CHAPTER XI.

HE death of Charles Darwin focussed, as it were,

THE

into one concentrated glow the feelings of admiration, and even reverence, which had been growing stronger and stronger in the years since the "Origin of Species" was published. It soon became evident that a public funeral in Westminster Abbey was very generally called for, and this being granted, a grave was chosen. in the north aisle and north-east corner of the nave, north of and side by side with that of Sir John Herschel, and ten or twelve feet only from that of Sir Isaac Newton. On April 26, 1882, a great representative host of scientists, literary men, politicians, and theologians assembled for the final scene. The pallbearers were the Dukes of Devonshire and Argyll, the Earl of Derby, Mr. J. Russell Lowell (then American Minister in London), Mr. W. Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society), Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and Canon Farrar. The Bishop of Carlisle, preaching at the Abbey on the following Sunday, admitted that Darwin had produced a greater change in the current of thought than any other man, and had done it by per

fectly legitimate means. He had observed Nature with a strength of purpose, pertinacity, honesty, and ingenuity never surpassed.

"The career of Charles Darwin," wrote The Times on the day of his funeral, "eludes the grasp of personal curiosity as much as of personal enmity. He thought, and his thoughts have passed into the substance of facts of the universe. A grass plot, a plant in bloom, a human gesture, the entire circle of the doings and tendencies of nature, builds his monument and records his exploits. The Abbey has its orators and ministers who have convinced senates and swayed nations. Not one of them all has wielded a power over men and their intelligences more complete than that which for the last twenty-three years has emanated from a simple country house in Kent. Memories of poets breathe about the mighty church. Science invokes the aid of imagination no less than poetry. Darwin as he searched, imagined. Every microscopic fact his patient eyes unearthed, his fancy caught up and set in its proper niche in a fabric as stately and grand as ever the creative company of Poets' Corner wove from sunbeams and rainbows."

"Our century is Darwin's century," said the Allgemeine Zeitung. The New York Herald described his life as "that of Socrates except its close." The Neue Freie Presse said truly that his death caused lamentation as far as truth had penetrated, and wherever civilisation had made any impression.

A movement was at once set on foot for securing a worthy public memorial of Darwin. Subscriptions

flowed in abundantly, and came from all countries of Europe, the United States, the British Colonies, and Brazil. Sweden sent the astonishing number of 2296 subscriptions; persons of all ranks contributed, from a bishop to a seamstress. Over £4,000 in all was subscribed, and it was resolved, in the first place, to procure the best possible statue. This work was entrusted to Mr. Boehm, R.A., with admirable results. Permission was obtained to place it in the great hall of the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, and here it was unveiled on June 9, 1885, by the Prince of Wales, who accepted the statue on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum from Professor Huxley as representing the subscribers. It is agreed that the statue is excellent, the attitude easy and dignified, the expression natural and characteristic. The only defect is that the hands are unlike Darwin's. The balance, about £2,200, remaining over from the fund, was given to the Royal Society to be invested for the promotion of biological studies and researches.

The conditions under which Darwin lived were just those in which, as The Saturday Review put it, his sweet and gentle nature could blossom into perfection. "Arrogance, irritability, and envy, the faults that ordinarily beset men of genius, were not so much conquered as non-existent in a singularly simple and generous mind. It never occurred to him that it would be to his gain to show that he and not some one else was the author of a discovery. If he was appealed to for help by a fellowworker, the thought never passed into his mind that he had secrets to divulge which would lessen his importance.

It was science, not the fame of science, that he loved, and he helped science by the temper in which he approached it. He had to say things which were distasteful to a large portion of the public, but he won the ear even of his most adverse critics by the manifest absence of a mere desire to shine, by his modesty, and by his courtesy. He told honestly what he thought to be the truth, but he told it without a wish to triumph or to wound. There is an arrogance of unorthodoxy as well as an arrogance of orthodoxy, and if ideas that a quarter of a century ago were regarded with dread are now accepted without a pang, the rapidity of the change of opinion, if not the change itself, is largely due to the fact that the leading exponent of these ideas was the least arrogant of men."

Geniality and genuine humour must be remembered as among the many delightful traits in Darwin's character. Mr. Edmund Yates, in his "Celebrities at Home" (second series), describes his as a laugh to remember, “a rich Homeric laugh, round and full, musical and jocund.”

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At a droll suggestion of Mr. Huxley's, or a humorous doubt insinuated in the musical tones of the President of the Royal Society (Sir Joseph Hooker), the eyes twinkle under the massive overhanging brows, the Socratic head, as Professor Tyndall loves to call it, is thrown back, and over the long white beard rolls out such a laugh as we have attempted to describe."

Exceptionally good-hearted and sympathetic as a man, Darwin discovered his life-work, and did it, in spite of a most powerful hindrance, in the best possible manner, with the least possible waste of force. But, more than doing his work, he set others to work, incited them,

suggested to them, aided them, scattered among them seeds which, finding fertile soil, sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold. His greatness is as much in what he caused others to do as in what he did himself. Even in arousing antagonism, though by the gentlest means, he did a great work, for he secured examination and criticism in such bulk that the whole world was leavened by his doctrine; and in controversy no man has any disagreeable reminiscence of him. Many have cause to bless the day when they first came into communication with Darwin, to find him welcome them, encourage them, place his own vast stores of knowledge and thought at their disposal, and, best of all, make them love him. naturally as a dear friend.

Darwin's was one of those open and frank minds which are entrenched behind no rampart of isolating prejudice, and elevated on no platform of conscious superiority. It was equally natural to him to ask and to give information. No one ever was more accessible to all who genuinely sought his aid in their inquiries or their projects; no one ever more truly sought information from all quarters whence truth was attainable. Hence the mass of his letters to all kinds of persons is enormous, and only a small proportion, probably, will ever be published. His letters are like his conversation, free, frank, without a trace of arrière pensée, praising others where possible— and no man ever found it more possible to praise others more genuinely-depreciating himself and his work most unduly. "You so overestimate the value of what I do," he writes on one occasion, "that you make me feel ashamed of myself, and wish to be worthy of such praise."