148 LIFE OF 



fancied a lofty world-sage out of Hellenic antiquity a 

 Socrates or Aristotle stood before me." 



The well-known botanist, Alphonse de Candolle, thus 

 describes a visit to Down : 



" I longed to converse once more with Darwin, 

 whom I had seen in 1839, and with whom I kept up 

 a most interesting correspondence. It was on a fine 

 autumn morning in 1880 that I arrived at Orpington 

 station, where my illustrious friend's break met me. 

 I will not here speak of the kind reception given 

 to me at Down, and of the pleasure I felt in chat- 

 ting familiarly with Mr. and Mrs. Darwin and their 

 son Francis. I note only that Darwin at seventy was 

 more animated and appeared happier than when I had 

 seen him forty-one years before. His eye was bright 

 and his expression cheerful, whilst his photographs show 

 rather the shape of his head, like that of an ancient 

 philosopher. His varied, frank, gracious conversation, 

 entirely that of a gentleman, reminded me of that of 

 Oxford and Cambridge savants. The general tone was 

 like his books, as is the case with sincere men, devoid of 

 every trace of charlatanism. He expressed himself in 

 English easily understood by a foreigner, more like that 

 of Bulwer or Macaulay, than that of Dickens or Carlyle. 

 I asked him for news of the committee, of which he was 

 a member, for reforming English spelling, and when I 

 said that moderate changes would be best received by 

 the public, he laughingly said, ' As for myself, of course^ 

 I am for the most radical changes.' We were more 

 in accord on another point, that a man of science, even 



