CHARLES DARWIN. 115 



movement by means of cilia." He was seventeen then. 

 One of the last things he wrote (the date is April 1881) 

 wa$ in expression of surprise (rather contemptuous 

 surprise), that Carlyle " thought it a most ridiculous 

 thing that any one should care whether a glacier moved 

 a little quicker, or a little slower, or moved at all." One 

 may feel some surprise (not contempt) at Mr. Darwin 

 himself here : I fancy, as we get on in life, we all take 

 somewhat easily, or even rather expect, all manner of 

 similar bad shots on the part of strangers to our own 

 immediate leading article ; and so one may lift eyebrows 

 a little to find courteous Mr. Darwin so much of an 

 exception. But, utterly possessed as his very soul was 

 captivated, fascinated, mesmerised by the enchant- 

 ment of physical movement, it would seem that, for- 

 getful of his way with old Lord Stanhope, Charles 

 Darwin could not forgive Thomas Carlyle for presuming 

 to think such signal and glaring instance of it (such move- 

 ment) "fiddle-faddle." All had been so different with 

 him ! To him, namely, what had that " well-known large 

 erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, called the 

 bell-stone," not proved ? Here was a question of move- 

 ment, but it was mysterious and unfathomable. For he 

 was but fifteen when old Mr. Cotton told him (i. 41) 

 " that there was 'no rock of the same kind nearer than 

 Cumberland or Scotland, and solemnly assured him that 

 the world would come to an end before any one would be 

 able to explain how this stone came where it now lay." 

 What a charm for Mr. Darwin it must have given to a 

 glacier, that it explained this ! The whole tendency of 

 his nature, indeed, towards movement, and towards the 

 observation of movement, must have been greatly sup- 

 ported, stimulated, fostered by such a circumstance as 

 the glacier-borne " bell-stone." 



" There is to me incomparably more interest in observ- 



