Mr. Marsh was a man of very large and varied culture.  A thorough classical scholar and excellent modern linguist, philology was perhaps his most favourite pursuit.  He wrote various books, his best I think a very large octavo volume, entitled not very happily Man in Nature.  The subject of it is the modifications and alterations which this planet has undergone at the hands of man.  His subject leads him to consider much at large the denudation of mountains, which has caused and is causing such calamitous mischief in Italy and the south of France.  He shows very convincingly and interestingly that the destruction of forests causes not only floods in winter and spring, but drought in summer and autumn.  And the efforts which have recently been made in Italy to take some steps towards the reclothing of the mountain sides, have in great measure been due to his work, which has been largely circulated in an Italian translation.

The following letter which I select from many received from him, is not without interest.  It is dated 30th November, 1867.

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“DEAR SIR,—­I return you Layard’s article, which displays his usual marked ability, and has given me much pleasure as well as instruction.  I should much like to know what are his grounds for believing that ’a satisfactory settlement of this Roman question would have been speedily brought about with the concurrence of the Italian Government and the Liberal party in Rome, and with the tacit consent of the Emperor of the French, had it not been for the untoward enterprise of Garibaldi,’ p. 283.  I certainly have not the slightest ground for believing any such thing; nor do I understand to whom the settlement referred to would have been ‘satisfactory.’  Does Mr. Layard suppose that any conceivable arrangement would be satisfactory both to the Papacy and to Italian Liberals out of Rome?  The Government of Italy, which changes as often as the moon, might have accepted something which would have satisfied Louis Napoleon, Antonelli, and the three hundred nobili of Rome, who waited at dinner, napkin on arm, on the Antiboini, to whom they gave an entertainment,—­but the people?

“I send you one of Ferretti’s pamphlets, which please keep.  And I enclose in the package two of Tuckerman’s books.  If you could turn over the leaves of these and say to me in a note that they impress you favourably, and that you are not displeased with his magazine article, I will make him a happy man by sending him the note.

“Very truly yours,

“GEO.P.  MARSH.”

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I did more than “turn over the leaves” of the book sent, and did very truly say that they had interested me much.  It is rather suggestive to reflect how utterly unintelligible to the present generation must be the term “Antiboini” in the above letter, without a word of explanation.  The highly unpopular and objectionable “Papal Legion” had been in great part recruited from Antibes, and were hence nicknamed “Antiboini,” and not, as readers of the present day might fairly imagine, from having been the opponents of any “boini.”