CHARLES DARWIN. 141 



he might add certain inconsiderable riders to certain 

 inconsiderable previous words of his own the reason 

 being that, until he had done so, he could not sleep ! It is 

 here, too, that his own son (William, I think), when, in 

 regard to the prosecution of Governor Eyre for murder (to 

 which Mr. Darwin had actually subscribed 10), he "had 

 made some stupid remark," relates, " My father turned 

 on me almost with fury, and told me, if those were my 

 feelings, I had better go back to Southampton, etc. 

 Next morning at seven o'clock, or so, he came into my 

 bedroom, and sat on my bed, and said that he had not 

 been able to sleep, from the thought that he had been so 

 angry with me, and after a few more kind words he left me." 



This last anecdote, one may remark, illustrates another 

 little fact in our common humanity. The most finished 

 man of the world may break down at times, and show a 

 crack in the varnish. The late Lord Palmerston was 

 not by nature as gentle, probably, as Charles Darwin 

 was ; but, more completely than any other man in this 

 world, perhaps, he had turned himself inside out, so as to 

 be without latency, and thoroughly self-possessed always ; 

 yet witness his burst pretty well of " fury " on Stirling 

 of Keir, who had asked the ill-timed, and certainly very 

 injudicious, question in the House, Was it the case that 

 Napoleon in his will left a sum of money to the would- 

 be assassin of the Duke of Wellington ? 



But as concerns the immediate point, Mr. Darwin's 

 even painful delicacy of conscientiousness, we may just 

 allude finally here to the anxieties he suffered from it in 

 consequence of the calls made upon him by all sorts of 

 unknown correspondents. He received, his son says, many 

 letters from foolish, unscrupulous people ; but " he used 

 to say that if he did not answer them, he had it on his 

 conscience afterwards," "at night anything which had 

 vexed or troubled him in the day would haunt him, and 



