hours! He believes that he was considered by all his masters and by his father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. But even so, his conscientiousness came to the front. "I was not idle," he interjects, "but worked conscientiously at my classics, not using cribs." Darwin asserts also for himself at this time, "strong and diversified tastes, much zeal for whatever interested me, and a keen pleasure in understanding any complex subject or thing." He "used to sit for hours reading the historical plays of Shakespeare," or "Thomson's Seasons," or "the recently published poems of Byron and Scott." "I mention this," he says, "because later in life I wholly lost, to my great regret, all pleasure from poetry of any kind, including Shakespeare." The conclusion here is: "As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took me away at a rather earlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh University with my brother, where I stayed for two years." Here, as is easy to be understood, being at medical classes, he at once took to natural history. In this he had the aid of Newhaven fishermen, the countenance of some like-minded students, and the encouragement of some learned societies, to which, though still so young, he even read papers, not without some original observations in them. It is now he mentions having read, as we have seen (p. 5), his grandfather's Zoonomia, "admiring it greatly, but without its producing any effect" on himthis à propos of one of his new friends "bursting forth in high admiration of Lamarck." I listened in silent astonishment," says Mr. Darwin, "and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind." In the course of the Life and Letters, we have a good deal to hear of Lamarck, but always almost with rejection and contempt on the part of Mr. Darwin. Here, too, it is that Mr. Darwin describes himself as eventually, with regard to Zoonomia, "much disappointed, the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts given." Now, with the exception of what relates to his principle of, or for, modification, it is assumed to be established that there is nothing in Charles Darwin which was not already suggested by his grandfather Erasmus. The declaration of the former (Charles) here, then, whether as regards Erasmus or as regards Lamarck, amounts to a denial on his part of any influence from either. Mr. Darwin, never elsewhere otherwise as regards Lamarck, and however otherwise elsewhere (in the Krause-book), as regards his grandfather, is as usual like himself when he finds he has made an assertion that is possibly too sweeping. Apprehension comes to that tender conscience of his with that idea here, and he cannot help the postscript: "Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my Origin of Species." The claim here, "a different form" (which points to no more than the exception already made), can mean nothing additional to the claim for his father which we have already seen on the part of Mr. Francis Darwin (the passage quoted at p. 44 from the Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 189). In the hospital at Edinburgh, he avows, some of the cases (two operations among them) distressed me a good deal, and I have still vivid pictures before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish as to allow this to lessen my attendance." Such facts as these throw emphasis on his words, that his disposition was very affectionate, and that he had many friends whom he loved dearly. In them, too, we see the eminently good young man who might have been the hero of the mutual improvement society quite as much as Dr. Thomas Brown himself. Attending the meetings of the various societies had a good effect on him, he owns, in stimulating his zeal and giving him "new congenial acquaintances -several young men, namely, "fond of natural science." As he did learn at school conscientiously the irksome classics without a crib, so here in Edinburgh he was not so foolish as to allow mere feeling to interfere with his regular attendance at the hospital. His summer vacations at this time, he says, were given up to amusements, "though," he adds, and the addition is very much. in the same "good" direction, "I always had some book in hand." Here again we have the excellent, wellconducted lad who knew Thomson's Seasons and the recent poems of Byron and Scott, and who sat for hours reading the historical plays of Shakespeare. One gets struck with the patience and tenacity here-patience and tenacity despite of an entire want of congeniality and taste. For one can see, like the masters, and like the father, so far not an ordinary boy, not by any means an ordinary boy in the reality of his life-but still an ordinary boy, and a boy, "rather below the common standard in intellect," if that standard were alone to be referred to one's place and appearance in class. It is precisely this same good young man who will always have an improving book in hand (Milton in his pocket when he went ashore on the voyage even), and creditable acquaintances around him, of whom, at Maer in 1827, Sir J. Mackintosh opines, "There is something in that young man that interests me;" for, says Mr. Darwin, "this must have been chiefly due to his perceiving that I listened with much interest to everything which he said!" And, surely, we have a right, as concerns this "much interest," to put it in collation with the propriety and perseverance of the good young man, seeing that as Mr. Darwin adds, referring to it (the interest), "for I was as ignorant as a pig about his subjects of history, politics, and moral philosophy." "Praise from an eminent person "—this is the moral of Mr. Darwin himself here" is, I think, good for a young man, as it helps to keep him in the right course." Charles Darwin, after Edinburgh, did not proceed to Cambridge at the usual time in October, but after the Christmas vacation, early in 1828. He found that, in the two intervening years after leaving school, he “had actually forgotten almost everything which he had learnt, even to some few of the Greek letters;" hence the necessity of a certain delay while he worked under a private tutor at Shrewsbury. Why he went now to Cambridge was that it had been decided that he should become a clergyman, and that it was necessary, accordingly, that he should go to one of the English universities and take a degree. As regards religion, we can pretty well understand how we are to look upon it in his case so far. His father, like his grandfather, was, as we have seen, lax; his mother and her relations were Unitarians; while he himself, though beginning his education under a Unitarian minister, belonged with his brother, "nominally," to the Church of England. In such circumstances, a profession must have appeared on the whole simply a profession; and there could not, naturally, have been much difficulty or demur in the mind of the young man as regards the Church in the first instance. "As he did not then doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, he soon persuaded himself, after reading a few books on divinity, that our Creed must be fully accepted." This, like that of many others, was but a lukewarm beginning, and it never grew warmer. The temperature Ч of his faith certainly remained, honestly enough, for a few years now, at the conventional height. He did not shrink, doubtless, from any university shibboleth. Το W. D. Fox, on the occasion of the death of a relative, he writes in his letter of condolence, 23rd April 1829, that he is assured it will be known where support is to be looked for; " and after so pure and holy a comfort as the Bible affords, he is equally assured how useless the sympathy of all friends must appear." And, whilst on board the Beagle, he tell us himself: "I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority" (i. 307). Let me point, in passing, to that parenthesis as signally Darwinian it is not for him, by any inadvertence, to leave a possible slur gratuitously on any man! But, in the end (at least as late as 1873), we find it formally said (iii. 179): "I gave up common religious belief almost independently from my own reflections." Nor, looking to the world as it is, do I apprehend that there need be any special outcry so far. It is highly probable that with a very very great many nowadays convention is the rule, and a man ranks religiously rather by the side he takes, than by any overt profession of dogmas which formulate faith. "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge," Mr. Darwin declares, “ my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh or at school." When we look closely at this, we see that what is meant as unsatisfactory concerns alone instruction through books. These apart, there has been quite a busy intellectual life, whether at school or in Edinburgh. And yet we hear of books, too,—Shakespeare, Thomson, Byron, Scott, and the reading of them! My musical friends," says Mr. Darwin, "sometimes |