Alps, wherever he went, for he was not short of pocket-money. He took
the greatest pains over his catalogues, and wrote elaborate accounts of
the various minerals in a shorthand he invented out of Greek letters and
crystal forms.

Grafted on this mineralogy, and stimulated by the Swiss tour, was a new
interest in physical geology, which his father so far approved as to
give him Saussure's "Voyages dans les Alpes" for his birthday in 1834.
In this book he found the complement of Turner's vignettes, something
like a key to the "reason why" of all the wonderful forms and marvellous
mountain-architecture of the Alps. He soon wrote a short essay on the
subject, and had the pleasure of seeing it in print, in Loudon's
_Magazine of Natural History_ for March, 1834, along with another bit
of his writing, asking for information on the cause of the colour of the
Rhine-water.

He had already some acquaintance with J.C. Loudon, F.L.S., H.S., etc.,
and he was on the staff of that versatile editor not long afterwards,
and took a lion's share of the writing in the _Magazine of
Architecture_. Meanwhile he had been introduced to another editor, and
to the publishers with whom he did business for many a year to come. The
acquaintance was made in a curious, accidental manner. His cousin
Charles Richardson, clerk to Smith, Elder, and Co., had the opportunity
of mentioning the young poet's name to Thomas Pringle, editor of the
"Friendship's Offering" which John had admired and imitated. Mr. Pringle
came out to Herne Hill, and was hospitably entertained as a brother
Scot, as not only an editor, but a poet himself--not _only_ a poet, but
a man of respectability and piety, who had been a missionary in South
Africa. In return for this hospitality he gave a good report of John's
verses, and, after getting him to re-write two of the best passages in