"Off to Wetherby.—Resolve to dissipate the mind. Round Hey. Trees, &c., all green, yet how beautifully diversified—cool, warm, half tints—Dr. Johnson, chaise traveller. What is that purple tuft?—Elegant! Vicia cracca.... What is that like a diminutive fir tree? Equisetum, quite a puzzle for a beginner; never mind, learn soon. Clover, I know; but where can it be classed? Honeysuckle too—rushes and all, I suppose, though they would puzzle to find a flower. Clouds, the soul of landscape. What sky most beautiful? Never see a dandelion, but thoughts the most intense that never die.—Where slumbering—where the great reservoir?" No flower had the power to revive early associations like this. His first recollections of it, were as growing in a field near his father's house where he played in infancy. "Yellow flowers among the green wheat: Cherlock. Limestone district.—How delightful any occupation that keeps the mind from preying on itself. Want of employment similar to hunger.—Gastric juice eats the stomach if no food.... What a delicious smell! Butterfly orchis.... Foxglove unknown in some of the southern counties, here how luxuriant! Localities of plants, soil, &c., wants explanation. Poppy, sand, coltsfoot, clay. Furze, Linnæus. Flowers, all made after one model, never change the generic characters in whatever part of the world; proof, where there no other, of an all-wise designer.... Briony, spiral spring. Orchis morio. Something about this tribe mysterious. Children in a field playing, enjoyment. With what different eyes do I now look on nature. What should possess me to learn botany, all my life laughing at it. Arrangement, bump of order I suppose. Distant view of the wolds. York Minster—what a host of recollections!... Iris pseudacorus. Inoculated even the post-boy. The operation, the power of mind over mind, what is it? Country churches. People would write much better books if they would take individualities, instead of generalities, to sermons.... The numbers three and five, how predominant in botany. Geum urbanum.—Lutford. Jackasses on a common—patience personified. Why should Jack be a diminutive, a lowering of any thing. Jack snipe, Osmunda regalis.—Windmills always associate with country quiet; the monotonous turn of the sails. Retreat. Lunatics: mankind all so in one respect or another, but a great difference. Lunatics lose their reasoning powers, and jumble ideas,—take those for real which are only reflection and memory, while those counted sane, with correct ideas, act diametrically opposite to their knowledge.... Gravel-field, famous place for plants. Set out. Roman antiquities—a Roman burying place evidently,—continually digging out broken urns of baked clay, very fragile.... Cats without tails, a breed of them here; supposed originally from the Isle of Man. Style of face in different parts. Query, Is it caught? Lower part of the mouth formed by its owner." The notes continue, but are almost exclusively botanical.
In the spring of 1837, Mr. Roby made a rapid tour on the Continent, the notes and illustrative sketches of which were published in two volumes by Messrs. Longman and Co., under the title of "Seven Weeks in Belgium, Switzerland, Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy, &c." His quickness, and clearness of observation, and power of placing before the reader's eye, in a few words, the objects which met his own, render the book delightful and refreshing to those whom duty detains at home. Notes were taken on the spot, and but slightly amplified, so that the narrative has all the freshness of a youthful description of a day's pleasure. If the road branches off in two directions, and the driver hardly knows which to take, the reader himself feels puzzled, and thinks with apprehension of the nearness of the sun to the horizon, and the miles yet to be traversed; if the traveller is sailing down the lake listlessly drinking in the beauty around him, the reader, too, feels the calm repose of the still expanse of waters, and the softened grandeur of the panorama of mountains. Even "the dry hard names" of rare plants—music to the botanist—followed as they are here by their more familiar synonyms, enhance the charm of the book: we look up from the sunny surface of the glacier to the crimson flowers of the Azalea procumbens (trailing Azalea) starring the barren rock. Graphic description alternates with personal adventure and amusing anecdote, marked alike by vivacity of style, and the buoyant spirit of the author. Charming as a narrative of continental travel, it at the same time has been said, "as a guide book to the continent," to be "the best that was ever written,"—the sight-seer, the lover of scenery, and the botanist may use it to equal advantage. It shows how much may be secured by a really active and inquisitive mind, in a few weeks, while the full particulars respecting passports, routes, distances, moneys, exchanges, &c., puts the reader in the way of enjoying as much himself, when it falls to his lot to take the same route. The pictures of nature are in Mr. Roby's own effective style. The start from the Custom-house, termed by the "Literary Gazette" "a Calcott picture in a few lines," is an instance. "It was a calm grey morning, the population were hardly astir, the river with its wilderness of masts seemed hardly awake; and the very water having been suffered to rest untroubled for a space, looked dull and drowsy." The impressions made by the first sight of Alpine scenery on a mind like his, are, as it may be expected, vividly told. It was of this part of the work, that a lady, who had been familiar with good English scenery all her life, and did justice to it both by pen and pencil, remarked, "That book taught me to look at mountains."
