I7 o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



opened so very many years ago are of so exceptional 

 a kind that we are quite prepared to find that they 

 are deemed wholly inadequate to the result. . . . 

 They are entirely the presence of Mr. R. B. Martin 

 at Westminster Abbey, not merely as giving sanction 

 to the same as an individual, but appearing as one 

 of the deputation from a Society which has especially 

 become the indorser and sustainer of Mr. Darwin's 

 theories. & Co. 



The accordance of a resting-place to Darwin's 

 remains among England's illustrious dead in that 

 Valhalla, was an irenicon from Theology to one 

 whose theories, pushed to their logical issues, have 

 done more than any other to undermine the super- 

 natural assumptions on which it is built. Not that 

 Darwin was a man of aggressive type. If he speaks 

 on the high matters round which, like planet tethered 

 to sun, the spirit of man revolves by irresistible at- 

 traction, it is with hesitating voice and with no deep 

 emotion. A man of placid temper, in whom the 

 observing faculties were stronger than the reflective, 

 he was content to collect and co-ordinate facts, 

 leaving to others the work of pointing out their 

 significance, and adjusting them, as best they could, 

 to this or that theory. It would be unjust to say of 

 him what John Morley says of Voltaire, that " he 

 had no ear for the finer vibrations of the spiritual 

 voice," but we know from his own confessions, what 

 limitations hemmed in his emotional nature. The 



