M HERBERT SPENCER

A Resting Period,—But when he got home he found
his study of a work on the Differential Calculus a
weariness to the flesh, "To apply day after day
merely with the general idea of acquiring informa-
tion, or of increasing ability," was not in him, though
he could work hard when the end in view was
definite or large enough. Moreover an article in the
Philosophical Magazine led to an immediate abandon-
ment of the idea of an electro-magnetic engine.
"Thus, within a month of my return to Derby, it
became manifest that, in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp,
I had left behind a place of vantage from which there
might probably have been ascents to higher places,"

As a consolation for what was at the time a dis-
appointment, Herbert Spencer made a herbarium,
which still retained in 1894 a specimen of Enchanter*!
Nightshade gathered in the grove skirting the river
near Darley, In company with Edward Lott, with
whom he formed a life-long friendship, he often
spent the early summer morning, in rowing up the
Derwent, which in those days was rural and not
unpicturesque above Derby, As they rowed they
sang popular songs, making the woods echo with
their voices, and now and then arresting their
" secular matins " for the purpose of gathering a plant*
It is refreshing to read of Spencer having in his head
a considerable stock of sentimental ballads,

It was during this fallow year that at the age of one-
and-twenty he went with his father on a walking tour
in the Isle of "Wight, and first saw the sea, ** The
emotion produced in me was, I think, a mixture of joy
and awe,—the awe resulting from the manifestation
of size and power, and the joy, I suppose, from the