X OBITUARY 259 



ticular aptitude for grammatical exercises ; appeared 

 to the " strictly classical" pedagogue to be no mind 

 at all. As a matter of fact, Darwin's school 

 education left him ignorant of almost all the 

 things which it would have been well for him to 

 know, and untrained in all the things it would 

 have been useful for him to be able to do, in 

 after life. Drawing, practice in English compo- 

 sition, and instruction in the elements of the 

 physical sciences, would not only have been infi- 

 nitely valuable to him in reference to his future 

 career, but would have furnished the discipline 

 suited to his faculties, whatever that career might 

 be. And a knowledge of French and German, 

 especially the latter, would have removed from his 

 path obstacles which he never fully overcame. 



Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual 

 side, it is not surprising that Charles Darwin's 

 energies were directed towards athletic amuse- 

 ments and sport, to such an extent, that even his 

 kind and sagacious father could be exasperated 

 into telling him that " he cared for nothing but 

 shooting, dogs, and rat -catching." (I. p. 32.) It 

 would be unfair to expect even the wisest of fathers 

 to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat- 

 catching, as training in the ways of quick observa- 

 tion and in physical endurance, would prove more 

 valuable than the construing and verse-making to 

 his son, whose attempt, at a later period of his life, 

 to persuade himself '' that shooting was almost an 



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