78 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



" But I verily believe that come what will, the part which 

 England may play in the battle is a grand and a noble one. 

 She may prove to the world that, for one people, at any rate, 

 despotism and demagogy are not the necessary alternatives of 

 government; that freedom and order are not incompatible ; 

 that reverence is the handmaid of knowledge ; that free dis- 

 cussion is the life of truth, and of true unity in a nation. 



" Will England play this part ? That depends upon how 

 you, the public, deal with science. Cherish her, venerate 

 her, follow her methods faithfully and implicitly in their ap- 

 plication to all branches of human thought, and the future of 

 this people will be greater than the past. 



Listen to those who would silence and crush her, and I 

 fear our children will see the glory of England vanishing like 

 Arthur in the mist ; they will cry too late the woful cry of 

 Guinever: — 



' It was my duty to have loved the highest ; 

 It surely was my profit had I known ; 

 It would have been my pleasure had I seen.' "] 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down [February 15th, i860]. 



... I am perfectly convinced (having read this morning) 



that the review in the ' Annals ' * is by Wollaston ; no one 



else in the world would have used so many parentheses. I 



have written to him, and told him that the " pestilent " fellow 



* Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist, third series, vol. 5, p. 132. My father 

 has obviously taken the expression " pestilent " from the following passage 

 (p. 138) : " But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who has such 

 tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous performances 

 are ascribed ? What are her image and attributes, when dragged from her 

 wordy lurking-place ? Is she aught but a pestilent abstraction, like dust 

 cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an Intelligent First Cause of 

 all ? " The reviewer pays a tribute to my father's candour, " so manly 

 and outspoken as almost to ' cover a multitude of sins.' " The parentheses 

 (to which allusion is made above) are so frequent as to give a characteristic 

 appearance to Mr. Wollaston's pages. 



