CHAKLES DARWIN. 99 



during work - time, she says also, " I remember his 

 patient- look when he said once, ' Don't you think you 

 could not come in again ? I have been interrupted very 

 often.' " He always spoke to his servants with polite- 

 ness, using the expression, " would you be so good ? " in 

 asking for anything. His lawyer says of his business 

 replies to him, " Everything I did was right, and every- 

 thing was profusely thanked for." Evidently, whether 

 on board ship or elsewhere, Mr. Darwin, with all that 

 was his own, had lived among English gentlemen to some 

 purpose without forgetting at the same time that, in 

 that special reference, much that is more intrinsic has 

 been already said, or is still to say. His son remarks on 

 the courtesy and conciliatoriness of his tone even in his 

 style ; and no doubt correctly. Nay, does not his truth 

 in writing run risk at times of being spoiled by the 

 politeness of it ? Even to his " Dear Hooker," he cannot 

 speak of himself as a " fellow-labourer " without paren- 

 thetically adding " though myself a very weak one "- 

 which, on the whole, rather is a fall on " the other ; " 

 not but that, if acquainted for five years, the corre- 

 spondence between them was at the time a young one. 

 Still the gentlemanly tic is there of ceremonious phrases 

 and the ' right tone.' 



There is a good deal of fastidiousness nowadays 

 about the manners of those who are to be great only in 

 themselves. But that the plain country doctor's son was 

 a rich man, with horses and carriages and a full staff of 

 servants, and all the ways of wealth, was no fall on " the 

 other." Charles Darwin, with all that, had not onn 

 atom of pretension. In all that, for himself, for his 

 children, for his father, nay, even grandfather, lie may 

 have had pride ; but that pride was only a sound, and 

 healthy, and thankful satisfaction. There was not a 

 crease of his simplicity in it. Michael Angelo Titmarsh 



