Author signature.
Horace Greeley.
Horace Greeley was one of the few persons whose manhood fulfilled the precocious promise of his youth. He could read before he could speak plainly, and at the age of six he had declared that his purpose in life was to be a printer. At eleven he tried to be apprenticed at the village printing-office and was unsuccessful; at the age of fourteen he was taken on as an apprentice in the office of theNorthern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vt.
His family were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had lived in the northern part of New Hampshire for several generations. Horace was born in Amherst, N. H., February 3, 1811. So quick of apprehension was he, and so active was his intellect, that the commonest of common-school education was for him sufficient. His schooling was only that which he could obtain during three or four months in winter; for at other seasons of the year he labored in the field with his father and brothers; and when he went to be an apprentice for five years in the printing-office, he was paid a very slender pittance, the greater part of which he gave to his father, whose income was probably next to nothing.
In June, 1830, the newspaper office in which young Greeley was learning his trade became insolvent, and Greeley, then in his twentieth year, was released from his indentures. He tramped from office to office as a journeyman printer, and his father having removed to the then "new country of western Pennsylvania," the youngster, with ten dollars in his pocket, walking part way and part way earning his passage on a tug-boat, entered the city of New York, August 18, 1831. For days he sought in vain for employment among the printing-offices of the metropolis. He was gawky, poorly clad, and doubtless presented a very grotesque appearance to the cityfied people to whom he vainly applied for employment. Finally he effected an entrance into one of the printing-offices of the city, and, much to the surprise of those who sneered at his ungainly and unpromising figure, he straightway proved himself to be a competent, careful, and skilful printer. For fourteen months or more, he picked up odd jobs in the offices ofthe newspapers, always making friends and always managing to save a little money.
Finally, at the beginning of 1833, in partnership with Francis V. Story, a printer, he established a penny paper calledThe Morning Post. This venture failed, but Greeley and Story saved from the wreck two-thirds of their capital, which was $150, all told, and still had on hand their type and materials. They now became master job-printers and made small contracts with persons who had newspaper printing to give out. In his New England boyhood Greeley had occasionally contributed to the columns of the newspapers on which he worked, and now he resumed that employment. He wrote for several of the feeble newspapers of the time, and on the death of his partner, Francis Story, he associated himself with Jonas Winchester. The firm prospered, and in 1834 was strong enough to establish a weekly literary newspaper calledThe New Yorker. The first number of this paper appeared on March 22, 1834, and it sold one hundred copies; for the three months next succeeding this was the average of its weekly circulation. The paper gradually increased in popularity, and the name of its Editor-in-Chief, Horace Greeley, was now known and respected. He furnished editorials also to theDaily Whigand to other journals, and was selected by William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed for the editorship of a campaign paper calledThe Jeffersonian, published in Albany. This was a Whig newspaper printed weekly, and the audacity, aggressiveness, and ability with which it was edited commanded the respect of its readers.The Jeffersonianwas finally suspended in the spring of 1839, and during the presidential canvass of the following year, Greeley, foreseeing the activity of the campaign, seized upon the opportunity to establish a new campaign paper calledThe Log Cabin. This journal at once achieved the extraordinary circulation of twenty thousand copies for its first edition. It succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of its founders, H. Greeley & Company, and in a few weeks the circulation ran up to sixty thousand, eighty thousand, and even ninety thousand copies, a newspaper circulation in those days absolutely unprecedented.The Log Cabinwas characterized by the homely wit, the unsparing logic, and the terseness and vigor of expression which were always Horace Greeley's most marked traits as a journalist.
After the campaign of 1840The Log Cabinbecame a family political paper, and on April 10, 1841, its name was supplanted by that ofThe New York Tribune. Its home was at 30 Ann Street, and Horace Greeley, its editor, promised that it should be "worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant to family firesides."
As an editor Mr. Greeley was eccentric, and his marked personal traits were perceptible in his management of his newspaper. He was severely temperate, although opposed to prohibition as impracticable; he was in favor of a high protective tariff, opposed to slavery, predisposed to vegetarian diet, and at times manifested a proclivity to the doctrines of Fourier and Prudhomme.
