LIFE OF DARWIN. 155 



fectly legitimate means. He had observed Nature with 

 a strength of purpose, pertinacity, honesty, and ingenuity 

 never surpassed. 



"The career of Charles Darwin," wrote The Times 

 on the day of his funeral, "eludes the grasp of per- 

 sonal curiosity as much as of personal enmity. He 

 thought, and his thoughts have passed into the substance 

 of facts of the universe. A grass plot, a plant in bloom, 

 a human gesture, the entire circle of the doings and 

 tendencies of nature, builds his monument and records 

 his exploits. . . . The Abbey has its orators and 

 ministers who have convinced senates and swayed 

 nations. Not one of them all has wielded a power over 

 men and their intelligences more complete than that 

 which for the last twenty-three years has emanated from 

 a simple country house in Kent. Memories of poets 

 breathe about the mighty church. Science invokes the 

 aid of imagination no less than poetry. Darwin as he 

 searched, imagined. Every microscopic fact his patient 

 eyes unearthed, his fancy caught up and set in its proper 

 niche in a fabric as stately and grand as ever the creative 

 company of Poets' Corner wove from sunbeams and rain- 

 bows." 



" Our century is Darwin's century," said the All- 

 genuine Zeitung. The New York Herald described his 

 life as " that of Socrates except its close." The Neue 

 Freie Presse said truly that his death caused lamentation 

 as far as truth had penetrated, and wherever civilisation 

 had made any impression. 



A movement was at once set on foot for securing a 

 worthy public memorial of Darwin. Subscriptions 



