22 



The Natur-Alist. 



connection with the so-called great causes or " isms " of that long 

 stretch of time." The same friend adds : — " This recluseness, while 

 no doubt partly forced upon him by the exacting nature of the 

 investigations he has been constantly carrying on, has been also due 

 to some extent to a bodily infirmity under which he has laboured 

 during the greater part of his literary career." 



But, however Darwin may have been absorbed in his speculations, 

 he was not left in undisturbed quietude. It could not be. He had 

 to pay at least part of the price of greatness. If he would write and 

 publish books which stirred the mind and heart of men in all parts of 

 the world as with the sound of a trumpet, it was in the nature of 

 things, and inevitable, that at least an echo should come back upon 

 him. To say nothing of private praise from friends in all parts of 

 the world, and, not least, from the United States, in 1853 the Royal 

 Society awarded him their Royal medal, and in 1864 the Copley medal. 

 In 1859 the Geological Society awarded him the Wollaston medal, 

 while foreign Governments and societies have at various times 

 acknowledged his distinguished services in various departments of 

 scientific research and knowledge. In the November of 1877 the 

 University of Cambridge rather tardily conferred on him the 

 honorary degree of LL.D. At the dinner given at Cambridge the 

 same evening in honour of the event. Professor Huxley, who replied 

 for Darwin (now Dr. Darwin), referred, in pleasant badinage, to the 

 University as reserving its highest]honour until all other distinctions 

 had been heaped upon Mr. Darwin, " that its own chaplet might 

 crown the whole, and not be covered up." On the same occasion 

 Professor Huxley spoke of Darwin as the foremost amongst men of 

 science, with one exception, since the days of Aristotle. In the 

 course of the same year Darwin received what must have been to him 

 a more flattering compliment. On his sixty- ninth birthday he was 

 presented with an album — a magnificent folio — bound in velvet and 

 silver, containing the photographs of 154 men of science in Germany. 

 These included many of the best known and most highly honoured 

 names in Europe. He also received on the same occasion, from 

 Holland, an album with the photographs of 217 distinguished pro- , 

 fessors and men of science in that country. In returning thanks for 

 these unique marks of appreciation, Darwin wrote : — " I suppose 

 every worker at science occasionally feels depressed, and doubts 

 whether what he has published has been worth the labour which it 

 has cost him ; but for the remaining years of my life, whenever I 

 want cheering, I will look at the portraits of my distinguished 



