XXIX] LITERARY WORK, ETC., 1871-1886 103 



among whom was J. Russell Lowell, as the representative 

 of American science and literature. Among the many- 

 obituary notices of Darwin, that by Huxley (in NatiLvey of 

 April 27) is one of the shortest, most discriminating, and 

 most beautiful. It is published also in the second volume of 

 his Collected Essays." For those who have not read this 

 true and charming estimate of his friend, I may quote one 

 passage : *^ One could not converse with Darwin without 

 being reminded of Socrates. There was the same desire to 

 find some one wiser than himself; the same belief in the 

 sovereignty of reason ; the same ready humour ; the same 

 sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of men. But 

 instead of turning away from the problems of nature as wholly 

 insoluble, our modern philosopher devoted his whole life to 

 attacking them in the spirit of Heraclitus and Democritus, 

 with results which are as the substance of which their specu- 

 lations were anticipatory shadows." 



In the year 1881 I removed to Godalming, where I had 

 built a small cottage near the water-tower and at about the 

 same level as the Charterhouse School. We had been partly 

 induced to come here to be near my very old friend Mr. 

 Charles Hayward, whom I had first known during my 

 residence at Neath about forty years before. He was living 

 with his nephew, the late C. F. Hayward, a well-known archi- 

 tect, whose children were about the same age as my own. 

 We found here some very pleasant friends among the masters 

 at Charterhouse School, as well as among residents who had 

 come to the place for its general educational advantages or 

 for the charm of its rural scenery. We had here about half 

 an acre of ground with oak trees and hazel bushes (from 

 which I named our place " Nutwood Cottage "), and during 

 the eight years we lived there I thoroughly enjoyed making 

 a new garden, in which, and a small greenhouse, I cultivated 

 at one time or another more than a thousand species of 

 plants. The soil was a deep bed of the Lower Greensand 

 formation, with a thin surface layer of leaf-mould, and it was 

 very favourable to many kinds of bulbous plants as well as 



