

256 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [ch. xiii. 



and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me 

 quite splendidly by quoting the Ant i- Jacobin versus my 

 Grandfather. You are not alluded to, nor, strange to say, 



Huxley ; and I can plainly see, here and there, 's hand. 



The concluding pages will make Lyell shake in his shoes. 

 By Jove, if he sticks to us, he will be a real hero. Good- 

 night. Your well-quizzed, but not sorrowful, and affec- 

 tionate friend. C. D. 



I can see there has been some queer tampering with the 

 review, for a page has been cut out and reprinted. 



The following extract from a letter of Sept. 1st, 1860, is 

 of interest, not only as showing that Lyell was still con- 

 scientiously working out his conversion, but also and espe- 

 cially as illustrating the remarkable fact that hardly any of 

 my father's critics gave him any new objections so fruit- 

 ful had been his ponderings of twenty years : 



" I have been much interested by your letter of the 

 28th, received this morning. It has delighted me, because 



reprobated as ' utterly dishonourable to Natural Science.' " The passage 

 from the Anti-Jacobin, referred to in the letter, gives the history of the evo- 

 lution of space from the " primaeval point or punctum saliens of the universe," 

 which is conceived to have moved "forward in a right line, ad infini- 

 tum, till it grew tired; after which the right line, which it had generated, 

 would begin to put itself in motion in a lateral direction, describing an area of 

 infinite extent. This area, as soon as it became conscious of its own exist- 

 ence, would begin to ascend or descend according as its specific gravity would 

 determine it, forming an immense solid space filled with vacuum, and capa- 

 ble of containing the present universe." 



The following (p. 263) may serve as an example of the passages in which 

 the review r er refers to Sir Charles Lyell : " That Mr. Darwin should have 

 wandered from this broad highway of nature's works into the jungle of fan- 

 ciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that he is mistaken in believing 

 that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his converts. We know, indeed, the 

 strength of the temptations which he can bring to bear upon his geological 

 brother. . . . Yet no man has been more distinct and more logical in the de- 

 nial of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and that not in the in- 

 fancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigour and maturity." The Bishop 

 goes on to appeal to Lyell, in order that with his help " this flimsy specula- 

 tion may be as completely put down as was what in spite of all denials we 

 must venture to call its twin though less instructed brother, the Vestiges of 

 Creation.' 1 '' 



With reference to this article, Mr. Brodie Innes, my father's old friend 

 and neighbour, writes : " Most men would have been annoyed by an article 

 written with the Bishop's accustomed vigour, a mixture of argument and ridi- 

 cule. Mr. Darwin was writing on some "parish matter, and put a postscript 

 ' If you have not seen the last Quarterly, do get it ; the Bishop of Oxford has 

 made such capital fun of me and my grandfather.' By a curious coincidence, 

 when I received the letter, I was staying in the same house with the Bishop, 

 and showed it to him. He said, ' I am very glad he takes it in that way, he 

 is such a capital fellow.' " 



