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Charles Darwin : 
[April, 
well known that Erasmus Darwin died in 1802, at Litch- 
field. There is, as a correspondent tells us, no tittle of 
evidence that the two ever came within a hundred miles of 
each other ; and there is further no shadow of likelihood 
that, had they met, the old physician would have expounded 
his theological views to a peasant child under seven years 
of age, or that the latter, had he done so, would have at- 
tended to or understood the ledture. If Carlyle cannot claim 
a personal knowledge of the elder Darwin, but judged merely 
from common report or from published documents, his state- 
ment is, as we shall see, not “ thoroughly reliable,” or, in 
English, trustworthy. It is, however, conjectured by some 
that the charges brought against the Darwins may be traced 
to an apocryphal or pseudo-Carlylean letter which appeared 
in a Scottish provincial journal, and which seems to have 
been widely reproduced as if genuine. Be this as it may, 
Mr. Henry G. Atkinson has shown culpable levity and in- 
discretion in adopting and repeating such assertions without 
due inquiry into their evidences. Had he examined the 
works of Erasmus Darwin he would have discovered — e.g., 
in the “ Phytologia,” written only three years before the 
author’s death — ample disproof of the charge of Atheism. 
This book bears as a motto on its title-page the following 
line from the “ Ordo Naturae ” of Linne : — “ Suadent hcec 
Creatoris leges a simplicibus ad composita .” On reading through 
the work Mr. Atkinson would have found not merely a total 
absence of any denial of the existence of God, either explicit 
or by inuendo, but he could scarcely have overlooked such 
passages as the following : — “ Great God of Justice ! grant 
that it [sugar] may soon be cultivated only by the hands of 
freedom, and may thence give happiness to the labourer as 
well as to the merchant and the consumer ” (p. 77). Or — 
“ Surely this must be called a wise provision of the Author 
of Nature, as by these means innumerable animals enjoy 
life and pleasure without producing pain to others. There 
is another source of nutriment provided for young animals 
which still further evinces the benevolence of the Author of 
Nature, and that is the milk furnished by the mother to her 
offspring : by this beautiful contrivance the mother acquires 
pleasure in parting with a nutritious fluid, and the offspring 
in receiving it ” (p. 82). Or the following : — “Thirdly, there 
should be no burial-places in churches or in churchyards, 
where the monuments of departed sinners should shoulder 
God’s altar, pollute His holy places with dead men’s bones, 
and produce by putrid exhalations contagious diseases among 
those who frequent His worship” (p.242). Or, lastly: — 
