vi 



At the end of two years' residence in Edinburgh, it hardly needed 

 Dr. Darwin's sagacity to conclude that a young man, who found 

 nothing but dulness in professorial lucubrations, could not bring 

 himself to endure a dissecting room, fled from operations, and did 

 not need a profession as a means of livelihood, was hardly likely 

 to distinguish himself as a student of medicine. He therefore 

 made a new suggestion, proposing that his son should enter an 

 English University and qualify for the ministry of the Church. 

 Charles Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the less, probably, 

 that a good deal of natural history and a little shooting were by no 

 means held, at that time, to be incompatible with the conscientious 

 performance of the duties of a country clergyman. But it is char- 

 acteristic of the man, that he asked time for consideration, in order 

 that he might satisfy himself that he could sign the Thirty-nine 

 Articles with a clear conscience. However, the study of " Pearson on 

 the Creeds " and a few other books of divinity soon assured him 

 that his religious opinions left nothing to be desired on the score of 

 orthodoxy, and he acceded to his father's proposition. 



The English University selected was Cambridge ; but an unexpected 

 obstacle arose from the fact that, within the two years which had 

 elapsed since the young man who had enjoyed seven years of the 

 benefit of a strictly classical education had left school, he had forgotten 

 almost everything he had learned there, " even to some few of the Greek 

 letters." (I, p. 46.) Three months with a tutor, however, brought him 

 back to the point of translating Homer and the Greek Testament 

 " with moderate facility," and Charles Darwin commenced the third 

 educational experiment of which he was the subject, and was entered 

 on the books of Christ's College in October 1827. So far as the direct 

 results of the academic training thus received are concerned, the English 

 University was not more successful than the Scottish. " During the 

 three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as 

 the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh 

 and as at school." (I, p. 46.) And yet, as before, there is ample 

 evidence that this negative result cannot be put down to any native 

 defect on the part of the scholar. Idle and dull young men, or even 

 young men who being neither idle nor dull, are incapable of caring for 

 anything but some hobby, do not devote themselves to the thorough 

 study of Paley's ' Moral Philosophy,' and ' Evidences of Christianity ' ; 

 nor are their reminiscences of this particular portion of their studies 

 expressed in terms such as the following : " The logic of this book 

 [the 'Evidences '] and, as I may add, of his ' Natural Theology ' gave 

 me as much delight as did Euclid." (I,'p. 47.) 



The collector's instinct, strong in Darwin from his childhood, as is 

 usually the case in great naturalists, turned itself in the direction of 

 Insects during his residence at Cambridge. In childhood, it had been 



