64 1860-1865 : PEESONAL 



useful. I sigh when I think how poor my reprinted Memoirs 

 would appear beside them, if any injudicious post-mortem 

 friend were to issue them. There is something grand in 

 the blunt force of Falconer's writings, and when he mounts 

 the Pegasus of Theory, he reminds me of the picture of 

 Sintram (ask Henrietta) with him the very thought of a 

 Speculation is sin, and a very serious thing it is the original 

 sin, besetting sin, of the scientific man but when he specu- 

 lated himself, as on the perfection of the post-Tertiary record, 

 how lame and impotent he was. He sinned and suffered 

 in short. 



Of the contrast between the death of the old and of the 

 young he writes to Charles Darwin, September 26, 1865. 



How strange is the difference between the loss of an aged 

 parent and child : my father has been my companion as well 

 as parent for 25 years, our intimacy has never been broken^ 

 our aims have been one as much as those of father and son 

 ever could by possibility be ; but I have to reflect on his loss 

 before I realise it and swell with grief. How different in 

 my child's case ! I cannot see that it is altogether natural; 

 though it is so in the main. Is my grief for him more selfish 

 than that for my child ? I cannot feel it to be so. I do sup- 

 pose we have a pure nature, independent of conditions (and 

 of Darwinism applied !), but what it is we can only hope to 

 know if we realize a future state. 



I am gratified by your expressions about my father ; 

 he was one of the most truly liberal and modest men I ever 

 knew ; he had not an atom of self in him, always thought 

 nothing of himself, and never took any self-seeking steps 

 to raise himself in the estimation of the Government or 

 of scientific men. With one-tenth of the exertion that 

 Murchison displayed, he would have had honors and titles 

 showered on him, and I hate the Eoyal Soc. for never recog- 

 nizing the obligations science is under to him. He never 

 received any honor, distinction or reward from the Crown 

 or Government for all his public services, because he never 

 would put himself into the way of them. I thought the boast 

 of the E.S. was that they sought out such as had similar 

 claims upon science. I know I am not agreed with, but I 

 will not give in. 



