ing our boat along. The exercise contin- | few moments later. Over in the direction ues for about ten minutes, when we are of Cronstadt the sky for the last two hours all startled by an exclamation from the skipper, in decidedly pure Anglo-Saxon. He has stepped into one of the holes, halfcovered with snow, made by the fishermen in order to set their traps for lamprey, and is wet through to the waist. After a hurried council of war we send him back to change, and lighting our pipes proceed to await his return with what patience we can muster. However, he is soon back, and, with more caution, we again set to our work as before, which happily grows every moment lighter as we get nearer to the gulf and out of the shelter of the island. Soon with a cheery Jump on!" from the skipper, we are off, and off in earnest, crashing and bumping over seams and fissures as we fly. On each tack as we get more and more into the open the speed increases until it seems almost impossible to breathe. Ice-boating certainly tries one's faith to the utmost, for we are now flying along at some thirty miles an hour, and straight in front of us about twenty yards ahead we see a big open space with floating blocks of ice. It appears impossible to put about before we are in it; but with a necessary caution to "hold tight," round we swing almost on the very brink, and are scudding away on the opposite tack again to repeat the same process a

has been getting blacker and blacker, and a dull wail in the freshening wind heralds the coming storm. There are now some half-dozen boats careering about in different directions, and we see some way ahead, and apparently well in the storm one that has lost her mast. So, taking in a couple of reefs to avoid a similar catastrophe, we start off to the rescue. However, with great ingenuity, they have rigged up a jury-mast and are off again before we can reach them. A myetel, or snow-storm, has now set in in earnest, and such a one as we never see in the temperate climate of England. The snow, in fine, dust-like particles, comes down so thick and fast that it is impossible to see a yard ahead, while the wind howls and shrieks as it tears along as if angry with us for disputing its sovereignty in this world of ice. We now decide to return, and back we start, " humming " along at a glorious pace. We are now running before the wind, and so what took us nearly three hours to accomplish in the outward spin we now do in some forty minutes. How our skipper managed in this impenetrable mist to find his way back and avoid broken ice is a mystery to me. However, back we got, ravenously hungry from the cold and hard work, and food and vodka are all the order of the day.

For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded

for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither

of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register

letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of

LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

From The Quarterly Review.

DARWIN'S LIFE AND LETTERS..

EXPECTATION of no common kind has for the past five years been aroused by the report, that a memoir was, naturally enough, being prepared of the great biolo

ter of which we shall leave our readers to judge by the tone of our remarks as we proceed. There is no wonder indeed that the expectation should have been high, when the circumstance is taken into consideration, that Mr. Darwin's biographer

gist whose mortal remains were laid in was announced to be that one of his ac

Westminster Abbey on the 26th of April, 1882. The expectation was by no means confined to the men of science who had been his colleagues or competitors, but was shared by thousands to whom the methods and the labors of naturalists are strange. The effect of that series of works which, beginning in 1859, had one after another, throughout a period of more than twenty years, appeared from the pen of the late Mr. Darwin, had been felt by almost all classes of educated men and

complished sons who, from his natural tastes and education, had been most associated with his father's labors, and whose name had publicly appeared as that of his father's assistant on the title-page of one of his father's works. Mr. Francis Darwin has already for some years been recognized as ah able expositor of the new school of botanical science, and the merit of his original investigations had obtained for him, in the year of his father's death, admission into the Royal Society. In his

women-not only in this country, but attempt to fulfil the pious task he had throughout the civilized world felt, it is undertaken, he has had the great advantrue, in very varying degrees, and exciting tage of an autobiographical sketch by the

very divergent opinions. To say that such an effect had never before been produced is to say little; for it is only in the present age that an author has had the possibility of addressing so vast a multitude of readers. But even the present age has not seen another author whose views have obtained a circulation, and at least partial acceptance, so wide; and this, notwithstanding that the views were repugnant to the sentiments of many, revolutionary in the sight of others, and presenting grave difficulties to those who regarded them most favorably. Into any controversy on those views it is not our intention here to enter. Controversy now were useless. Most thinking people have long since "taken sides," and it cannot be denied that, though some still hold out, as they have ever done, against " Darwinism" in all sincerity renouncing its doctrines - their number has for several years past proved but an insignificant proportion to that of their opponents, and is yet daily diminishing.

Whether we deem the expectation of which we have just spoken, to be justified or disappointed by the work whose title stands at the end of this article, is a mat

subject of his memoir, which forms the second chapter of the first volume. To this we shall presently return, since the personal recollections of almost any man, written by himself, possess an interest far greater than that with which the pen of the most expert biographer can invest the life of another.

