years of observation and experiments"? With all his experiences in pigeons, poultry, and seeds, Mr. Darwin supported his results mainly on a compilation. Had the public but known that! And so, then, are these letters of Mr. Darwin's to remain in proof to posterity how allimportant it is, if you would gain an end, to look out for some leading authorities whom, as determinative, it will suffice to court?1 As regards selection, scientific dis covery on the part of Darwin, there never was any.

So it was that the grandfather, "when he wanted something to be done for him," "looked out" for the right man - Josiah Wedgewood-to apply to!--I may add here, too, that much that is final in regard to contingency as against Mr. Huxley's necessity of physical atoms, will be found in the chapter on the Survival of the Fittest.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT IN MR. DARWIN HIMSELF CONDITIONED THE WORK AND ITS SUCCESS.

So much for others.

We come now to what it was in Mr. Darwin himself that led to the peculiarity of the work, its success included.

Of course, it was the hereditary bee hypothesis that gave form to the work itself, as it was compilation in natural history that found it in matter. Coming a little closer, however; we have seen that the grandfather was minded on the whole to trace all life to an original filament; and we have seen also that stir, movement before the eyes, was probably what gave the first shock of curiosity to the grandson. Suppose, then, we bring both filament and stir together in a beetle-this for the Origin! There are so many beetles-Hydroporus, Hydrobius, Hydrophilus-Violet Black, Large Smooth Black, Long Smooth Black, it is quite possible that the young man, seeing so many of them, and all of them so much alike, may have asked himself some fine day, could each species have been separately created?-might not one species just have varied from another? and in such a manner, too, that one single species was the original of the whole of them? In his own words, Have not Vallied species just descended from common stocks"? And only to put it in that way, is it not at once righteously

to suggest at least evolution, bring it about as you may?

I do not think that any one will deny, that such thought is an eminently natural one. An omnipotent God statedly employed in the sort of retail trade of manufacturing beetles is no very improving spectacle. Still, if it is to be assumed that species are derived from species, instead of being expressly created, it is just possible that the peculiar lever of the movement, proposed by Mr. Darwin, may not be the right one.

But of that again-what we have before us at present is Mr. Darwin's own relation to the work which he undertook. Now, if it was the love of hypothesis that was to preside over the work; it was, as we are inclined to fancy, Mr. Darwin's characteristic simplicity that set it all in movement.

In the one case, I think we may say that the tendency to even startling hypothesis is admitted in grandfather, father, and himself. "I have a fair share of invention," says Mr. Darwin more than once significantly to himself with a smile. Of course, the check of judgment is as strongly claimed as the love of hypothesis is admitted. But if we are under the dominion of hypothesis, it is at least not generally found that facts are incorruptible. Mr. Francis Darwin himself has of his father these strong words (i. 149): "It was as though he were charged with theorising power ready to flow into any channel on the slightest disturbance, so that no fact, however small, could avoid releasing a stream of theory, and thus the fact became magnified into importance. In this way it naturally happened that many untenable theories occurred to him." It would be difficult to put the case more plainly; though, of course, it is only natural for the son to add, and in a measure truly to add," but fortunately his richness of imagination was equalled by his

power of judging and condemning the thoughts that occurred to him." In fact, Mr. Darwin himself makes a stronger acknowledgment for himself than his son does for him. Even on the last page of the Journal words occur which are an undeniable confession. They are these: "As the traveller stays but a short time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches-hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses." He writes to Henslow once (i. 189): "As yet I have only indulged in hypotheses, but they are such powerful ones that I suppose, if they were put into action but for one day, the world would come to an end.” In 1865 he acknowledges to Mr. Huxley that his "Pangenesis" is "a very rash and crude hypothesis," the result of "a passion to try to connect facts by some sort of hypothesis." For very soberest conclusion, let us bear in mind this (ii. 108): "I am a firm believer that without speculation. there is no good and original observation."

So much for hypothesis, what we have named bee, and what the "candid reader" will probably find unfair." Good heavens ! I wonder where that is, whether in man or doctrine, to which at all events I would wish to prove unfair! Ah do I not know that from the moment I am, or wish to prove, unfair, from that moment I fail?

We turn to the simplicity that (with the hypothesis) set all in movement. The many striking instances of simplicity on the part of the boy cannot yet have escaped our memory. The tale of the hat, and the shots he was tricked out of; the collecting dead insects and fishing with dead worms; the remorse of conscience for the puppy he beat; the prayers to be enabled to run in time; the "fearful reproach" of poco curante that was

It

not "just" all these we must still recollect, and that he believed that he was "in many ways a naughty boy." must still be quite within our recollection, too, that the simple conscience of the boy followed him into manhood. He, late in life even, cannot sleep till he gets up and adds an important rider to some trifle he had said! "The surprise and delight with which he hears of his collections and observations being of some use: it seems only to have gradually occurred to him that he would ever be more than a collector of specimens and facts, of which the great men were to make use." The extravagance of his praise: "I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are"-" every one with eyes. to see or ears to hear ought to bow their knee to you, and I for one do "—so and so the clearest-headed man whom I have ever known, a wonderful observer, to my judgment I have come across no one like him, his powers of observation I have never seen exceeded or even equalled." It is almost too bad to say so, and may seem mere profanation of the most affectionate and reverential feelings between father and son; but the most perfect proof of the simplicity of Mr. Darwin lies in his relation to his father. "Miss, a grand old lady in Shropshire, was telling everybody that she would call and tell that fat old doctor very plainly what she thought of him." This fat old doctor, whom " facts in conversation" alone interested, who was a "great talker," who was a "great collector of anecdotes," "who knew an extraordinary number of curious stories," who was always joking and in high spirits, and who told stories and anecdotes “in conversation with a succession of people during the whole day," -this fat old country doctor and gossip was to Charles Darwin "the best judge of character he ever met," "the most acute observer he ever saw," 'the wisest man he ever knew;" he could read the characters, and even the