While we were sitting over our wine after dinner, in came Dr.Daubeny, one of the most celebrated geologists of the day--a curious little animal, looking through its spectacles with an air very _distinguee_--and Mr.Darwin, whom I had heard read a paper at the Geological Society.

He and I got together, and talked all the evening." The long vacation of 1837 was passed in a tour through the North, during which his advanced knowledge of art was shown in a series of admirable drawings.

Their subjects are chiefly architectural, though a few mountain drawings are found in his sketch-book for that summer.
The interest in ancient and picturesque buildings was no new thing, and it seems to have been the branch of art-study which was chiefly encouraged by his father.

During this tour among Cumberland cottages and Yorkshire abbeys, a plan was formed for a series of papers on architecture, perhaps in answer to an invitation from his friend Mr.
Loudon, who had started an architectural magazine.

In the summer he began to write "The Poetry of Architecture; or, The Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character," and the papers were worked off month by month from Oxford, or wherever he might be, only terminating with the termination of the magazine in January, 1839.