In his management ofThe TribuneMr. Greeley made a wide acquaintance with the newspaper men, politicians, and the statesmen of the time. Among thoseassociated with him in the management of his paper was Henry J. Raymond, who afterward became the founder ofThe New York Times. Those who rendered service toThe Tribunewere George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Bayard Taylor, and others who subsequently achieved renown. Mr. Greeley himself has said that of his first issue of five thousand copies of the paper, nearly all "were with difficulty given away."The Tribunewas first sold at one cent a copy; in a month's time it reached a circulation of three thousand, and a month later it had reached the extraordinary circulation of eleven and twelve thousand.The New YorkerandThe Log Cabinhad all along been managed as weekly issues from the same office; but in September of the first year of the establishment ofThe Tribunethese were merged in what was nowThe New York Weekly Tribune, which at once leaped to a large circulation and became a great force throughout the country, especially in the rural districts.
In 1842 Mr. Greeley began to print in his paper one column daily of matter on Fourierite topics, written by Albert Brisbane, and occasionally these theories were defended in his editorial columns, and he thereby gained a certain amount of obloquy from which he did not readily recover. The paper had the reputation of being not only extremely radical in its political views, but also committed to many of the "isms" of the times. It paid much attention to the spirit-rappings of the Fox sisters, of Rochester, and investigated the curious phenomena with fearless open-mindedness.The Tribuneprospered, though not greatly, and it was evident that Mr. Greeley's business management was never very successful; and it may be said that his greatest success as the editor of a prosperous and profitable newspaper was always achieved by the co-operation of wiser managers than himself. His personal appearance was peculiar, and he very soon became a well-known figure in the public life of New York. He usually wore a broad-brimmed, soft white hat and a light-colored overcoat, and his appearance, although always spotlessly neat, was characterized by a certain disorderliness which instantly attracted attention. He had a shrill, high-keyed voice; he was irascible in temper, and was never the "philosopher" which those who least knew him credited him with being. In an angry letter published in his own newspaper he referred to the editor ofThe Daily Timesas "that little villain, Raymond;" and replying to an offensive charge against him byThe Evening Post, he began with, "You lie, villain, wilfully, wickedly, basely lie." Other passages at arms like these occasionally enlivened, if they did not disfigure, the editorial columns ofThe Tribune, over which Greeley exercised a personal censorship which, in later years, he found it necessary to relax. He was sincerely and ardently devoted to the cause of Protection, to the interests of the farmer and the laboring man, to sound money, and to all the ennobling and refining activities of social life. In spite of a careless personal manner, and a voice not at all agreeable to the ear, he became a popular and greatly sought public speaker. As a lecturer in the lyceums of towns and villages, then greatly in vogue, he was always an acceptable and greatly admired figure.
In 1848 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives to filla vacancy for three months. With great vigor he charged upon several of the most prominent abuses of the time, and selecting the practice of paying mileage to Congressmen, he assaulted that with a vehemence which ultimately destroyed it. As a member of Congress he also introduced the first bill to give free homesteads to actual settlers on the public lands. He was a candidate in 1861 for United States Senator, but was defeated by Ira Harris, of Albany. In 1864 he was one of the Republican Presidential Electors, and in 1870 was nominated for Congress in a hopelessly Democratic district, and was defeated. He had always been an intense opponent of human slavery, and in 1848 his hostility to the war with Mexico was doubtless inspired by his dread of the extension of the slave system. He was an enthusiastic supporter of John C. Fremont, who was nominated for President by the Republicans in 1856; and he made his newspaper so dreaded and feared by the opposition that he was indicted in Virginia for circulating incendiary documents through its columns. During these years he was an incessant and untiring worker, and produced for the columns of his own and other newspapers a prodigious amount of matter. He had heretofore labored in politics in conjunction with William H. Seward, Governor, and afterward United States Senator. In 1854 the separation between Greeley, Seward, and Thurlow Weed became established, and Mr. Seward's friends prevented the election of Mr. Greeley as a delegate to the Republican Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Greeley, however, obtained a seat as delegate in the Convention as a representative from the State of Oregon, and in that capacity he, more than any other man, doubtless turned the tide against Mr. Seward and in favor of Abraham Lincoln, who was nominated by the Convention.
At the breaking out of the Civil War Mr. Greeley manifested great trepidation and reluctance to face the issue. He even advised inThe Tribunethat the "Erring Sisters" be allowed to depart in peace; but later he rallied manfully to the cause of the defence of the Union, and his newspaper rang with impassioned appeals for the freedom of the slaves held in bondage in the South. He incessantly urged a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and called upon President Lincoln to take every possible measure for the emancipation of the Southern bondmen.
