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how he cannot but endeavour, by propitiatory words, to do away with the effect that his political expressions, in his first letter after the voyage, may have had on his old captain, Fitz-Roy. Another somewhat amusing, but very telling, example in the same direction is what he feared was too much of a boast (i. 118), when he had said that in South America he killed twenty-three snipe in twenty-four shots, and so must anxiously append, "but they were not quite so wild as English snipe." He upbraids his own selfishness (i. 364) in keeping to himself the rare beetle he had caught near Jenyns Blomefield's vicarage, though that naturalist was then making collections for certain public purposes; but I suppose every one will be quite ready to forgive Darwin for even such a delinquency-in the case of a beetle! were there not the characteristic repentance present also to absolve it.

Mr. Darwin, in a letter (ii. 54) to Hooker, pleasantly admits to him-"When I wrote last I was going to triumph over you, for my experiment had in a slight degree succeeded; but this, with infinite baseness, I did not tell, in hopes that you would say that you would eat all the plants which I could raise after immersion.--The children at first were tremendously eager, and asked me often whether I should beat Dr. Hooker.'" It is at least with similar graciousness that, in mentioning to Lyell his dedication to him of the Journal, he subjoins, "Pray do not think that I am so silly as to suppose that my dedication can anyway gratify you, except so far as I trust you will receive it as a most sincere mark of my gratitude and friendship.'

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But of the ascribed repentance proper, so characteristic of Mr. Darwin, the best instances occur at iii. 53 sqq. is told by Mr. Brodie Innes, and another by Mr. Romanes. To both gentlemen Mr. Darwin is obliged to present himself at untimely night hours, and to both only that

he might add certain inconsiderable riders to certain inconsiderable previous words of his own-the reason being that, until he had done so, he could not sleep! It is here, too, that his own son (William, I think), when, in regard to the prosecution of Governor Eyre for murder (to which Mr. Darwin had actually subscribed £10), he “had made some stupid remark," relates, "My father turned on me almost with fury, and told me, if those were my feelings, I had better go back to Southampton, etc. Next morning at seven o'clock, or so, he came into my bedroom, and sat on my bed, and said that he had not been able to sleep, from the thought that he had been so angry with me, and after a few more kind words he left me."

This last anecdote, one may remark, illustrates another little fact in our common humanity. The most finished man of the world may break down at times, and show a crack in the varnish. The late Lord Palmerston was not by nature as gentle, probably, as Charles Darwin was; but, more completely than any other man in this world, perhaps, he had turned himself inside out, so as to be without latency, and thoroughly self-possessed always ; yet witness his burst pretty well of "fury fury" on Stirling of Keir, who had asked the ill-timed, and certainly very injudicious, question in the House, Was it the case that Napoleon in his will left a sum of money to the wouldbe assassin of the Duke of Wellington?

But as concerns the immediate point, Mr. Darwin's even painful delicacy of conscientiousness, we may just allude finally here to the anxieties he suffered from it in consequence of the calls made upon him by all sorts of unknown correspondents. He received, his son says, many letters from foolish, unscrupulous people; but "he used to say that if he did not answer them, he had it on his conscience afterwards," - "at night anything which had vexed or troubled him in the day would haunt him, and

I think it was then that he suffered if he had not answered some troublesome person's letter." "He made a rule, nevertheless, of keeping all letters that he received -and all of them received replies " (i. 119, 124).

In all that we cannot but think of his signal tenderness of feeling and his extreme modesty always. So modest he was, that, to his boyish dream, if even Eddowes' newspaper (the local Shrewsbury print) "alluded to him as our deserving fellow-townsman,' his ambition would be amply gratified." While his tenderness again was such that he might be seen "gently touching a flower," in gratitude, as it were, and in the charm of its very delicacy. Anything like cruelty was an instant outrage to him. He could not look at performing dogs for thinking of the licks they must have received. His horror when he picked up a bird, not quite dead but lingering from a shot it had received on the previous day! He would not yield to anger, for "he was conscious that it had a tendency to multiply itself in the utterance." He was manlily irate, nevertheless, at anything that wore the aspect of injustice. The law of primogeniture was unjust, and "how atrociously unjust are the stamp laws, which render it so expensive for the poor man to buy his quarter of an acre it makes one's blood burn with indignation" (i. 343). It was only of such parents (for the consort of a Darwin could only be another of himself) that the children could say (i. 138): "Our father and mother would not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to tell."

