108 CAMBRIDGE. [Ch. V. 



the Fitzwilliam Museum in looking over the prints in that 

 collection." 



My father's letters to Fox show how sorely oppressed he 

 felt by the reading for an examination. His despair over 

 mathematics must have been profound, when he expresses a 

 hope that Fox's silence is due to "your being ten fathoms 

 deep in the Mathematics ; and if you are, God help you, for so 

 am I, only with this difference, I stick fast in the mud at the 

 bottom, and there I shall remain." Mr. Herbert says : " He 

 had, I imagine, no natural turn for mathematics, and he gave 

 up his mathematical reading before he had mastered the first 

 part of algebra, having had a special quarrel with Surds and 

 the Binomial Theorem." 



We get some evidence from my father's letters to Fox of his 

 intention of going into the Church. " I am glad," he writes,* 

 " to hear that you are reading divinity. I should like to 

 know what books you are reading, and your opinions about 

 them ; you need not be afraid of preaching to me pre- 

 maturely." Mr. Herbert's sketch shows how doubts arose in 

 my father's mind as to the possibility of his taking Orders. 

 He writes, " We had an earnest conversation about going into 

 Holy Orders ; and I remember his asking me, with reference 

 to the question pu* by the Bishop in the Ordination Service, 

 * Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy 

 Spirit, &c.,' whether I could answer in the affirmative, and on 

 my saying I could not, he said, * Neither can I, and therefore 

 I cannot take orders.'" This conversation appears to have 

 taken place in 1829, and if so, the doubts here expressed must 

 have been quieted, for in May 1830, he speaks of having some 

 thoughts of reading divinity with Henslow. 



The greater number of his Cambridge letters are addressed 

 by my father to his cousin, William Darwin Fox. My father's 

 letters show clearly enough how genuine the friendship was. 

 In after years, distance, large families, and ill-health on both 

 sides, checked the intercourse ; but a warm feeling of friend- 

 ship remained. The correspondence was never quite dropped 

 and continued till Mr. Fox's death in 1880. Mr. Fox took 

 orders, and worked as a country clergyman until forced by 

 ill-health to leave his living in Delamere Forest. His love 

 of natural history was strong, and he became a skilled 

 fancier of many kinds of birds, &c. The index to Animals and 

 Plants, and my father's later correspondence, show how much 

 help he received from his old College friend. 



* March 18, 1829. 