In 1864, being convinced that the cause of the rebellion was gradually weakening, he urged upon the President the policy of negotiating with the leaders of the Confederate government for a surrender of their warlike policy, on conditions to be arrived at by commissioners from both sides. This proposition excited much indignation throughout the country, and when, in answer to repeated demands from Mr. Greeley, President Lincoln authorized him to undertake such a conference at Niagara Falls, the people generally applauded the wisdom of the President, as well as the disappointment of Mr. Greeley, when the conference came to naught.
After the final surrender at Appomattox and the capture of the Confederate President, Mr. Greeley visited Richmond and signed the bail bond of Jefferson Davis. This action raised a storm of public censure, and he was for a time overwhelmedby the wrath and indignation of those who had been formerly associated with him in political affairs. He defended himself with great vigor, and fearlessly assailed those who stigmatized him as a sympathizer with the fallen rebel chieftain. He was not friendly to the nomination of General Grant in 1868, and disapproved of many of the schemes that marked his administration. Returning from a visit through the Southern States in the early years of President Grant's term, he brought to his newspaper some vigorous and outspoken denunciations of the "carpet-bag" governments of the formerly rebel States, and denunciations of the "scalawags" who, he said, "were the pests of the reconstructed States of the South." These and similar outgivings attracted the attention of a large element of the Republican party, and he was nominated for the Presidency, against General Grant, in 1872. Mr. Greeley's canvass was one of great picturesqueness and industry. He made a series of speeches extending over a tour from New England to the West, and returning to New York, which were marked by a most wonderful originality, freshness, and brilliance; but nothing could avail to stem the tide of prejudice which rose against him and in favor of General Grant. He had been nominated by the so-called Liberal Republicans and by the Democrats, but he failed to carry any one of the Northern States, and of the other States he carried only Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. He was assailed during this canvass in the bitterest terms by those who regarded him as a turncoat and a traitor, and undoubtedly the vituperation and abuse showered upon him had the effect of disheartening him and destroying the zest with which he had theretofore undertaken the multifarious duties of life. He returned to New York from an exhausting campaign, depressed in spirit and weary in body and in mind. The death of his devoted wife added to his sorrows, and on November 29, 1872, only a few weeks after the Presidential election, he died at Pleasantville, N. Y., of mental and nervous prostration. His body lay in state in the City Hall, and his funeral was attended by the notables of the land—President Grant, who had just been re-elected by the people, being numbered among those who mourned at his bier.
In addition to his editorial labors Mr. Greeley was the author of a number of works, among which were "Hints toward Reforms," "Glances at Europe," "History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension," "Overland Journey to San Francisco," "The American Conflict," and "Recollections of a Busy Life." He was also the founder of "The Whig Almanac," a manual of politics, which in later years became known as "The Tribune Almanac," and survived his demise.[Back to Contents]
Author signature.
Louis Agassiz.
There is no need to give an abstract of the contents of these fascinating volumes, for everybody is reading them. Most are probably wishing for more personal details, especially of the American life; but the editorial work is so deftly and delicately done, and "the story of an intellectual life marked by rare coherence and unity" is so well arranged to tell itself and make its impression, that we may thankfully accept what has been given us, though the desired "fulness of personal narrative" be wanting.
Twelve years have passed since Agassiz was taken from us. Yet to some of us it seems not very long ago that the already celebrated Swiss naturalist came over, in the bloom of his manly beauty, to charm us with his winning ways, and inspire us with his overflowing enthusiasm, as he entered upon the American half of that career which has been so beneficial to the interests of natural science. There are not many left of those who attended those first Lowell Lectures in the autumn of 1846—perhaps all the more taking for the broken English in which they were delivered—and who shared in the delight with which, in a supplementary lecture, he more fluently addressed his audience in his mother-tongue.
In these earliest lectures he sounded the note of which his last public utterance was the dying cadence. For, as this biography rightly intimates, his scientific life was singularly entire and homogeneous—if not uninfluenced, yet quite unchanged, by the transitions which have marked the period. In a small circle of naturalists, almost the first that was assembled to greet him on his coming to this country, and of which the writer is the sole survivor, when Agassiz was inquired of as to his conception of "species," he sententiously replied: "A species is a thought of the Creator." To this thoroughly theistic conception he joined the scientific deduction which he had already been led to draw, that the animal species of each geological age, or even stratum, were different from those preceding and following, and also unconnected by natural derivation. And his very last published works reiterated his steadfast conviction that "there is no evidenceof a direct descent of later from earlier species in the geological succession of animals." Indeed, so far as we know, he would not even admit that such "thoughts of the Creator" as these might have been actualized in the natural course of events. If he had accepted such a view, and if he had himself apprehended and developed in his own way the now well-nigh assured significance of some of his early and pregnant generalizations, the history of the doctrine of development would have been different from what it is, a different spirit and another name would have been prominent in it, and Agassiz would not have passed away while fighting what he felt to be—at least for the present—a losing battle. It is possible that the "whirligig of time" may still "bring in his revenges," but not very probable.
