CHAPTEE XL 



CHARLES DARWIN CONTINUED. 



IN further illustration here, we may refer to the de- 

 cisions of Mr. Darwin himself in regard to celebrated 

 or notorious contemporaries whom he had met in society. 

 He mentions Lyell, Eobert Brown, Sir J. Herschel, Hum- 

 boldt, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Motley, Grote, Babbage, 

 Buckle, Carlyle, " Carlyle sometimes went on too long 

 on the same subject he silenced every one Babbage, 

 and Lyell, both pf whom liked to talk by haranguing 

 without stop or pause, during a whole meal, on the 

 advantages of silence. Carlyle sneered at almost every 

 one : in my house one day he called Grote's History 

 1 a fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual about it.' 

 I always thought that his sneers were partly jokes, 

 but this now seems rather doubtful I believe that 

 his benevolence was real, though stained by not a little 

 jealousy." He speaks of Carlyle's hearty laugh, and does 

 justice to " his extraordinary power of drawing pictures 

 of things and men far more vivid, as it seems to me, 

 than any drawn by Macaulay. Whether his pictures of 

 men were true ones is another question." " His mind 

 seemed to me a very narrow one." " He thought it a 

 most ridiculous thing that any one should care" about 

 the movements of a glacier. " He laughed to scorn the 

 idea that a mathematician, such as Whewell, could 



