was right, and everything was for ").

profusely thanked

But we may now draw all this personal matter into a single point by consideration of his portraits. Each of the three volumes (Life, etc.) has its own specimen. Mr. Darwin is described as a tall man, six feet in height, broad-shouldered but not noticeably so, with a spare body and thin legs. His hair was brown, and his complexion, as I am tempted to interpret his own "rather sallow" and his son's "ruddy rather than sallow," a rustic reddish fair. From the circumference of it, "224 inches," his hat would be, as the manufacturers have it, at least a 7; which medium size was, as I take it, that in Kant's case also. The first of the portraits, of which a photograph, dated 1854, seems to have been the original, may allowably, from its place and otherwise, be assumed to be, generally, the most characteristic. It represents Mr. Darwin as, at the age of forty-five, he was just in his prime. With checked vest, checked neckcloth, and a certain honest, matter-of-fact look, it is an English squire-like face we see there. The head, bald, rises and rounds finely. The eyes, overhung by unusually projecting shaggy brows, look out honestly. They seem as if they had been made both for and by observation. The ridge above them is so steep that one might almost think a cleaver had struck across the line beneath it. The nose is quite what we might expect from Fitz-Roy's dislike to it as inexpressive whether of energy or quickness. It is shortish, smallish, turned-upish, dumpyish, common; it has an insignificant, and withal an innocent look. The mouth in this portrait is a very remarkable feature; and it is well seen, the face being beardless as yet, and framed only by a plain, close, gentlemanly sidewhisker. It is the expression of it that is remarkable. In the other portraits the beard so far hides the mouth;

but we might almost fancy the expression in question to have disappeared from these. Especially in the last of them, all is serene, composed, and assured now (it is taken within a year of his death); there is a reflective look in it almost a look, indeed, of rather sad reflection. On the other hand, it is the eyebrows that are the prominent feature in the remaining portrait. Each is shaggier now, with a terrier-like look; and the face itself seems smaller somehow, more set-like-is it as still in battle that it is set?

Returning now to the squire-like portrait of the checked waistcoat, the checked neckerchief, and the shaven face between the gentlemanly side-whiskers, with the fine bald forehead rounding down to the rugged ridge over the honest eyes, succeeded by the insignificant nose, the peculiar mouth, and the broadish chin, it is the mouth was specially remarked on. One fancies there is an expression on it as though hiding simple gratification at the compliment (of the sitting), but returning to a usual surface, as it were, of habitual unpretending plainness and unreflected, yet considerate, sincerity. And yet again that mouth seems almost to be saying, you are looking at me, and I fear you do not see much in me— I am not quite sure that you do not see an ignoramus in me, which perhaps I am and perhaps with a twist of the chin-I am not. But, with whatever shade of contradicting defiance, there is at the same time an expression, amiable and good, half of admitted, half of denied slowness. "He was at first inclined to rate everything too highly"that (i. 57) seems somehow just to go with such a look. "I would as soon have died," he writes to Huxley (ii. 324), knowing well that he would be powerless to express himself in public-"I would as soon have died as tried to answer the Bishop in such an assembly." I know I am not quick is, virtually, a sort of frequent

avowal of Mr. Darwin's. We have, in the second volume (op. cit.), a specimen of his handwriting. There is not a bit of the writing-master in it. It seems, too, he had not the gift of drawing; and I fancy he neither liked driving nor carving; and if ever he played billiards or bagatelle, I rather think it was with the butt of the cue he struck.

PART II.

THE WORK.

CHAPTER I.

AUTHORITIES USED, COMPILATION, ETC.

IN coming now to the "Work," it may in that regard suggest itself that what concerns Mr. Darwin's predecessors has been already discussed; so that there can further remain for us no more than his own. This, to be sure, even looking solely to what is printed, is, as work, not small. Happily, however, we have not to draw it all into consideration, but only what of it relates, more or less, to Mr. Darwin's peculiar views on the origin of species. True it is that perhaps after his earlier works—mostly connected with the voyage of the Beagle, and preceding (in 1858 say) the eve of his more specially respective publications-Charles Darwin never could, and never did, write anything without having at heart his one proper, single, and distinctive theory. That, then, the so-called theory of natural selection shall be our theme for the future; and in the prosecution of it we shall not think it necessary to travel beyond such writings of Mr. Darwin's as, whether