Much to his credit, it may be said that a good share of Agassiz's invincible aversion to evolution may be traced to the spirit in which it was taken up by his early associate, Vogt, and, indeed, by most of the German school then and since, which justly offended both his scientific and his religious sense. Agassiz always "thought nobly of the soul," and could in no way approve either materialistic or agnostic opinions. The idealistic turn of his mind was doubtless confirmed in his student days at Munich, whither he and his friend Braun resorted after one session at Heidelberg, and where both devotedly attended the lectures of Schelling—then in his later glory—and of Oken, whose "Natur-Philosophie" was then in the ascendant. Although fascinated and inspired by Oken'sà prioribiology(built upon morphological ideas which had not yet been established, but had, in part, been rightly divined) the two young naturalists were not carried away by it, probably because they were such keen and conscientious observers, and were kept in close communion with work-a-day nature. As Agassiz intimates, they had to resist "the temptation to impose one's own ideas upon nature, to explain her mysteries by brilliant theories rather than by patient study of the facts as we find them," and that "overbearing confidence in the abstract conceptions of the human mind as applied to the study of nature; although, indeed," he adds, "the young naturalist of that day who did not share in some degree the intellectual stimulus given to scientific pursuits by physio-philosophy would have missed a part of his training." That training was not lost upon Agassiz. Although the adage in his last published article, "A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle," was well lived up to, yet ideal prepossessions often had much to do with his marshalling of the facts.
Another professor at Munich, from whom Agassiz learned much, and had nothing to unlearn, was the anatomist and physiologist Döllinger. He published little, but he seems to have been the founder of modern embryological investigation, and to have initiated his two famous pupils, first Von Baer, and then Agassiz, into at least the rudiments of the doctrine of the correspondence between the stages of the development of the individual animal with that of its rank in the scale of being, and the succession in geological time of the forms and types to which the species belongs: a principle very fertile for scientific zoölogy in the hands of both these naturalists, and one of the foundations of that theory of evolutionwhich the former, we believe, partially accepted, and the other wholly rejected.
The botanical professor, the genial Von Martius, should also be mentioned here. He found Agassiz a student, barely of age; he directly made him an author, and an authority, in the subject of his predilection. Dr. Spix, the zoölogical companion of Martius in Brazilian exploration, died in 1826; the fishes of the collection were left untouched. Martius recognized the genius of Agassiz, and offered him, and indeed pressed him, to undertake their elaboration. Agassiz brought out the first part of the quarto volume on the "Fishes of the Brazilian Expedition of Spix and Martius" before he took his degree of doctor of philosophy, and completed it before he proceeded to that of doctor in medicine, in 1830. The work opened his way to fame, but brought no money. Still, as Martius defrayed all the expenses, the net result compared quite favorably with that of later publications. Moreover, out of it possibly issued his own voyage to Brazil in later years, under auspices such as his early patron never dreamed of.
This early work also made him known to Cuvier; so that, when he went to Paris, a year afterward, to continue his medical and scientific studies—the one, as he deemed, from necessity, the other from choice—he was received as a fellow-savant; yet at first with a certain reserve, probably no more than was natural in view of the relative age and position of the two men; but Agassiz, writing to his sister, says: "This extreme but formal politeness chills you instead of putting you at your ease; it lacks cordiality, and, to tell the truth, I would gladly go away if I were not held fast by the wealth of material of which I can avail myself." But only a month later he writes—this time to his uncle—that, while he was anxious lest he "might not be allowed to examine, and still less to describe, the fossil fishes and their skeletons in the Museum, ... knowing that Cuvier intended to write a work on this subject," and might naturally wish to reserve the materials for his own use; and when the young naturalist, as he showed his own sketches and notes to the veteran, was faintly venturing to hope that, on seeing his work so far advanced, he might perhaps be invited to share in a joint publication, Cuvier relieved his anxiety and more than fulfilled his half-formed desires.
