CHAPTER III. 



EARLY DAYS. 



As the Chester express steams out of Shrewsbury- 

 station, you see on your left, overhanging the steep bank 

 of Severn, a large, square, substantial-looking house, 

 known as the Mount, the birthplace of the author of 

 the ' Origin of Species.' There, in the comfortable 

 home he had built for himself, Dr. Robert Darwin, the 

 father, lived and worked for fifty years of unobtrusive 

 usefulness. He had studied medicine at Edinburgh and 

 Ley den, and had even travelled a little in Germany, 

 before he settled down in the quiet old Salopian town, 

 where for half a century his portly figure and yellow 

 chaise were familiar objects of the country-side for 

 miles around. Among a literary society which included 

 Coleridge's friends, the Tayleurs, and where Hazlitt 

 listened with delight to the great poet's ' music of the 

 spheres,' in High Street Unitarian Chapel, the Mount 

 kept up with becoming dignity the family traditions of 

 the Darwins and the Wedgwoods as a local centre of 

 sweetness and light. 



On February the 12th, 1809, Chai'les Darwin first 

 saw the light of day in this his father's house at Shrews- 

 bury. Time and place were both propitious. Born in 



