MR. HERBERT'S RECOLLECTIONS. j^ 



To realise the strength of the feeling that led to this re- 

 solve, we must remember how passionate was his love of sport. 

 We must recall the boy shooting his first snipe,* and trembling 

 with excitement so that he could hardly reload his gun. Or 

 think of such a sentence as, " Upon my soul, it is only about 

 a fortnight to the ' First,' then if there is a bliss on earth that 

 is it."f 



Another anecdote told by Mr. Herbert illustrates again 

 his tenderness of heart: 



u When at Barmouth he and I went to an exhibition of 

 ' learned dogs.' In the middle of the entertainment one of 

 the dogs failed in performing the trick his master told him to 

 do. On the man reproving him, the dog put on a most 

 piteous expression, as if in fear of the whip. Darwin seeing 

 it, asked me to leaVe with him, saying, ' Come along, I can't 

 stand this any longer ; how those poor dogs must have been 

 licked.' " 



It is curious that the same feeling recurred to my father 

 more than fifty years afterwards, on seeing some performing 

 dogs at the Westminster Aquarium ; on this occasion he was 

 reassured by the manager telling him that the dogs were 

 taught more by reward than by punishment. Mr. Herbert 

 goes on : " It stirred one's inmost depth of feeling to hear 

 him descant upon, and groan over, the horrors of the slave- 

 trade, or the cruelties to which the suffering Poles were sub- 

 jected to at Warsaw. . . . These, and other like proofs have 

 left on my mind the conviction that a more humane or tender- 

 hearted man never lived." 



His old college friends agree in speaking with affectionate 

 warmth of his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. From 

 what they have been able to tell me, I gain the impression of 

 a young man overflowing with animal spirits leading a varied 

 healthy life not over-industrious in the set studies of the 

 place, but full of other pursuits, which were followed with a 



* ' Recollections,' p. 34. 



f Letter from C. Darwin to W. D. Fox. 



