LITERARY WORK IN DEVONSHIRE. 279 



readers. Philip Gosse was charged with supposing that God 

 had formed these objects on purpose to deceive — in order, 

 in fact, to set a trap for naughty geologists. The reply 

 was obvious, and had occurred to him already. " Were the 

 concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to 

 deceive ? " he had asked. " Were the growth-lines of a 

 created shell intended to deceive ? Was the navel of the 

 created man intended to deceive him into the persuasion 

 that he had had a parent ? " The book, nevertheless, in 

 spite of the beauty and ingenuity of its literary illustration, 

 was received with scorn by the world of science and 

 with neglect by the general public. The moment was a 

 transitional one ; the world had just been led captive by 

 that picturesque piece of amateur evolutionism, The 

 Vestiges of Creation. It was whispered here and there that 

 something stronger and more convincing was on the road. 

 Hooker was murmuring in the ear of Lyell that Darwin 

 was in possession of some " ugly facts." The human mind 

 was preparing for a great crisis of emancipation, of relief 

 from a fettering order of ideas no longer tenable or endur- 

 able, and no one was concerned to give even fair play to a 

 piece of reasoning, such as Omphalos, whose whole purpose 

 was to bind again those very cords out of which the world 

 was painfully struggling. The reception of Omphalos, 

 especially by the orthodox party, was an extreme disap- 

 pointment to my father. So certain had he been that the 

 whole camp of faith would rally around him, and that all 

 Christians would accept his solution of the problem with 

 rapture, that he had ordered the printing of an immense 

 edition, the greater part of which was left upon his hands. 



It may be interesting to print here the candid and 

 characteristic letter which he received on this occasion 

 from Charles Kingsley : — 



