I865-] DR. WELLS— CANON FARRAR. 225 



Lubbock about Parliament. . . . Did you see a sneer some 

 time ago in the Times about how incomparably more interest- 

 ing politics were compared with science even to scientific 

 men ? Remember what Trollope says, in ' Can you Forgive 

 her,' about getting into Parliament, as the highest earthly 

 ambition. Jeffrey, in one of his letters, I remember, says 

 that making an effective speech in Parliament is a far grander 

 thing than writing the grandest history. All this seems to 

 me a poor short-sighted view. I cannot tell you how it has 

 rejoiced me once again seeing your handwriting — my best of 

 old friends. 



Yours affectionately, 



Ch. Darwin. 



[In October he wrote Sir J. D. Hooker : — 

 " Talking of the ' Origin,' a Yankee has called my atten- 

 tion to a paper attached to Dr. Wells's famous ' Essay on 

 Dew,' which was read in 1813 to the Royal Soc, but not 

 [then] printed, in which he applies most distinctly the prin- 

 ciple of Natural Selection to the Races of Man. So poor old 

 Patrick Matthew is not the first, and he cannot, or ought not, 

 any longer to put on his title-pages, ' Discoverer of the prin- 

 ciple of Natural Selection ' ! "] 



C. Darwin to F. IV. Farrar* 



Down, Nov. 2 [1865 ?]. 



Dear Sir, — As I have never studied the science of lan- 

 guage, it may perhaps seem presumptuous, but I cannot re- 

 sist the pleasure of telling you what interest and pleasure I 

 have derived from hearing read aloud your volume.f 



I formerly read Max Miiller, and thought his theory (if it 

 deserves to be called so) both obscure and weak ; and now, 



the ' Anthropological Review ' (May, 1864), and speaks of the author's 

 "characteristic unselfishness" in ascribing the theory of Natural Selection 

 " unreservedly to Mr. Darwin." 



* Canon of Westminster. 



f ' Chapters on Language,' 1865. 



