1844-54.

COMFORT OF PRAYER.

261

living? Is it well or ill with them? But there is no reply. I can only pray for them; but why say only? Is there any thing, my dear brother, we can do for each other, or for those we love, more certain to serve them than prayer? That it is something, even my faithless, sceptical heart and fault-finding spirit has realized. To the God of all grace I commend you."

CHAPTER X.

THE SCOTTISH INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM, AND THE CHAIR OF

TECHNOLOGY.

"I doubt my body

Will hardly serve me through : while I have laboured

It has decayed; and now that I demand
Its best assistance, it will crumble fast."

PARACELSUS.

THE Session of 1854-55 was begun with gloomy anticipations as to health. "My lungs are not what they should be; and the only thing that could do them good, rest, I cannot get. I have large classes this winter, and must do all I can for them. I leave the issue in the hands of God, for I cannot help myself, nor does any outlet appear." Intelligence received then of the death of several relatives and much-loved friends, fell heavily on him, when less able physically to bear the shock. Amongst these was Professor Edward Forbes, who but a few months before had entered on the duties of the Natural History Chair in the Edinburgh University. His welcome by his old student friends was of the warmest, and unbounded hopes of the new career opening to him filled the hearts of many. In the summer of 1854 he gave a short course of lectures, and was entering upon his first winter session, when a few days of suffering carried him off. On the 24th of November, George writes

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DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES.

263

to his brother:-"I have very sad news to communicate. Edward Forbes died last Saturday, after a short and painful illness, and I can convey to you no adequate idea of the sadness and dismay with which his unlooked-for death has filled us. . . . He was a man of genius, and united to it so much good sense, prudence, discretion, kindliness, gentleness, and geniality, that he was very largely and widely honoured and loved. I loved him far better than I ever told him; but he credited me, I believe, with great affection. To myself the loss is irreparable. Short-sighted mortals that we are, he and I had been arranging all sorts of conjoint labours, and this is the end of it! With nearly every one there is the feeling that he was taken away, not from the evil to come, but from the good that he would have done." That Edward Forbes reciprocated this admiration may be gathered from his saying of George Wilson, -"How sad to see so splendid a jewel in such a shattered casket!" To Dr. Cairns, George speaks of the loss as a great personal grief. "His death takes another idol away." While to another he writes, "I feel as if all the brave and young and fair were dying, and a mere wreck like me allowed to float on. Let us not, however, my dear friend, think of satisfying God by our works. I try to live as a dying man (which I am), with faith in a living Saviour, whose finished work leaves me nothing to do in the way of meritorious labour, though it lays on me the greatest obligation to work for Him and do His will. It is a blessed thing to know Christ, as one not ashamed to count the meanest of us His brethren, who has promised to exalt us to a share in His glory, and invites us all to come unto Him and find rest. He is a far more gracious Master to us than any of us are to ourselves, and His service is perfect freedom."

His cousin, Alexander, had lost a boy of five years on the passage out to Australia; he died in sight of land, and the first possession of his parents in the new country was a little grave. His beauty and winning ways had made Harry deeply loved by all who knew him, and his death was regarded as no common loss. On learning his bereavement, George writes to the sorrowing father:-"Scarcely am I home from Rothesay before we are all startled by the unlooked-for decease of my young, brave, frank, and skilled colleague, Dr. Richard Mackenzie, who had volunteered to accompany the troops to the East, and perishes of cholera after winning the utmost esteem and gratitude of the Highland soldiers, and risking his life at the battle of the Alma. The shock of that is scarcely past, before we are plunged into new and deeper grief by the death, after a very short illness, of Edward Forbes, in the very height of his glory and usefulness; and I am in tears for the loss of that beloved friend, when your letter arrives with its afflicting news. I have given up making idols; they are all taken away. Harry I thought of as full of life and energy; and destined, with that remarkable mechanical genius of his, to become great, and good, and famous, long, long after I had found rest in the grave. He was so beautiful-the most beautiful boy I ever saw-so loving, so lovable, what had Death to do with him? Was I not here, and others, who had digged for death as for hidden treasure, and could even rejoice at the prospect of going to be with Christ, which for us is far better than a dying life here, that he should be summoned, and we left! I have asked myself the same question regarding the death of Mackenzie, and still more regarding the loss of Edward Forbes, whose death is universally felt to be a public calamity. But I can find no answer, and expect none on this side the grave. I am

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265

learning, I hope, more and more to trust God, and to put faith in Christ; and to leave these, and a thousand other black mysteries to be explained, if God please, hereafter, and if it does not so please Him, to be left unexplained."

"I have agreed very reluctantly," he tells his brother Daniel, "to write Edward Forbes's life. I have been so importuned to become his biographer, that I have assented. I loved him very dearly, and knew him well, and the task is in that respect very welcome; but I had labours of my own to work out which must be put aside.1 I enclose some verses on his loss, which embody two ideas of his own applied to plants and animals." The verses alluded to appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine' for March, 1855, with a short explanatory preface:

"The lines seek to apply, mutatis mutandis, to the mystery of the great Naturalist's death, certain canons which he enforced in reference to the existence of living things, both plants and animals. Their purport was, to teach that an individual plant or animal cannot be understood, so far as the full significance of its life and death is concerned, by a study merely of itself; but that it requires to be considered in connexion with the variations in form, structure, character, and deportment, exhibited by the contemporary members of its species spread to a greater or less extent over the entire globe; and by the ancestors of itself, and of those contemporary individuals throughout the whole period which has elapsed since the species was created.

"He further held, that the many animal and vegetable

1 "I hope I shall live to write Edward Forbes's Life," is an expression in a letter about this date. But this hope was only partly fulfilled. The amount of labour demanded from him by the duties of the subsequent years, left almost no leisure for literary work. Every attempt was made to get on with it, but at his death it was left unfinished. It has since been completed by the hand of another.