CHARLES DARWIN. Ol 



I am deeply conscious of the poverty of this tribute of rever- 

 ence for the Ufe and work of the greatest man of our century. The 

 wreath I place on his tomb is only one of modest wild flowers, 

 grouped by an unartistic hand ; but it is the outcome of sincere 

 admiration and respect for the memory of one who, from my boy- 

 hood upwards, has been my ideal of all that is noble, patient, 

 earnest, and lofty in human nature. 



Let Grant Allen's own words finish the story — I know none 

 worthier with which to close any estimate of such a man : — 

 " Charles Darwin was a great man, and he accomplished a great 

 work. The Newton of biology, he found the science of life a 

 chaotic maze ; he left it an orderly system, with a definite plan 

 and a recognizable meaning. Great thoughts like his do not 

 readily die ; they expand and grow in ten thousand bosoms till 

 they transform the world at last into their own likeness, and adapt 

 it to the environment they have themselves created by their 

 informing power. Alone am'ong the prophets and teachers of 

 triumphant creeds, he saw with his own eyes the adoption of the 

 faith he had been the first to promulgate in all its fulness by every 

 fresh and powerful mind of the younger race that grew up around 

 him. The Nestor of Evolutionism, he had lived among two suc- 

 cessive generations of thinkers, and over the third he ruled as king. 

 With that crowning joy of a great, a noble, and a happy life, let us 

 leave him here, alone in his glory." 



Sutton^ Surrey ; November, i88^. 



NOTES. 



I must express my obligations to many authors in the prepara- 

 tion of this paper : prominently' among these to Professor Huxley, 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer, Hermann Miiller, Fritz Miiller, Mr. A. R. 

 Wallace, Mr. H. W. Bates, and Dr. K. Wilson. 



From the works of Charles Darwin himself I need scarcely say 

 I have derived the choicest material of all, as coming from the 

 fountain-head of evolutionary science. 



