Jaxiary 



1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



65 



Carpenter wins the silver medal for his ten photographs 

 from fossils (SI), and Mr. S. F. Clarke a bronze medal for 

 his twenty-two wonderful micro-photographs (72). In 

 Class XIII., for photographs taken on the company's dry- 

 plates, Mr. Carpenter again wins a silver medal for (20) 

 eight beautiful views, and Miss E. G. Stone a bronze medal 

 for Frame 71, which contains five pictures, of which the 

 best are " The Sunflower " — a beautiful little girl holding 

 the flower in question — and '• Sisters" ; another bronze 

 medal was won by Mr. A. J. Baines. The gold medal in 

 Class XIY., for large direct photographs, was won by Mr. 

 J. T. Hop wood for Frame 5G, which contains six pictures, 

 of whicli the most noticeable is '• Jack," a pretty boy in 

 sailor's dress dancing a hornpipe ; while Mr. William 

 Adcock carries ofi'the silver medal for ^5-1) " A Labourer's 

 Luxury," a good rugged face with a pipe in its mouth. The 

 two bronze medals in this class were awarded respectively 

 to Messrs. H. Mansfield and J. E. Dumont. Mr. Dumont's 

 (10) "His Own Barber" being exceedingly clever and 

 amusing. The silver medal given by the Amateur Photo- 

 graplier for artistic treatment of difficult subjects is awarded 

 to Mr. G. Davison, for " A Breezy Day in Spring " (78), 

 and the bronze medal to INIiss Miles for her studies of horses 

 (80). 



A pleasant hour or two can be spent in inspecting this 

 exhibition, which will remain open until further notice, and 

 which can be viewed gratis on presentation of a visiting 

 card. Such a visit will give a very adequate notion of 

 recent advances in photography, and is likely to encourage 

 the visitor who is not already a photographer to endeavour 

 speedil}' to acquire this charming and useful art. 



DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS. 

 I. 



HESE long-expected volumes justify the 

 eagerness with which they havu been 

 awaited. In these daj-s, when biographical 

 liody-snatchers pounce on their victims 

 l)efore, as the phrase goes, the grave is cold 

 over them, Mr. Francis Darwin reproves 

 our haste and justifies his delay in allowing 

 more than five years to pass before issuing 

 this work, while he shows himself of like spirit with his 

 illustrious lather, the note of whose life is that he possessed 

 his soul in patience. The book is executed with consummate 

 .skill and reverent care. The biogr.apher is in no wise 

 obtrusive; he comes between reader and subject only to 

 supply the needed links to connect the letters which com- 

 pri.se four-fifths of the work, adding a sketch of his father's 

 everyday life and methods of working, not gratifying over- 

 much the idle curiosity which hungers for gossip about the 

 private life of celebrities, but just putting us on easy terms 

 with Darwin, so that we feel we know what manner of man 

 he was, and find every favourable impression given us by 

 his books and his relations with his contemporaries con- 

 firmed. Looming larger than he himself dreamed among 

 the makers of epochs, he did not strive nor cry, but kept 

 himself from the clamour of tongues in the quiet sanctuary 

 of home, partly because he preferred the seclusion, but also 

 because the nature of his work demanded it, and chiefly 

 because of the wretched health which, especially after his 

 voyage, prostrated him for weeks together, and even under 

 the best conditions permitted him to work but three hours a 

 day. For these reasons only a fovoured few were received 

 into the family circle at Down, and the society even of these 

 was rarely sought " because of the excitement, violent 

 shivering, and vomiting thus brought on." 



We quote from the chapter in the first volume, to which 

 readers will turn with most interest, as containing the 

 modest and candid autobiography which, without any 

 thought that it would ever be published, Darwin wrote for 

 his children when in his sixty-seventh year, '• as if" he .says 

 at the outset, " I were a dead man in another world looking 

 back at my own life." Next in interest to this is a charac- 

 teristic paper by that "defender of the faith," Profe.ssor 

 Huxley, who narrates, for the advantage of a generation 

 which has grown up since the battle raged, the stoiy of the 

 reception of the " Origin of Species." Upon the preparation 

 of this and Darwin's succeeding books the letters throw 

 abundant light, and for this purpose Mr. Francis Darwin 

 has wisely arranged them according to their several sub- 

 jects. By far the larger number are addressed to Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, whose fortunate prescience has preserved them from 

 the commencement ; and next in importance are those 

 addressed to the late Sir Charles Lyell and to Professor 

 Huxley. Both in the nature of its contents and in the 

 simple, lovable, truth-seeking character which it exhibits, 

 as of one to whom affection was dearer than fame, a more 

 delightful and abidingly valuable collection has never been 

 made p^iblic. 



Darwin came of a long line of Lincolnshire yeomen, 

 whose forbears spelt the name variously, as Darwen, 

 Derwent, Darwynne, perhaps deriving it from rivers of 

 kindred name. His father was a kindly, prosi)erous 

 Shrewsbury doctor, son of Erasmus Darwin, also a doctor, 

 and the celebrated author of " Zoonomia," the " Botanic 

 Garden," and other florid and fantastic productions, in 

 which, however, an accurate .scientific presentment of certain 

 facts of development is embodied. Beyond i-eminding our 

 readers that his famous grandson was born at Shrewsbury 

 in February 1809, educated at the Grammar School there, 

 then at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities ; occupied 

 as volunteer naturalist on board the Fnagle from December 

 1831 till October 1836; that he published the "Origin of 

 Species" in 1859, and was laid to rest in April 1882 near 

 the grave of Newton in our beautiful Abbey of Westminster, 

 we shall skip further oft-told detail, and, for the benefit of 

 tho.se to whom these portly volumes, the price of which is 

 six-and-thirty shillings, may not be within reach, deal with 

 some of the fresh matter which they contain," and the 

 authority for which is mainly vouched for in Darwin's own 

 words. 



As with not a few other men of light and leading, neither 

 school nor university did much for him, nor did his boyhood 

 give indication of future greatness. In his answers to the 

 series of questions addressed to various scientific men in 

 1873 by his cousin, Fi'ancis Galton, he says : " I consider 

 that all I have learnt of any value has been self-taught," 

 and he adds that his education fostered no methods of 

 observation or reasoning. Of the Shrewsbury Grammar 

 School, where, after the death of his mother in his ninth 

 year, he was placed as a boarder till he was sixteen years 

 old, he tells us "nothing could have been worse for the 

 development of my mind ; " all that he was taught were the 

 classics, and a little ancient geography and historj' — no 

 mathematics, and no modern languages. And this is the 

 abortion which still does duty for "education " in five-sixths 

 of the schools of England, where the mechanical curriculum 

 has no relation to the duties of after life. Happily for 

 Darwin, he had inherited a taste for natural history and 

 for collecting, his spoils including not only shells and plants, 

 but also coins and seals. When the fact that he helped 

 his brother in chemical experiments became known to 

 Dr. Butler, that desiccated pedagogue publicly rebuked 

 him "' for wasting time on such useless subjects." His father, 

 angry at finding that he was doing no good at school, 



