386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE HALO OF A HUNDEED YEAES^ (FEBEUAEY, 1809, 



TO FEBEUAEY, 1909) 



Br Peofbssoe R. M. WENLEY 



DNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



IN ordinary circumstances, a humble representative of Wissenschaft 

 der Pliilosophie, like myself — a pursuer rather than a possessor of 

 knowledge, would deem any poor words of his superfluous on such an 

 occasion, and in an assembly composed chiefly of those who have con- 

 secrated their lives to the natural sciences. But, to-night, I am so bold 

 as to proffer claim to a little niche, because we are to make a pregnant 

 pause, and enjoy an interchange of ideas, in commemoration of the 

 illustrious name, services and discoveries of Charles Eobert Darwin, 

 who first saw the light at Shrewsbury, on February 12, 1809, that 

 memorable year of memorable infants. 



Place aux dames, as if Darwin were not enough, 1809 gave us 

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Cowden Clarke, the Shakespeare 

 scholar, and Fanny Kemble, the great actress. In science, it produced 

 Grassmann and Liouville, the eminent mathematicians; the botanists 

 K. H. E. Koch and George Engelmann; the geologist J. D. Forbes; 

 Jakob Henle, the anatomist; Fitch, the economic entomologist; Stock- 

 hardt, the founder of agricultural experiment stations; and Griscom, 

 the physician. Its children made literature immensely their debtor, 

 for, among them were Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Lever, 

 Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark 

 Lemon (the humorist), Edward Fitzgerald, who rendered Omar 

 Khayyam an English classic ; Paludan-Miiller, an ornament of Scanda- 

 navian letters; Giusti, the Tuscan poet, whom his countrymen delight 

 to call the Beranger of Italy; and Nikolaus Becker, author of that 

 famous song, " Der deutsche Ehein." In music we owe it Chopin and 

 Mendelssohn; in art, Diaz de la Pena, the French landscape painter; 

 in history, Hefele, John Hill Burton, Kinglake, Skene, Cronholm, 

 Bruno Bauer, and Michael Horvath, greatest of Hungarian historians ; 

 in scholarship, Theodor Benfey and John Stuart Blackie; in theology, 

 Isaac Dorner; and, in practical religion, Selwyn, the influential mis- 

 sionary-bishop of New Zealand. The educationist, Barnard; the jurist, 

 Phillimore; the publicist, William Eathbone Greg; the philanthropist, 

 Miall, and Baron Hausmann, who found Paris brick and left it 



* Address of the president of the Research Club of the University of 

 Michigan, on the occasion of the Darwin commemoration. 



