174 DARWIX1ANISM. 



that no words whatever could have been more admirably 

 calculated to move the audience. As Mr. Huxley it was 

 even in Mr. Huxley himself to move. He was the king 

 of the amphitheatre, and not a man of the day was a 

 greater favourite with the public ; inasmuch as he, 

 perhaps, was the very ablest writer of information which, 

 while instructive and expressly scientific, was, at the 

 same time, also interesting, entertaining, and in the 

 highest degree lucid. 



The Origin of Species was published on the 24th 

 November 1859. The Times article appeared on 26th 

 December 1859. The lecture at the Boyal Institution 

 was delivered on the 10th February 1860. And of the 

 speeches at Oxford the dates were 28th and 30th June 

 1860. Even from as much as this, then, it was 

 impossible but that the subject must have been in most 

 mouths in England in the course of a few months. As 

 we all know, all in England is done by parties, and 

 everything that appears in England is of no use 

 whatever until it is made an affair of party. It was 

 not different with the origin of species. Creation or 

 Evolution became the party-question of the day ; and it 

 was debated at a temperature that was perfectly suffo- 

 cating. Lecture-rooms rang with the subject, and not a 

 periodical in the kingdom but glowed red-hot with it. I 

 say Creation or Evolution ; for, as usual, any nicety of 

 distinction was not to be understood ; and, whatever 

 might be peculiar and specific in natural selection, it 

 itself must mean, and could mean " to the general "- 

 only evolution. We would just suggest for the moment 

 that this at once was a wandering from the question ; 

 which, as a question, was not of evolution as evolution, 

 but of Mr. Darwin's special, proper, and particular 

 theory of evolution. 



It remains for us now to point to the immense share 



