PER CONTRA. 291 



'believe in evolution, the answer to the end of time 

 must be that it was Mr, Darwin. And yet the more 

 his work is looked at, the more marvellous does its 

 success become. It seems as if some organisms can do 

 anything with anything. Beethoven picked his teeth 

 with the snuffers, and seems to have picked them 

 sufficiently to his satisfaction. Sd Mr. Darwin with 

 one of the worst styles imaginable did all that the 

 clearest, tersest writer could have done. Strange, that 

 such a master of cunning (in the sense of my title) 

 should have been the apostle of luck, and one so 

 terribly unlucky as Lamarck, of cunning, but such 

 is the irony of nature. Bufibn planted, Erasmus 

 Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it was Mr. Darwin 

 who said, "That fruit is ripe," and shook it into 

 his lap. 



With this Mr. Darwin's best friends ought to be 

 content ; his admirers are not well , advised in repre- 

 senting him as endowed with all sorts of qualities 

 which he was very far from possessing. Thus it is 

 pretended that he was one of those men who were 

 ever on the watch for new ideas, ever ready to give a 

 helping hand to those who were trying to advance our 

 knowledge, ever willing to own to a mistake and give 

 up even his most cherished ideas if truth required 

 them at his hands. No conception can be more 

 wantonly inexact. I grant that if a writer was suffi- 

 ciently at once inconipetent and obsequious Mr. Darwin 

 was " ever ready," &c. So the Emperors of Austria wash 

 a few poor people's feet on some one of the festivals of 

 the Church, but it would not be safe to generalise from 



