450 CHARLES DARWIN. 



ber, 183G — not only fixed the course anrl character of the young 

 naturalist's life-work, but opened to his mind its principal problems 

 and suggested the now familiar solution of them. For he brought 

 back with him to England a conviction that the existing species of 

 animals and plants are the modified descendants of earlier forms, and 

 that the internecine struggle for life in which these modifiable forms 

 must have been engaged would scientifically explain the changes. 

 The noteworthy point is that both the conclusion and the explanation 

 were the legitimate outcome of real s.cientific investigation. It is an 

 equally noteworthy fact, and a characteristic of Darwin's mind, that 

 these pregnant ideas were elaborated for more than twenty years be- 

 fore he gave them to the world. Offering fruit so well ripened upon 

 the bough, commending the conclusions he had so thoroughly matured 

 by the presentation of very various lines of facts, and of reasonings 

 close to the facts, unmixed with figments and a priori conceptions, it 

 is not so surprising that his own convictions should at the close of the 

 next twenty years be generally shared by scientific men. It is cer- 

 tainly gratifying that he should have lived to see it, and also have 

 outlived most of the obloquy and dread which the promulgation of 

 these opinions aroused. 



Mr. Darwin lived a very quiet and uneventful life. In 1839 he 

 married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, who with five sons and two 

 daughters survives him ; he made his home on the border of the little 

 hamlet of Down, in Kent, —"a plain but comfortable brick house in 

 a few acres of pleasure-ground, a pleasantly old-fashioned air about it, 

 with a sense of peace and silence ; " and here, attended by every bless- 

 ing except that of vigorous health, he lived the secluded but busy life 

 which best suited his chosen pursuits and the simplicity of his charac- 

 ter. He was seldom seen even at scientific meetings, and never in 

 general society ; but he could welcome his friends and fellow-workers 

 to his own house, where he was the most charming of hosts. 



At his home, without distraction and as continuously as his bodily 

 powers would permit, Mr. Darwin gave himself to his work. 

 At least ten of his scientific papers, of greater or less extent, had 

 appeared in the three years between his return to England and his 

 marriage; and in the latter year (1839) he published the book by 

 which he became popularly known, viz., the " Journal of Researches 

 into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during 

 the Voyage of the Beagle," which has been pronounced " the most 

 entertaining book of genuine travels ever written," and it certainly is 

 one of the most instructive. His work on " Coral Reefs" appeared iu 



