156 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



Darwin in Westminster Abbey. Among the signa- 

 tures of members of Parliament, requesting Dean 

 Bradley's consent to Darwin's interment there, was 

 that of Mr. Richard B. Martin, partner in the well- 

 known bank of that name, trading under the sign of 

 the ' Grasshopper.' In his history of this old institu- 

 tion Mr. John B. Martin prints the following letter, 

 which was received on the 2 7th April 1882, the day 

 after Darwin's funeral : 



SIRS We have this day drawn a check for the 

 sum of 280, which closes our account with your 

 firm. Our reasons for thus closing an account 

 opened so very many years ago are of so exceptional 

 a kind that we are quite prepared to find that they 

 are deemed wholly inadequate to the result. . . . 

 They are entirely the presence of Mr. R. B. Martin 

 at Westminster Abbey, not merely as giving sanction 

 to the same as an individual, but appearing as one 

 of the deputation from a Society which has especially 

 become the endorser and sustainer of Mr. Darwin's 

 theories. & Co. 



The accordance of a resting-place to Darwin's 

 remains among England's illustrious dead in that 

 Valhalla, was an irenicon from Theology to one 

 whose theories, pushed to their logical issues, have 

 done more than any other to undermine the super- 

 natural assumptions on which it is built. Not that 

 Darwin was a man of aggressive type. If he speaks 

 on the high matters round which, like planet tethered 

 to sun, the spirit of man revolves by irresistible at- 

 traction, it is with hesitating voice and with no deep 

 emotion. A man of placid temper, in whom the 



