238 Charles Darwin. 



I have had the pleasure, on two occasions, of visit- 

 ing Darwin at his invitation. On the first occasion, 

 in the summer of 1871, I was accompanied by Mr. J. 

 Jenner Wier, one of his Hfe-long friends and admir- 

 ers. From Mr. Wier I first learned that Darwin was, 

 in one sense, virtually a confirmed invalid, and that 

 his work had been done under physical difficulties 

 which would have rendered most men of indepen- 

 dent means vapid, self-indulgent, and useless members 

 of society. 



It is eloquent of the indomitable will and perse- 

 verance of the man that, during the long voyage on 

 the Beagle, he suffered so from sea-sickness that he 

 never fully recovered from the shock to his system, 

 and could not again venture on the ocean. He had, 

 in fact, on his return from the voyage, to go through 

 a long course of hydropathic treatment. We also 

 now know that though he had suffered much for 

 some months past from weakness and recurring fits 

 of faintness, and had been confined to the house, yet 

 as late as Tuesday evening before the day of his 

 death, at 4 P.M., Wednesday, he was in his study 

 examining a plant which he had had brought to him, 

 and that he read that night before retiring, while as 

 late as the i6th of March, he read two papers on 

 special botanical subjects before the Linnaean Society. 



The village of Down is fifteen miles south-east of 

 London, four miles from Orpington station on the 

 South-Eastern Railway. The country is among the 

 most beautiful agricultural suburbs of London, and 

 I shall never forget the impression of peaceful, quiet 

 seclusion experienced, as we drove from the station 



