MODERN EVOLUTION. 



183 



couragements, and shattered health have not pre- 

 vented me from fulfilling the purpose of my life." 



These words recall a parallel invited by Gibbon's 

 record of his feelings on the completion of his im- 

 mortal work, when walking under the acacias of his 

 garden at Lausanne, he pondered on the " recovery 

 of his freedom, and perhaps the establishment of his 

 fame," but with a " sober melancholy " at the thought 

 that " he had taken an everlasting leave of an old 

 and agreeable companion." 



Herbert Spencer, spiritual descendant — longo 

 intervallo — of Heraclitus and Lucretius, was born at 

 Derby on the 27th of April, 1820. His father was a 

 schoolmaster; a man of scientific tastes, and, it is 

 interesting to note, secretary of the Derby Philo- 

 sophical Association founded by Erasmus Darwin. 

 In Mr. Spencer's book on Education there are hints 

 of his inheritance of the father's bent as an observer 

 and lover of Nature in the remark that, " whoever 

 has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows 

 not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge- 

 rows can assume.'' He was articled in his seven- 

 teenth year to a railway engineer, and followed that 

 profession until he was twenty-five. During this 

 period he wrote various papers for the Civil En- 

 gineers' and Architects' Journal, and, what is of 

 importance to note, a series of letters to the Non- 

 conformist in 1842 on The Proper Sphere of 

 Government (republished as a pamphlet in 1844), 

 in which " the only point of community with the 



