Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/188

 D.C.L. of Oxford in 1860 and honorary LL.D. of Cambridge in 1866.

Though Sedgwick spent much time in the field during the vacations, he seldom left the British Isles, and to Ireland he went but twice. He visited the continent only four times, going as far as Chamonix in 1816, to Paris in 1827, to the Eastern Alps with Murchison in 1829, and he made, with the same companion, another long geological tour in Germany and Belgium in 1839.

Meanwhile Sedgwick engaged in much university business. He was senior proctor in 1827, and in 1847 he was made Cambridge secretary to Prince Albert when the latter was elected chancellor of the university, and from 1850 to 1852 served as a member of a royal commission of inquiry into the condition of that university. He was appointed by his college to the vicarage of Shudy-Camps (tenable with his fellowship), declined the valuable living of East Farleigh offered him in 1831 by Lord-chancellor Brougham, accepted a prebendal stall at Norwich in 1834, and declined the deanery of Peterborough in 1853. At Norwich, as in Cambridge, he stimulated an interest in science, and was hardly less popular as a preacher than as a host. But this removed him from Cambridge only for two months in the year. He delivered his usual courses of lectures till the end of 1870, though in later years he not seldom had to avail himself of the services of a deputy.

He died after a few days' illness very early in the morning of 27 Jan. 1873, and was buried in the chapel of Trinity College. It was determined to build a new geological museum as a memorial, and a large sum was collected for the purpose, but this scheme has not yet been carried out (1897). His name is commemorated by the ‘Sedgwick Prize’ (for an essay on a geological subject), founded by Mr. A. A. Vansittart in 1865.

Sedgwick was quick in temper, but sympathetic, generous, and openhanded; a lover of children, though he never married. As a speaker and lecturer he was often discursive, sometimes colloquial, but on occasion most eloquent. He possessed a marvellous memory, and was an admirable raconteur. Thus his humour, his simplicity of manner, and his wide sympathies made him welcome among ‘all sorts and conditions of men,’ from the roadside tavern to the royal palace. A reformer in politics, he was not without prejudices against some changes. The same was also true in science. Though so eminently a pioneer, new ideas met sometimes with a hesitating reception. He was rather slowly convinced of the former great extension of glaciers advocated in this country by Louis Agassiz and [q. v.], never quite accepted Lyell's uniformitarian teaching, and was always strongly opposed to Darwin's hypothesis as to the origin of species. But he had a marvellous power of unravelling the stratigraphy of a complicated district, of co-ordinating facts, and of grasping those which were of primary importance as the basis of induction. A certain want of concentration diminished the quantity and sometimes affected the quality of his work, but any one whose good nature is great and interests are wide, who is at once a professor in a university and a canon of a cathedral—and active in both—must be liable to many serious interruptions. Moreover, Sedgwick's health, after his election to a fellowship, was never really good. His eyes, especially in later life, gave him much trouble; one indeed had been permanently injured in 1821 by a splinter from a rock. He seems to have met with more than his share of accidents—falls, a dislocated wrist, and a broken arm.

It is evident that he disliked literary composition and was somewhat given to procrastinate. But, notwithstanding these drawbacks, he left an indelible mark on his own university, and will be ever honoured as one of the great leaders in the heroic age of geology. At the outset of his career, as he stated in his last published words, ‘three prominent hopes’ possessed his heart—to form a collection worthy of the university, to secure the building of a suitable museum, and to ‘bring together a class of students who would listen to my teaching, support me by their sympathy, and help me by the labour of their hands.’ These hopes, as he says, were fully realised (Catalogue of the Cambrian and Silurian Fossils, &c., Pref. p. xxxi).

Sedgwick in his prime was a striking figure: almost six feet high, spare but strongly built, never bald, close-shaven, with dark eyes and complexion, strongly marked features, overhanging forehead, and bushy eyebrows. A portrait in oils by Thomas Phillips, R.A., dated 1832, and owned by Mr. John H. Gurney of Norwich, was reproduced for the ‘Life and Letters’ (1890), as was also a fine crayon portrait by Lowes Dickinson, dated 1867, now in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. Busts of Sedgwick by H. Weekes and Thomas Woolner are in possession of the Geological Society, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sedgwick never published a complete book on any geological subject, though he wrote a lengthy introduction to the description of