The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



9 St. Mark's Crescent, Regent's Park. October 2, 1865. 



Dear Darwin, — I was just leaving town for a few days 

 when I received your letter, or should have replied at once. 



The Reader has no doubt changed hands, and I am in- 

 clined to think for the better. It is purchased, I believe, by 

 a gentleman who is a Fellow of the Anthropological Society, 

 but I see no signs of its being made a special organ of that 

 Society. The Editor (and, I believe, proprietor) is a Mr. 

 Bendyshe, the most talented man in the Society, and, judg- 

 ing from his speaking, which I have often heard, I should 

 say the articles on ^' Simeon and Simony," '^ Metropolitan 

 Sewage," and '* France and Mexico," are his, and these 

 are in my opinion superior to anything that has been in the 

 Reader for a long time; they have the point and brilliancy 

 which are wanted to make leading articles readable and 

 popular. The articles on MilFs Political Economy and on 

 Mazzini are also first-rate. He has introduced also the 

 plan of having two, and now three, important articles in 

 each number — one political or social, one literary, and one 

 scientific. Under the old regime they never had an editor 

 above mediocrity, except Masson (? Musson) ; there was a 

 want of unity among the proprietors as to the aims and 

 objects of the journal ; and there was a want of capital to 

 secure the services of good writers. This seems to me to 

 be now all changed for the better, and I only hope the 

 rumour of that hete noire y the Anthropological Society, 

 having anything to do with it may not cause our best men 

 of science to withdraw their support and contributions. 



I have read Tylor, and am reading Lecky. I found the 

 former somewhat disconnected and unsatisfactory from the 

 absence of any definite result or any decided opinion on 

 most of the matters treated of. 



Lecky I like much, though he is rather tedious and 



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