Perhaps it was hardly fair to misprize (it happened a few pages back) Mr. Darwin's knowledge of character; for no one can possibly read the above without agreeing that Charles Darwin not only could, in that regard, see, but name. We have no difficulty to "agnize" all that has been described-the bold young man and gentleman that is nephew of the Duke of Grafton, and a descendant of that king, the gracious, graceful, graceless Charles II. He is captain of a man-of-war, and yet only twenty-three years old, while his naturalist is but twenty-two; that is, both, so far as age goes, boys: neither likely, then, to avoid the other's angles from the consideration and composure that are born of experience. Before sailing, Captain Fitz-Roy was to Charles Darwin "everything that is delightful," his "beau ideal of a captain; you cannot imagine anything more pleasant, kind, and open;" "if I was to praise him half so much as I feel inclined, you would say it was absurd;" "there is something most extremely attractive in his manners and way of coming straight to the point;" "he asked me at once, 'Shall you bear being told that I want the cabin to myself— when I want to be alone? if we treat each other this way, I hope we shall suit; if not, probably we should wish each other at the devil.'" After sailing, however, it is not long before the picture becomes as we have above seen it. By and by he writes, "The captain keeps all smooth by rowing every one in turn." It is very remarkable the perfectly respectful and friendly, but unhesitatingly firm front which the concessive Charles Darwin, who would not hurt the feelings of a fly, keeps to the impetuous young commander who knows not a check or a curb to the instant expression of his will. He had said it-the slaves spoke true-you doubt my word-we part-we cannot any longer live together! Self-willed, just as a matter of course the instant,

straight-a-head autocrat that took on at once, with a kind of young, high-spirited zest, his own peremptory authority, and then again, with sharpened zeal, rose fresh every morning to its exercise! his very kindness belonged to the character of such a bashaw. He was the descendant of kings. He knew himself a gentleman by blood and by birth, and in his very being. He was high placed by divine right: he could not but be generous, he would see that those others who belonged to him, who, in a certain way, were his-had justice done them. The keen-faced, keen-eyed, quick young man who, the moment his authoritative foot was on the deck, saw ! -saw and shouted without a moment's misgiving, without a thought, or a stop, or a pause, shouted!

What was he there for? he must be hard and exacting. In his own importance of place, he would act up to it. But he was most noble, high, true, chivalrous. He was filled with his duty. If he was absolute in command, he had been as absolute in his obedience. He was transparently sincere. And Charles Darwin, after all, was just the fellow to this man; for, if gentle gentlest of the gentle, he was strong toostrongest of the strong. As he said himself of Henslow, A man must have been blind not to have perceived that beneath his placid exterior there was a vigorous and determined will: when principle came into play, no power on earth could have turned him one hair's-breadth." It was this principle of the quiet inquirer that found no possibility for itself to yield to the mere will of the stormier man of action.

But it was in these experiences that the unformed collegian thawed-thawed into the man and the gentleman of the world. That was what the voyage did for the manhood of Charles Darwin, and it was more important for him at least-than what resulted for

the science of the naturalist. "Professor De Candolle has described a visit to Down," writes Mr. Francis Darwin in his first volume, p. 139, "and speaks of my father's manner as resembling that of a 'savant' of Oxford or Cambridge: this does not strike me as quite a good comparison; in his ease and naturalness there was more of the manner of some soldiers." There is not one letter that is printed in these three volumes which does not confirm this of Darwin; and it came from his intercourse with the gentlemen of the Beagle in their free speech and generally free, untrammelled ways of the world. It was just as though, returning home from the Continent in the somewhat closely-fitting sleeves of the Germans, his tailor had said to him, "These are not ill-made; but now, sir, we shall see how you will look in our looser English garments." Alluding to the Cambridge professors and to Henslow's evenings, Mr. Darwin once writes (i. 187), "I have listened to the great men of those days, conversing on all sorts of subjects, with the most varied and brilliant powers:" it was on very different subjects, and in a very different manner, and with very different expressions, that he heard the young men on the Beagle conversing. He might have come straight from the ship when, in 1860 (ii. 351), he wrote the redoubtable T. H.: “ My dear Huxley, For Heaven's sake don't write an anti-Darwinian article; you would do it so confoundedly well. I have sometimes amused myself with thinking how I could best pitch into myself, and I believe I could give two or three good digs; but I will see you d-d first before I will try." It is not likely that Mr. Darwin would write so vernacularly to every one. Still it is remarkable how very vernacular, how uncommonly free and easy all these letters are. They abound with such exclamations as these: "Good heavens!" Bless my

soul, the accursed fact!" "it riles me dreadfully!" "God knows, it is odious and damnable!" "my everlasting abstract, my confounded book has half - killed me;" "God help him if he tries to read it!" "God only knows what I shall make of it!" "he floored me from my ignorance, by Jove!" "it rejoices the cockles of my heart!" "thank you for the dose of soft solder! "it will be all nuts to me!" "am I not a poor devil?" "I shall get more kicks than ha'pennies!" "my most frequent source of doubt was whether others would not think this or that a God-created barnacle, and surely deserved a name; ""the devil take the whole book;" "it is a devil of a job;" "after what these have said, I do not care a dI am shut up, and can only

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d- n the whole case; as not going to show the white feather; I can now afford to d―n my critics with ineffable complacency of mind." These, surely, are the tones, not of the savant, but of the man of the world; and his manners, as described, are those to suit. "His greeting was sailor-like," says Sir Joseph Hooker, "that is, delightfully frank and cordial." Total absence of pretence or affectation," "absence of pose," "natural and simple way": of his father, Mr. Francis Darwin has these expressions. From these experiences of the world, the sweet blood of Mr. Darwin quite naturally took in, so to speak, the gentleman as gentleman. whole intercourse and ways of him, even at home, were instinct with the same principles and feeling. His own daughter, Mrs. Litchfield, speaks so charmingly of "the singular modesty and graciousness of his nature." As she worked for him in correcting his proofs, she says, "he was always so full of gratitude for the trouble taken, and he used almost to excuse himself if he did not agree with any correction." Referring to his longsuffering on the raids of his children into the study

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during work time, she says also, "I remember his patient look when he said once, Don't you think you could not come in again? I have been interrupted very often.' He always spoke to his servants with politeness, using the expression, "would you be so good?" in asking for anything. His lawyer says of his business replies to him, "Everything I did was right, and everything was profusely thanked for." Evidently, whether on board ship or elsewhere, Mr. Darwin, with all that was his own, had lived among English gentlemen to some purpose without forgetting at the same time that, in that special reference, much that is more intrinsic has been already said, or is still to say. His son remarks on the courtesy and conciliatoriness of his tone even in his style; and no doubt correctly. Nay, does not his truth in writing run risk at times of being spoiled by the politeness of it? Even to his "Dear Hooker," he cannot speak of himself as a "fellow-labourer" without parenthetically adding "though myself a very weak one”— which, on the whole, rather is a fall on "the other; not but that, if acquainted for five years, the correspondence between them was at the time a young one, Still the gentlemanly tic is there of ceremonious phrases and the right tone.'

There is a good deal of fastidiousness nowadays about the manners of those who are to be great only in themselves. But that the plain country doctor's son was a rich man, with horses and carriages and a full staff of servants, and all the ways of wealth, was no fall on "the other." Charles Darwin, with all that, had not one atom of pretension. In all that, for himself, for his children, for his father, nay, even grandfather, he may have had pride; but that pride was only a sound, and healthy, and thankful satisfaction. There was not a crease of his simplicity in it. Michael Angelo Titmarsh