DARWIN AND DELUSION'. 15 



araiy by their ovv'n royal legs. George the Fourth , 

 who was my godfather, put me in tights when I 

 joined the Coldstream Guards, for he had very good 

 legs; and William the Fourth took me out of tights 

 and put me in loose trousers, because his legs were 

 not of so irresistiVjle a quality as hLs brothers. 



The following anecdote may not be unamusing 

 to my readers, and it is strictly relevant to the 

 subject on which I am writing; for though the 

 circumstance occmTcd at a time antecedent to 

 Darwin, the heroine of my story had evidently 

 a notion tliat man and woman, perhaps Adam 

 and Eve, were descended from pre-Adamite frogs ; 

 at all events, slie thought the human race were, in 

 some of their exercises and habits, similar to frogs. 



The lady to whom I allude was a strong- 

 minded woman, not handsome nor young ; the 

 absence of personal charms had, perhaps, tended 

 to strengthen her savage and unyielding virtue : 

 I say unyielding, but I know not if the fortress 

 was ever besieged. In some things she resembled 

 the young lady — I suppose her young — wlio so 

 wittily advocated ''woman suffrage'' at a recent 

 public meeting, quoting the clever speech of one 

 of George Eliot's best*drawn characters^ to tlie 