"He desired his secretary to bring him a certain portfolio of drawings. He showed me the contents: they were drawings of fossil fishes, and notes which he had taken in the British Museum and elsewhere. After looking it through with me, he said he had seen with satisfaction the manner in which I had treated this subject; that I had, indeed, anticipated him, since he had intended at some future time to do the same thing; but that as I had given it so much attention, and had done my work so well, he had decided to renounce his project, and to place at my disposition all the materials he had collected and all the preliminary notes he had taken."
Within three months Cuvier fell under a stroke of paralysis, and shortly died. The day before the attack he had said to Agassiz, "Be careful, and remember that work kills." We doubt if it often kills naturalists, unless when, like Cuvier, they also become statesmen.
But to live and work, the naturalist must be fed. It was a perplexing problem how possibly to remain a while longer in Paris, which was essential to the carrying on of his work, and to find the means of supplying his very simple wants. And here the most charming letters in these volumes are, first, the one from his mother, full of tender thoughtfulness, and making the first suggestion about Neuchâtel and its museum, as a place where the aspiring naturalist might secure something more substantial than "brilliant hopes" to live upon; next, that from Agassiz to his father, who begs to be told as much as he can be supposed to understand of the nature of this work upon fossil fishes, which called for so much time, labor, and expense; and, almost immediately, Agassiz's letter to his parents, telling them that Humboldt had, quite spontaneously and unexpectedly, relieved his present anxieties by a credit of a thousand francs, to be increased, if necessary. Humboldt had shown a friendly interest in him from the first, and had undertaken to negotiate with Cotta, the publisher, in his behalf; but, becoming uneasy by the delay, and feeling that "a man so laborious, so gifted, and so deserving of affection ... should not be left in a position where lack of serenity disturbs his power of work," he delicately pressed the acceptance of this aid as a confidential transaction between two friends of unequal age.
Indeed, the relations between the "two friends," one at that time sixty-three, and the other twenty-five, were very beautiful, and so continued, as the correspondence shows. Humboldt's letters (we wish there were more of them) are particularly delightful, are full of wit and wisdom, of almost paternal solicitude, and of excellent counsel. He enjoins upon Agassiz to finish what he has in hand before taking up new tasks (this is in 1837), not to spread his intellect over too many subjects at once, nor to go on enlarging the works he had undertaken; he predicts the pecuniary difficulties in which expansion would be sure to land him, bewails the glacier investigations, and closes with "a touch of fun, in order that my letter may seem a little less like preaching. A thousand affectionate remembrances. No more ice, not much of echinoderms, plenty of fish, recall of ambassadorsin partibus, and great severity toward booksellers, an infernal race, two or three of which have been killed under me."
The ambassadorsin partibuswere the artists Agassiz employed and sent to England or elsewhere to draw fossil fishes for him in various museums, at a cost which Humboldt knew would be embarrassing. The ice, which he would have no more of, refers to the glacier researches upon which Agassiz was entering with ardor, laying one of the solid foundations of his fame. Curiously enough, both Humboldt and Von Buch, with all their interest in Agassiz, were quite unable to comprehend the importance of an inquiry which was directly in their line, and, indeed, they scorned it; while the young naturalist, without training in physics or geology, but with the insight of genius, at once developed the whole idea of the glacial period, with its wonderful consequences, upon his first inspection of the phenomena shown him by Charpentier in the valley of the Rhône.
It is well that Humboldt's advice was not heeded in this regard. Nevertheless he was a wise counsellor. He saw the danger into which his young friend'senthusiasm and boundless appetite for work was likely to lead him. For Agassiz it might be said, with a variation of the well-known adage, that there was nothing he touched that he did not aggrandize. Everything he laid hold of grew larger under his hand—grew into a mountain threatening to overwhelm him, and would have overwhelmed anyone whose powers were not proportionate to his aspirations. Established at Neuchâtel, and giving himself with ardor to the duties of his professorship, it was surely enough if he could do the author's share in the production of his great works on the fossil and the fresh-water fishes, without assuming the responsibilities and cares of publication as well, and even of a lithographic establishment which he set up mainly for his own use. But he carriedpari passu, or nearly so, his work on fossil mollusca—a quarto volume with nearly a hundred plates—his monographs of echinoderms, living and fossil, his investigations of the embryological development of fishes, and that laborious work, the "Nomenclator Zoologicus," with the "Bibliographia," later published in England by the Ray Society. Moreover, of scattered papers, those of the Royal Society's Catalogue, which antedate his arrival in this country, are more than threescore and ten. He had help, indeed; but the more he had, the more he enlarged and diversified his tasks; Humboldt's sound advice about his zoölogical undertakings being no more heeded than his fulminations against the glacial theory.
