142 DARWINIANISM. 



1 think it was then that he suffered if he had not 

 answered some troublesome person's letter." " He made 

 a rule, nevertheless, of keeping all letters that he received 

 and all of them received replies" (i. 119, 124). 



In all that we cannot but think of his signal tenderness 

 of feeling and his extreme modesty always. So modest he 

 was, that, to his boyish dream, if even Eddowes' newspaper 

 (the local Shrewsbury print) " alluded to him ' as our de- 

 serving fellow-townsman,' his ambition would be amply 

 gratified." While his tenderness again was such that he 

 might be seen " gently touching a flower," in gratitude, as 

 it were, and in the charm of its very delicacy. Any- 

 thing like cruelty was an instant outrage to him. He 

 could not look at performing dogs for thinking of the 

 licks they must have received. His horror when he 

 picked up a bird, not quite dead but lingering from a 

 shot it had received on the previous day ! He would 

 not yield to anger, for " he was conscious that it had a 

 tendency to multiply itself in the utterance." He was 

 manlily irate, nevertheless, at anything that wore the 

 aspect of injustice. The law of primogeniture was 

 unjust, and " how atrociously unjust are the stamp laws, 

 which render it so expensive for the poor man to buy his 

 ([uarter of an acre : it makes one's blood burn with 

 indignation " (L 343). It was only of such parents (for 

 the consort of a Darwin could only be another of himself) 

 that the children could say (i. 138): "Our father and 

 mother would not even wish to know what we were 

 doing or thinking unless we wished to tell." 

 . A perfect focus of this whole personal nature is to be 

 found in all that relates to Mr. A. 11. Wallace and his 

 anticipation of the theory of natural selection. Mr. 

 Durwin would have Mr. Wallace's essay, when it is sent 

 him, published at once and before any paper of his own. 

 He yields to the actual conjunct preliminary statement 



