70 CHARLES DARWIN. 



I cannot, of course, attempt to sketch his life, or to give you 

 an exhaustive account of all the mighty work which that life 

 accomplished in every branch of natural science. To compre- 

 hend that fully, you must diligently read through and through all 

 the 19 or 20 volumes written by Darwin, together with expositions 

 thereon by Huxley, Wallace, and others. I must content myself 

 with presenting you with a very few details of his early years, and 

 with showing you, in brief outline only, the result of his wonderful 

 labours in the sciences to which he devoted his best years and his 

 highest powers. 



Surrounded by those whom he very tenderly loved, in his own 



home near the quiet little village of Down amid the pleasant 



Kentish hills, at four o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, 



April the 19th, 1882, Charles Darwin passed from amongst us, 



and finished 



" A noble hfe-work, nobly crowned." 



To all who knew, even in small degree, anything of him, the 

 message in the daily papers of April 2Tst was one laden with sorrow 

 and a sense of loss. When that life ended, there ended one of a 

 man in whose spirit were blended all that is great and all that is 

 beautiful in human nature. The greatest genius, the most prolific 

 thinker, the acutest reasoner, the most brilliant generalizer in the 

 domain of biological science, he was at the same time one who 

 possessed the " child-spirit " in all its exquisite simplicity, one in 

 whom the scientist and the philosopher were exalted and ennobled 

 by the courtesy and kindliness of the true Enghsh gentleman. 



Charles Darwin was a descendant of two very remarkable 

 families, and in the history of these we can see the " condi- 

 tioning circumstances which finally led up to the joint pro- 

 duction of the man and the philosopher, the thinking brain and 

 the moving energy.'' 



Early in the last century there lived in Nottinghamshire one 

 Robert Darwin, "a person of curiosity,"' having "'a taste for 

 literature and science." He was a member of the celebrated 

 Spalding Club, a friend of Stukeley the antiquary, and appears 

 to have pursued the study of Geology as far as, in that age, it 

 could be pursued. Of his four sons, Robert, the eldest, and Erasmus, 

 the youngest, were authors and students of Botany. Robert issued 