In the midst of all this, Agassiz turned his glance upon the glaciers, and the "local phenomenon" became at once a cosmic one. So far a happy divination; but he seems to have believed quite to the last that, not only the temperate zones, but whole intertropical continents—at least the American—had been sheeted with ice. The narrative in the first volume will give the general reader a vivid but insufficient conception of the stupendous work upon which he so brilliantly labored for nearly a decade of years.
Cœlum, non animum, mutantwho come with such a spirit to a wider and, scientifically, less developed continent. First as visitor, soon as denizen, and at length as citizen of the American republic, Agassiz rose with every occasion to larger and more various activities. What with the Lowell Institute, the college in Charleston, S. C., and Cornell University, in addition to Harvard, he may be said to have held three or four professorships at once, none of them sinecures. He had not been two months in the country before a staff of assistants was gathered around him, and a marine zoölogical laboratory was in operation. The rude shed on the shore, and the small wooden building at Cambridge, developed under his hand into the Museum of Zoölogy—if not as we see it now, yet into one of the foremost collections. Who can say what it would have been if his plans and ideas had obtained full recognition, and "expenditure" had seemed to the trustees, as it seemed to him, "the best investment;" or if efficient filial aid, not then to be dreamed of, had not given solid realization to the high paternal aspirations? In like manner grew large under his hand the Brazilian exploration, so generously provided for by a Boston citizen and fostered by an enlightened emperor; and on a similar scale was planned, and partly carried out, the "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," as the imperial quartowork was modestly entitled, which was to be published "at the rate of one volume a year, each volume to contain about three hundred pages and twenty plates," with simple reliance upon a popular subscription; and so, indeed, of everything which this large-minded man undertook.
While Agassiz thus was a magnanimous man, in the literal as well as the accepted meaning of the word, he was also, as we have seen, a truly fortunate one. Honorable assistance came to him at critical moments, such as the delicate gift from Humboldt at Paris, which perhaps saved him to science; such as the Wollaston prize from the Geological Society in 1834, when he was struggling for the means of carrying on the "Fossil Fishes." The remainder of the deficit of this undertaking he was able to make up from his earliest earnings in America. For the rest, we all know how almost everything he desired—and he wanted nothing except for science—was cheerfully supplied to his hand by admiring givers. Those who knew the man during the twenty-seven years of his American life, can quite understand the contagious enthusiasm and confidence which he evoked. The impression will in some degree be transmitted by these pleasant and timely volumes, which should make the leading lines of the life of Agassiz clear to the newer generation, and deepen them in the memory of an older one.[Back to Contents]
Charles Darwin.
By the universal consent of mankind, the name of Charles Darwin was, even during his lifetime, among those of the few great leaders who stand forth for all time as the creative spirits who have founded and legislated for the realm of science. It is too soon to estimate with precision the full value and effect of his work. The din of controversy that rose around him has hardly yet died down, and the influence of the doctrines he propounded is extending into so many remote departments of human inquiry, that a generation or two may require to pass away before his true place in the history of thought can be definitely fixed. But the judgment of his contemporaries as to his proud pre-eminence is not likely ever to be called in question. He is enrolled among Dii majorum gentium, and there he will remainto the end of the ages. When he was laid beside the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey, there arose far and wide a lamentation as of personal bereavement. Thousands of mourners who had never seen him, who knew only his writings, and judged of the gentleness and courtesy of his nature from these, and from such hearsay reports as passed outward from the privacy of his country home, grieved as for the loss of a friend. It is remarkable that probably no scientific man of his day was personally less familiar to the mass of his fellow-countrymen. He seemed to shun all the usual modes of contact with them. His weak health, domestic habits, and absorbing work kept him in the seclusion of his own quiet home. His face was seldom to be seen at the meetings of scientific societies, or at those gatherings where the discoveries of science are expounded to more popular audiences. He shrank from public controversy, although no man was ever more vigorously attacked and more completely misrepresented. Nevertheless, when he died the affectionate regret that followed him to the grave, came not alone from his own personal friends, but from thousands of sympathetic mourners in all parts of the world, who had never seen or known him. Men had ample material for judging of his work, and in the end had given judgment with general acclaim. Of the man himself, however, they could know but little, yet enough of his character shone forth in his work to indicate its tenderness and goodness. Men instinctively felt him to be in every way one of the great ones of the earth, whose removal from the living world leaves mankind poorer in moral worth as well as in intellect.
