240 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. XVI] 



we had to take out letters of administration. Finding from 

 my brother's papers that he had obtained a small local business, 

 and that there was railway work in prospect, I determined to 

 take his place, and at once asked permission of Mr. Hill to be 

 allowed to leave at Easter. 



My year spent at Leicester had been in many ways useful 

 to me, and had also a determining influence on my whole 

 future life. It satisfied me that I had no vocation for teaching, 

 for though I performed my duties I believe quite to Mr. Hill's 

 satisfaction, I felt myself out of place, partly because I knew 

 no subject — with the one exception of surveying — sufficiently 

 well to be able to teach it properly, but mainly because a com- 

 pletely subordinate position was distasteful to me, although I 

 could not have had a more considerate employer than Mr. 

 Hill. The time and opportunity I had for reading was a 

 great advantage to me, and gave me an enduring love of good 

 literature. I also had the opportunity of hearing almost every 

 Sunday one of the most impressive and eloquent preachers 

 I have ever met with — Dr. John Brown, I think, was his name. 

 He was one of the few Church of England clergymen who 

 preached extempore, and he did it admirably so that it was a 

 continual pleasure to listen to him. But I was too firmly con- 

 vinced of the incredibility of large portions of the Bible, and of 

 the absence of sense or reason in many of the doctrines of 

 orthodox religion to be influenced by any such preaching, 

 however eloquent. My return to some form of religious 

 belief was to come much later, and from a quite different source. 



But, as already stated, the events which formed a turning- 

 point in my life were, first, my acquaintance with Bates, and 

 through him deriving a taste for the wonders of insect-life, 

 opening to me a new aspect of nature, and later on finding in 

 him a companion without whom I might never have ventured 

 on my journey to the Amazon. The other and equally im- 

 portant circumstance was my reading Malthus, without which 

 work I should probably not have hit upon the theory of natural 

 selection and obtained full credit for its independent discovery. 

 My year spent at Leicester must, therefore, be considered as 

 perhaps the most important in my early life. 



