice of a reviewer for
the _Principles_, yet he could not fail to rejoice in the fact that it
had fallen to his friend, who so strongly sympathised with his views, to
introduce it to the public. While the book was being printed and the
review of it was in preparation, a number of letters passed between
Lyell and Scrope, and the latter, before his death, gave me the
carefully treasured epistles of his friend, with the drafts of some of
his replies. These letters, some of which have been published, throw
much light on the difficulties with which Lyell had to contend, and the
manner in which he strove to meet them.

As we have already seen, many of the leaders in the Geological Society
at that day besides being strongly inclined to Wernerian and Cataclysmal
views, had an honest, however mistaken, dread lest geological research
should lead to results, apparently not in harmony with the accounts
given in Genesis of the Creation and the Flood. Lyell, as this
correspondence shows, was most anxious to avoid exciting either
scientific or theological prejudice. He wrote, 'I conceived the idea
five or six years ago' (that is in 1824 or 5) that 'if ever the Mosaic
geology could be set down without giving offence, it would be in an
historical sketch[52],' and 'I was afraid to point the moral ... about
Moses. Perhaps I should have been tenderer about the Koran[53].' He
further says 'full _half_ of my history and comments was cut out, and
even many facts, because either I, or Stokes, or Broderip, felt that it
was anticipating twenty or thirty years of the march of h