Charles Darwin came of a family which from the beginning of the sixteenth century had been settled on the northern borders of Lincolnshire. Several of his ancestors had been men of literary taste and scientific culture, the most noted of them being his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, the poet and philosopher. His father was a medical man in large practice at Shrewsbury, and his mother a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, of Etruria. Some interesting reminiscences are given of the father, who must have been a man of uncommon strength of character. He left a large fortune, and thus provided for the career his son was destined to fulfil. Of his own early life and later years, Darwin has left a slight but most interesting sketch in an autobiographical fragment, written late in life for his children, and without any idea of its ever being published. Shortly before his mother's death, in 1817, he was sent, when eight years old, to a day-school in his native town. But even in the period of childhood he had chosen the favorite occupation of his life: "My taste for natural history," he says, "and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things—shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters and brothers ever had this taste."
Some of the incidents of his Cambridge life which he records are full of interest in their bearing on his future career. Foremost among them stands thefriendship which he formed with Professor Henslow, whose lectures on botany he attended. He joined in the class excursions and found them delightful. But still more profitable to him were the long and almost daily walks which he enjoyed with his teacher, during the latter half of his time at Cambridge. Henslow's wide range of acquirement, modesty, unselfishness, courtesy, gentleness, and piety, fascinated him and exerted on him an influence which, more than anything else, tended to shape his whole future life. The love of travel which had been kindled by his boyish reading, now took a deeper hold of him as he read Humboldt's "Personal Narrative" and Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy." He determined to visit Teneriffe, and even went so far as to inquire about ships. But his desire was soon to be gratified in a far other and more comprehensive voyage. At the close of his college life he was fortunate enough, through Henslow's good offices, to accompany Sedgwick in a geological excursion in North Wales. There can be little doubt that this short trip sufficed to efface the dislike of geology which he had conceived at Edinburgh, and to show him how much it was in his own power to increase the sum of geological knowledge. To use his own phrase, he began to "work like a tiger" at geology.
But he now had reached the main turning-point of his career. On returning home from his ramble with Sedgwick he found a letter from Henslow, telling him that Captain Fitz-Roy, who was about to start on the memorable voyage of the Beagle, was willing to give up part of his own cabin to any competent young man who would volunteer to go with him, without pay, as a naturalist. The post was offered to Darwin and, after some natural objections on the part of his father, accepted.
The Beagle weighed anchor from Plymouth on December 27, 1831, and returned on October 2, 1836.
On his return to England, Darwin at once took his place among the acknowledged men of science of his country. For a time his health continued to be such as to allow him to get through a large amount of work. The next two years, which in his own opinion were the most active of his life, were spent, partly at Cambridge, and partly in London, in the preparation of his "Journal of Researches," of the zoölogical and geological results of the voyage, and of various papers for the Geological and Zoölogical Societies. So keen was his geological zeal that, almost against his better judgment, he was prevailed upon to undertake the duties of honorary secretary of the Geological Society, an office which he continued to hold for three years. And at each period of enforced holiday, for his health had already begun to give way, he occupied himself with geological work in the field. In the Midlands he watched the operations of earthworms, and began those inquiries which formed the subject of his last research, and of the volume on "Vegetable Mould" which he published not long before his death. In the Highlands he studied the famous Parallel Roads of Glen Roy; and his work there, though in after-years he acknowledged it to be "a great failure," he felt at the time to have been "one of the most difficult and instructive tasks" he had ever undertaken.
In the beginning of 1839 Darwin married his cousin, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, and grand-daughter of the founder of the Etruria Works, and took a house in London. But the entries of ill-health in his diary grow more frequent. For a time he and his wife went into society, and took their share of the scientific life and work of the metropolis. But he was compelled gradually to withdraw from this kind of existence, which suited neither of them, and eventually they determined to live in the country. Accordingly, he purchased a house and grounds at Down, in a sequestered part of Kent, some twenty miles from London, and moved thither in the autumn of 1842. In that quiet home he passed the remaining forty years of his life. It was there that his children were born and grew up around him; that he carried on the researches and worked out the generalizations that have changed the whole realm of science; that he received his friends and the strangers who came from every country to see him; and it was there that, after a long and laborious life, full of ardor and work to the last, he died, at the age of seventy-three, on April 19, 1882.
