CHARLES DARWIN. 125 



an applauding public. Carlyle, with his vivid soul, was 

 all a-tremble in presence of opinions that to him contra- 

 dicted the truth and the right; and his very keenest 

 admirers who came daily nearest him were (though not 

 without exceptions) precisely those whom physical, 

 material pursuits occupied, and to whom the abstract 

 copy-liners were their philosophers. Carlyle's intellec- 

 tual life was a very unhappy one all that he was 

 minded should fail, he saw succeed. It is not difficult 

 to understand the set of his mind, even from the way 

 in which he speaks of the brothers, the two Darwins, 

 Erasmus and Charles, and especially of the book of the 

 latter (" wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious 

 stupidity of mankind ; never could read a page of it, or 

 waste the least thought upon it "). We may bring what 

 is here in regard specially home to us if we will think 

 of Buckle and the instant success of the poor boy's 

 big, foolishly vainglorious fungus of a volume. I never 

 heard Carlyle on that theme ; but I conversed on it 

 with his brother John (who was melancholy about such 

 " disorder " by which he meant Unfug), and have no 

 difficulty in realising to myself the miserable relative 

 feelings of Thomas that that should be thought dcht 

 that it should even found a school ! The truth is that a 

 feebler general public has seldom existed than what was 

 atmosphere to Carlyle. 



If, now, we turn to what Mr. Darwin says of Buckle 

 (i. 74, ii. 110, 386), the whole scene with the three men 

 becomes quite a tableau vivant 



" I (Darwin) was very glad to learn from him (Buckle) his system 

 of collecting facts. He told me that he bought all the books which 

 he read, and made a full index, to each, of the facts which he 

 thought might prove serviceable to him. I asked him how at first 

 he could judge what facts would be serviceable, and he answered 

 that he did not know, but that a sort of instinct guided him. From 