In 1840 Mr. Roby again visited the Continent by a different route, adhering to his custom of making notes and sketches of what he saw. At the close of the same year his attention was engaged by the preparation of a new edition of the "Traditions of Lancashire," in a less expensive form, so as to bring it within the reach of general readers. It was published in three volumes by Colburn, as the first of a series of Popular Traditions of England.
Mr. Roby's delight was as great in imparting as in imbibing knowledge, and he took a warm interest in all institutions for its diffusion. The principal literary occupation of the next four years appears to have been the preparation and delivery of lectures in connexion with societies of this kind, in which his native county so eminently abounds. His early efforts, while yet residing at Wigan, and the welcome reception they met with, have been before noticed; quite as acceptable were the matured results of reading and research now offered to larger and more mixed audiences. In the early autumn of 1838 he gave a course of ten lectures in the theatre, Rochdale, in aid of the Philosophic and Literary Society of that town, on botany; comprising both classification and physiology, illustrated by large diagrams painted in distemper. They were afterwards delivered at Manchester, accompanied by some beautiful experiments, made with the aid of Dr. Warwick's oxy-hydrogen microscope, kindly superintended by that gentleman, and subsequently at the Collegiate Institution, Liverpool.
The subjects of other lectures were various. A course of four, on Tradition, as connected with, and illustrating history, antiquities, and Romance, were delivered at Rochdale. Drawings executed in a bold style in black and red chalks, many of them thrown off at the time, illustrated either the localities where the various legends had birth, or the costumes, style of building, &c. of the period. One set of lectures which the writer has been so happy as to find fully written out, manifests not only his taste for art, but his knowledge of its principles. They are on painting, embracing light and shade, composition, colour, and perspective; and when delivered, were copiously illustrated, occasionally by pictures of the old masters in his possession. He was never more at home, than when ministering to the instruction or gratification of others. His talents, information, acquisitions of various kinds, whatever he might happen to possess, that could at all contribute to the purpose, were put in requisition; and when the idea he wished to convey, or illustrate, was caught by his audience, or in private by his listening friends, his countenance became radiant with pleasure; the belief that he had been of use in any way to others, was one of his highest gratifications.
Among his MSS. are some lectures on architecture, commencing with the rude huts of barbarous tribes, and then proceeding to the structures, as far as they are known, of the ancient nations. Gothic architecture finds its place in the fifth lecture; but from the abruptness with which it breaks off in the middle of a sentence, it appears that the lectures were not completed. There are also, memoranda and rough diagrams for distinct lectures on baronial architecture.
A friend of Mr. Roby's, who was also for many years a neighbour, has kindly favoured the writer with the following recollections of some of his lectures.