That the author, or, as he modestly terms himself, the editor of these volumes, should be a "Darwinian," is but natural, and in that character, it is as natural that the doctrine of descent should have strong hold upon him. Hence no false pride can be attributed to him for devoting his first chapter to "The Darwin Family." The name variously spelt of old time - Derwent, Darwen, Darwynne, and so on - is obviously a "place-name," but still suggests no certain origin, for there is nothing to show whether its first bearer came from Cumberland, Derbyshire, or Yorkshire, in all of which counties it is still perpetuated by localities. The first known ancestor of the family, as discovered by that trustworthy and laborious genealogist, the late Colonel Chester, lived nearly four hundred years ago at Marton, in the north-western limits of Lincolnshire; and his successor in the fourth generation became also possessed of landed estates at Manton, in the same

printed anything. Both tastes, however, were far more strongly developed in his younger brother, the Erasmus Darwin whose fame, considerable as it was during his lifetime, had fallen into obscurity, or was only recollected by the admirable parodies of his sonorous versification by

people were reminded of its existence by the works of his grandson, whose "Life and Letters" we here notice.

county, situated in that curiously wild dis- | but on the latter he is not known to have trict which lies on the right bank of the Trent before it falls into the Humber, and even now preserves much more of its natural aspect than can be seen in most parts of England. This Darwin, William by name, left a son, another William, who served on the king's side in the Civil War, and was consequently impoverished, the authors of the "Antijacobin," until though he recovered his lands. Entering, however, at the bar, he ultimately became recorder of Lincoln, but, in the mean while, he married the daughter of a ser- Thus it will be seen that the ancestors jeant-at-law, Erasmus Earle, and so of the deceased naturalist had displayed brought into the family a Christian name no little intellectual power, but it remains that subsequently became celebrated. to speak of Robert Waring, the third son The son of the recorder, again called Wil- of this Erasmus.* He, too, took up medliam, married the heiress of Robert War-icine; and, marrying a daughter of Wedg ing, of Staffordshire; and she inherited from the family of Lassells, or Lascelles, an estate at Elston, near Newark, which has ever since remained the property of her descendants. From this union two sons were born. The line of the eldest, of whom nothing important is recorded, ended in daughters; but the second son, Robert, seems to have been no ordinary man, and was termed by the antiquary Stukeley, a person of curiosity phrase meaning in those days something very different from what it would now, though even in its modern sense it is justified by certain rhymes, of which he was the reputed author,* handed down in the family:

66

From a morning that doth shine,
From a boy that drinketh wine,
From a wife that talketh Latine,

Good Lord deliver me!

wood, of Etruria, carried on a prosperous practice as a physician in Shrewsbury, where, at a house called the Mount, two sons were born to him. The elder, another Erasmus, the friend of Carlyle, lived a bachelor in London, and died in 1881. The younger, the subject of this work, was Charles Robert,† who describes his father as being "the wisest man he had ever known," and entertained so great an affecation for him that anything he said was received with almost implicit faith. When, in after years, this son visited the old Shrewsbury abode, the tenant of which with mistaken kindness stayed with him all the while, he wrote: "If I could have been alone in that greenhouse for five minutes, I know I should have been able to see my father in his wheel-chair as vividly as if he had been before me." Some amusing traits of this gentleman, who, as his friends, are recorded, but here they is obvious, was most highly esteemed by need not be mentioned. We wish we

It is suspected that the third line in this "litany" was suggested by the fact of his having married a very learned lady, though her name is not given, and whether the conduct of any one of his four sons prompted the second line is not known. At any rate, the eldest died unmarried, at the respectable age of ninety-two, having cultivated a taste for botany and for poetry. On the former subject he published a work, which reached a third edition,

• The form in which they are given may be original, but the idea conveyed in them is undoubtedly borrowed, for it may be found in an old French proverb that has been often quoted.

His two other sons were evidently no common men. Charles, the eldest, having adopted the medical profession, was of extraordinary promise when he was cut off in his twenty-first year, by a wound received in dissecting, and Erasmus, the second, amused himself when a boy, by numbering the houses and the people of Lichfield, his result being found, when a real census was taken, to be nearly accurate. He was a man of varied tastes, and was not the less known for his intimacy with Boulton, the engineer, and with Day, the philosophical, if eccentric, author of "Sandford and

Merton."

↑ The second Christian name seems never to have been used by him upon whom it was bestowed, and he will doubtless go down to posterity as he was known to his contemporaries—plain Charles Darwin.