The story of his life at Down is almost wholly coincident with the history of the development of his views on evolution, and the growth and appearance of the successive volumes which he gave to the world. For the first four years his geological tastes continued in the ascendant. During that interval there appeared three remarkable works, his volume on "Coral Islands," that on "Volcanic Islands," and his "Geological Observations on South America."
After working up the geological results of the long voyage in the Beagle, he set himself with great determination to more purely geological details. While on the coast of Chili he had found a curious new cirripede, to understand the structure of which he had to examine and dissect many of the common forms. The memoir, which was originally designed to describe only his new type, gradually expanded into an elaborate monograph on the Cirripedes (barnacles) as a whole group. For eight years he continued this self-imposed task, getting at last so weary of it as to feel at times as if the labor had been in some sense wasted which he had spent over it; and this suspicion seems to have remained with him in maturer years. But when at last the two bulky volumes, of more than one thousand pages of text, with forty detailed plates, made their appearance, they were hailed as an admirable contribution to the knowledge of a comparatively little known department of the animal kingdom. In the interests of science, perhaps, their chief value is to be recognized, not so much in their own high merit, as in the practical training which their preparation gave the author in anatomical detail and classification. He spoke of it himself afterward as a valuable discipline, and Professor Huxley truly affirms that the influence of this discipline was visible in everything which he afterward wrote.
It was after Darwin had got rid of his herculean labors over the "Cirripede" book, that he began to settle down seriously to the great work of his life—the investigation of the origin of the species, of plants and animals. Briefly, it may be stated here that he seems to have been first led to ponder over the question of the transmutation of species, by facts that had come under his notice during theSouth American part of the voyage in the Beagle—such as the discovery of the fossil remains of huge animals akin to, but yet very distinct from, the living armadillos of the same regions; the manner in which closely allied animals were found to replace one another, as he followed them over the continent; and the remarkable character of the flora and fauna of the Galapagos Archipelago. "It was evident," he says, "that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me." His first note-book for the accumulation of facts bearing on the question was opened in July, 1837, and from that date he continued to gather them "on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading."
He now set to work upon that epitome of his observations and deductions which appeared in November, 1859, as the immortal "Origin of Species."
Those who are old enough to remember the publication of this work, cannot but marvel at the change, which, since that day, not yet thirty years ago, has come alike upon the non-scientific and the scientific part of the community in their estimation of it. Professor Huxley has furnished to the biography a graphic chapter on the reception of the book, and in his vigorous and witty style recalls the furious and fatuous objections that were urged against it. A much longer chapter will be required to describe the change which the advent of the "Origin of Species" has wrought in every department of science, and not of science only, but of philosophy. The principle of evolution, so early broached and so long discredited, has now at last been proclaimed and accepted as the guiding idea in the investigation of nature.
One of the most marvellous aspects of Darwin's work was the way in which he seemed always to throw a new light upon every department of inquiry into which the course of his researches led him to look. The specialists who, in their own narrow domains, had been toiling for years, patiently gathering facts and timidly drawing inferences from them, were astonished to find that one who, in their eyes, was a kind of outsider, could point out to them the plain meaning of things which, though entirely familiar to them, they had never adequately understood. The central idea of the "Origin of Species" is an example of this in the biological sciences. The chapter on the imperfection of the geological record is another.
After the publication of the "Origin" Darwin gave to the world, during a succession of years, a series of volumes in which some of his observations and conclusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books on the fertilization of orchids, on the movements and habits of climbing plants, on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, on the effects of cross-and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, on the different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, were mainly based on his own quiet work in the greenhouse and garden at Down. His volumes on the descent of man and on the expression ofthe emotions in man and animals, completed his contributions to the biological argument. His last volume, published the year before his death, treated of the formation of vegetable mould and the habits of earthworms, and the preparation of it enabled him to revive some of the geological enthusiasm which so marked the earlier years of his life.
Such, in briefest outline, was the work accomplished by Charles Darwin. The admirable biography prepared by his son enables us to follow its progress from the beginning to its close. But higher even than the intellect which achieved the work, was the moral character which shone through it all.[Back to Contents]