8 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES i870- 



obtained a Second Class. In the Tripos of 1870, in 

 the same Hst among the First-Class men, Mr. Francis 

 Darwin's name appears. 



Mr. Eomanes had gone but a little distance along 

 the road on which he was destined to travel very far. 

 He had up to this time read none of Mr. Darwin's 

 books, and to a question on Natural Selection which 

 occurred in the Tripos papers he could give no answer. 



By this time he had abandoned the idea of Holy 

 Orders, perhaps on account of the opposition at 

 home, perhaps because of the first beginnings of the 

 intellectual struggles of doubt and of bewilderment. 

 He began to study medicine, and made a lifelong 

 friendship with Dr. Latham, the well-known Cam- 

 bridge physician, of whose kindness Mr. Eomanes 

 often spoke, and to whom he dedicated his first book, 

 which was the Burney Prize for 1873. But he also 

 began to study physiology under the direction of Dr. 

 Michael Foster, the present Professor of Physiology at 

 Cambridge, to whom she owes her famous medical 

 school, at that time in its very early beginnings. 



Science entirely fascinated him ; his first plunge 

 into real scientific work opened to him a new life, gave 

 him the first sense of power and of capacity. Now he 

 read Mr. Darwin's books, and it is impossible to over- 

 rate the extraordinary effect they had on the young 

 man's mind. Something of the feeling which Keats 

 describes in the sonnet ' On Looking into Chapman's 

 Homer ' seems to have been his : 



' Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 

 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 



Or like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, 

 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 



Looked at each other with a wild surmise 

 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.' 



About the spring of 1872 Mr. Eomanes began to 

 show signs of ill-health. He was harassed by faint- 



