1 14 CAMBRIDGE. [en. v. 



Besides a love of music, he had certainly at this time a 

 love of fine literature ; and Mr. Cameron tells me that my 

 father took much pleasure in Shakespeare readings carried 

 on in his rooms at Christ's. He also speaks of Darwin's 

 " great liking for first-class line engravings, especially those 

 of Raphael Morghen and Miiller; and he spent hours in 

 the Fitzwilliam Museum in looking over the prints in that 

 collection." 



My father's letters to Fox show how sorely oppressed he 

 felt by the reading for an examination. His despair over 

 mathematics must have been profound, when he expresses a 

 hope that Fox's silence is due to " your being ten fathoms 

 deep in the Mathematics ; and if you are, God help you, for 

 so am I, only with this difference, I stick fast in the mud at 

 the bottom, and there I shall remain." Mr. Herbert savs : 

 " He had, I imagine, no natural turn for mathematics, and 

 he gave up his mathematical reading before he had mas- 

 tered the first part of algebra, having had a special quarrel 

 with Surds and the Binomial Theorem." 



AVe get some evidence from my father's letters to Fox 

 of his intention of going into the Church. " I am glad," 

 he writes,* " to hear that you are reading divinity. I should 

 like to know what books you are reading, and your opinions 

 about them ; you need not be afraid of preaching to me 

 prematurely." Mr. Herbert's sketch shows how doubts 

 arose in my father's mind as to the possibility of his taking 

 Orders. He writes, " We had an earnest conversation about 

 going into Holy Orders ; and I remember his asking me, 

 with reference to the question put by the Bishop in the 

 Ordination Service, ' Do you trust that you are inwardly 

 moved by the Holy Spirit, &c.,' whether I could answer 

 in the affirmative, and on my saying I could not, he said, 

 ' Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take orders.' " This 

 conversation appears to have taken place in 1829, and if so, 

 the doubts here expressed must have been quieted, for in 

 May 1830, he speaks of having some thoughts of reading 

 divinity with Henslow. 



The greater number of his Cambridge letters are ad- 

 dressed by my father to his cousin, William Darwin Fox. 

 My father's letters show clearly enough how genuine the 

 friendship was. In after years, distance, large families, and 

 ill-health on both sides, checked the intercourse ; but a 



* March 18, 1829. 



