CHARLES DARWIN. 133 



research." Scientific research meant for Mr. Darwin 

 only the observation of movement, as in beetles, say; 

 and there was no such accomplishment in Carlyle. He 

 rather sought ever for the rest, and peace, and settlement 

 of a single idea, if it were at all to be had not for the 

 excitement of movement on the surface of earth (that of 

 poultry there, had it been even of the sacred chickens, 

 Thomas would have tripudiated at) ! But Carlyle in 

 that, his seeking, was no less active in mind and 

 enthusiastic than was Charles Darwin when he shouted 

 to his sister his self - congratulations on the " fine 

 opportunities " the Beagle would give him " for studying 

 the infinite host of living beings." To that study, for 

 the completion in his eyes of the scientific character, 

 Darwin only adds geology geology and natural history 

 certainly constituted him ; but was Carlyle nowhere in 

 science because he happened, it may be, not to be so 

 very far in these ? 



Mr. Darwin speaks well of Grote, and is highly 

 scandalised that Carlyle should have called Grote's 

 History " a fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual about 

 it." Carlyle had his own dialect ; and, probably, no one 

 but himself, though with the same thought to speak, 

 would have used such qualifying terms as fetid and 

 quagmire. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that the 

 thought for which these terms stood was an eminently 

 righteous one. Grote, in his position of author, was not 

 what he was, or is, commonly supposed to be. His one 

 advantage was that he could read German : and so it 

 was that he had his place among the abstracts ; who, 

 like the Lakers, or other such fortunate congenial 

 brotherhoods (and, whether well-founded or ill-founded, 

 there are, profanely to say it, always such cliques, very 

 much, as in the case of Carlyle for long, to the oppression 

 of the single fighter), had supported themselves and 



