180 FEAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Bishop Butler might be proud to imitate, surrounding 

 each fact with its appropriate detail, placing it in its 

 proper relations, and usually giving it a significance 

 which, as long as it was kept isolated, failed to appear. 

 This is done without a trace of ill-temper. He moves 

 over the subject with the passionless strength of a gla- 

 cier; and the grinding of the rocks is not always without 

 a counterpart in the logical pulverisation of the ob- 

 jector. But though in handling this mighty theme all 

 passion has been stilled, there is an emotion of the 

 intellect, incident to the discernment of new truth, 

 which often colours and warms the pages of Mr. Dar- 

 win. His success has been great; and this implies not 

 only the solidity of his work, but the preparedness of 

 the public mind for such a revelation. On this head, 

 a remark of Agassiz impressed me more than anything 

 else. Sprung from a race of theologians, this celebrated 

 man combated to the last the theory of natural selec- 

 tion. One of the many times I had the pleasure of 

 meeting him in the United States was at Mr. Win- 

 throp's beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. 

 Rising from luncheon, we all halted as if by common 

 consent, in front of a window, and continued there a 

 discussion which had been started at table. The maple 

 was in its autumn glory, and the exquisite beauty of the 

 scene outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate 

 without disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, 

 almost sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the gentlemen 

 standing round, * I confess that I was not prepared to 

 see this theory received as it has been by the best in- 

 tellects of our time. Its success is greater than I could 

 have thought possible.' 



o ry 



In our day grand generalisations have been reached. 

 The theory of the origin of species is but one of them. 