A perfect focus of this whole personal nature is to be found in all that relates to Mr. A. R. Wallace and his anticipation of the theory of natural selection. Mr. Darwin would have Mr. Wallace's essay, when it is sent him, published at once and before any paper of his own. He yields to the actual conjunct preliminary statement

proposed only in consequence of the representations of Lyell and Hooker. His one work, his whole life-long labour, is at stake, and there is not a feeling in the man but honour, an English gentleman's honour: "I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit." | And here, it is but just to add, the question is not only of one English gentleman, but two. Mr. Wallace, in the disinterestedness of his own self-annihilation, is as noble as Darwin; and this the Darwins themselves are prompt to declare. In fact, I know not but that in the whole incident, it is Mr. Wallace alone who has suffered -not that, on this side or on that, the will of man is to be blamed, but only the fatality of circumstance. Often in this world it would seem that it is not merit decides, but only the goddess Fortuna. With Mr. Darwin, if merit was supreme, so undoubtedly also was the favour of the Divinity.

I know not that it is illustrative of more than the general reader, to point out this reader's usual attitude, not to what is new simpliciter, but to what as new contradicts some belief or custom that as yet has been a matter of course. The initial reception, on the whole, of Mr. Darwin's theory was of that nature; and if he took it at all amiss, he might have reflected on how he himself felt when spiritualism, when mesmerism, when flint celts were first brought to his notice. "George hired a medium," he says (iii. 187), "who made the chairs, a flute, a bell, and candlestick, and fiery points jump about -how the man could possibly do what was done surpasses my understanding the Lord have mercy on us all, if we have to believe such rubbish." Now it was just this that, to the horror of Mr. Darwin, Carlyle and others retorted on himself. Nor was it different as regards mesmerism, on which his son reports (i. 374) Mr.

Darwin to have been equally sceptical; whereas, for at least two-thirds of the way, the manifestations involved are parallel with facts-to little profit as yet truly. Celts he met in this wise (ii. 160): "Whether the pieces of flint are really tools-their numbers make me doubt I came to the conclusion that they were angular fragments broken by ice action." It is at least interesting to find Mr. Darwin turn his back on others, precisely as others turned their backs on him.

That is a small, but still, so far, a veritable example of Mr. Darwin's genuineness of nature-what is told of his "pet economy in paper." In fact, Mr. Darwin, with all his tolerance, and all his liberality, and all his generosity, was, even in the midst of his riches, too genuine a man to waste that is, not to be economical. He kept for notes, in an express portfolio, all the blank sheets of letters received; he wrote on the backs of old MS., etc.—nay, "his feeling about paper extended to waste-paper," and he saw with a sort of grudge, and "objected, half in fun, to the careless custom of throwing a spill into the fire" after use. It is, somehow, quite in accordance with the same simple solidity of nature that, before buying pigeons when he needs them for his experiments, he thinks it necessary to apply to an expert for some relative information (" before I go to a seller, I am really anxious to know something about them, not to expose my excessive ignorance," ii. 46). So, about investments, I can suppose him, when such necessities disagreeably or unexpectedly even, interrupt him in his one sole, allabsorbing occupation, to put questions to some supposed capable friend, or look at newspapers and share-lists, before writing his solicitor-Ah, but his solicitor was as much a gentleman and an honest man as himself ("he had never seen my father," says Mr. Francis, yet spoke of his letters to him, in which "everything I did

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