"The cheerful alacrity with which on several occasions Mr. Roby yielded to the solicitations of his fellow-townsmen, by giving gratuitous lectures to assist their Institution, was evidence of his often-expressed wish to raise his less fortunate countrymen in the scale of intellectual and social life. I often came in contact with him in connexion with the Rochdale Literary and Philosophic Society, for which he gave several lectures on Tradition, Botany, and some other subjects. His lectures on the Linnæan system of Botany, and another series on the Physiology of Plants, given before our society, were of the very first character; displaying an amount of research, and a power of analysis, combined with most felicitous modes of illustration, rarely meeting in the same individual. The colored drawings used on these occasions, executed by himself and his son, would have done honour to any artist. Such was the popularity of the two botanical courses, that, by request, they were repeated in Manchester, and some other neighbouring towns. In illustrating the lectures on Tradition, the rapidity with which he could throw off the gable or window of an old manor-house or any object of a similar character, was, to me, perfectly marvellous—a few touches, and the effect was produced."
The most popular of the lectures were those on the peculiarities of the Lancashire dialect. They were delivered to crowded audiences at several literary institutions, connected with different large towns in the county. In a tolerably full abstract, given by the "Preston Pilot," and in the original notes, there is ample proof of the highly interesting character of these lectures. Ethnological inquiries, full of attraction to the lovers of that science, formed the introduction, while, to a Lancashire audience, the charm of the whole must have been irresistible, and have furnished an entertainment second only to "Mathews at Home." The fund of anecdote, the rich racy humour which sparkled through the lecture, the inimitable wit of "Tummus and Meary," and the equally inimitable tones of the voice which then gave it utterance, are still fresh in the recollection of many. Had the lectures been fully written out, they would have made a charming little Christmas book, fascinating alike from the information contained, and the mirth it would provoke. The anecdotes are all indicated in the notes by the principal word or sentence, and go far to prove what the lecturer asserted, that a Lancashire man would at any time equal an Irishman in wit.
These lectures were last delivered at Preston, in March, 1844. Having commenced the series, Mr. Roby, with characteristic determination, persisted in carrying it through, though suffering from a severe attack of influenza, which he kept at bay by force of will. Immediately on his return home his health gave way. Mischief had been going on for years, but the activity of his mind, and that indomitable spirit, which would bear extreme suffering before it complained, even to itself, had prevented his heeding any indications of disease, till it had pervaded the whole system. The disorder baffled medical skill; change of scene was tried in vain: as months rolled on his sufferings increased; and, though still striving to attend to professional duties, he was utterly unfit to cope with care and anxiety of any kind. Physical pain rendered him incapable of deriving pleasure from any of those sources which had heretofore afforded such rich enjoyment. Society, art, intellectual pursuits, became not only insipid but distasteful, and with this suffering a new element mingled, deep mental distress. Holy Writ speaks of such a thing as the heart not being "right in the sight of God," and a fearful consciousness that such was his own case, now became as "the arrow of the Almighty, the poison whereof drinketh up the spirit." An increasingly vivid apprehension of the just claims of the Being who demands of His creatures, the love of "heart and mind, and soul, and strength," a deepening insight into his own nature, augmented the torturing sense of his own deficiency. In a life without reproach, spent in the discharge of duty, and in refined and ennobling pursuits, there was nothing on which self-observation, while it looked at the outward, could detect a stain. Life had hitherto been too busy, time too fully and pleasantly occupied, to afford leisure for self-inspection; but now the ordinary routine of pursuit had been broken, and involuntary retirement induced; the eye was turned within, and the result was a conviction that God had not thus been loved with heart, and soul, and strength; and the spirit which had so long been partially under the power of great principles, now awoke to feel that it must incorporate them with its very life—or die. Little wonder that, on a spirit whose sensibilities were at once quick and strong, and on whom impressions once made were singularly permanent, such discoveries should work agony so intense, or that those who understood not the cause of the distress, should think that reason herself was giving way. Such has often been said of others, who were passing through the same crisis of their mental history, not inaptly termed "the everlasting No!" His mind had too much play to lose its balance. A more stolid mind, or a brain like "the gentle" Cowper's, predisposed to malady, would in all probability have given way, as month after month, year after year, rolled away and brought no relief. It was a suffering no friends could soothe; his mental conformation peculiar,—none seemed to meet its emergencies. Bodily disease no doubt aggravated mental agony, but as