They idled, fiddled, danced, gabbled, gadded and gossiped. The "School for Scandal" was written on the spot, with models drawn from life. It wasn't a play—it was a cross-section of Bath Society.

Bath was a clearing-house for the wit, learning and folly of all England—the combined Hot Springs, Coney Island, Saratoga and Old Point Comfort of the Kingdom. The most costly church of its size in America is at Saint Augustine, Florida. The repentant ones patronize it in Lent; the rest of the year it is closed.

At Bath there was the Octagon Chapel, which had the best pipe-organ in England. Herschel played the organ: where he learned how nobody seemed to know—he himself did not know. But playing musical instruments is a little like learning a new language.

A man who speaks three languages can take a day off and learn a fourth almost any time. Somebody has said that there is really only one language, and most of us have only a dialect. Acquire three languages and you perceive that there is a universal basis upon which the various tongues are built.

Herschel could play the hautboy, the violin and the harpsichord. The organ came easy. When he played the organ in the Chapel at Bath, fair ladies forgot the Pump-Room, and the gallants followed them—naturally. Herschel became the rage. He was a handsome fellow, with a pride so supreme that it completed the circle, and people called it humility. He talked but little, and made himself scarce—a point every genius should ponder well.

The disarming of the populace—confiscating canes, umbrellas and parasols—before allowing people to enter an art-gallery is necessary; although it is a peculiar comment on humanity to think people have a tendency to smite, punch, prod and poke beautiful things. The same propensity manifests itself in wishing to fumble a genius. Get your coarse hands on Richard Mansfield if you can! Corral Maude Adams—hardly. To do big things, to create, breaks down tissue awfully, and to mix it with society and still do big things for society is impossible.

At Bath, Herschel was never seen in the Pump-Room, nor on the North Parade. People who saw him paid for the privilege. "In England about this time look out for a shower of genius," the almanackers might have said.

To Bath came two Irishmen, Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Burke rented rooms of Doctor Nugent, and married the doctor's daughter, and never regretted it. Sheridan also married a Bath girl, but added the right touch of romance by keeping the matter secret, with the intent that if either party wished to back out of the agreement it would be allowed. This was quite Irish-like, since according to English Law a marriage is a marriage until Limbus congeals and is used for a skating-rink.

With the true spirit of chivalry, Sheridan left the questions of publicity or secrecy to his wife: she could have her freedom if she wished. He was a fledgling barrister, with his future in front of him, the child of "strolling players"; she, the beautiful Miss Linlay, was a singer of note. Her father was the leader of the Bath Orchestra, and had a School of Oratory where young people agitated the atmosphere in orotund and tremolo and made the ether vibrate in glee. Doctor Linlay's daughter was his finest pupil, and with her were elucidated all his theories concerning the Sixteen Perspective Laws of Art. She also proved a few points in stirpiculture. She was a most beautiful girl of seventeen when Richard Brinsley Sheridan led her to the altar, or I should say to a Dissenting Pastor's back door by night. She could sing, recite, act, and impersonate in pantomime and Greek gown, the passions of Fear, Hate, Supplication, Horror, Revenge, Jealousy, Rage and Faith.

Romney moved down to Bath just so as to have Miss Linlay and Lady Hamilton for models. He posed Miss Linlay as the Madonna, Beulah, Rena, Ruth, Miriam and Cecilia; and Lady Hamilton for Susannah at the Bath, Alicia and Andromache, and also had her illustrate the Virtues, Graces, Fates and Passions.

When the beautiful Miss Linlay, the pride and pet of Bath, got ready to announce her marriage, she did it by simply changing the inscription beneath a Romney portrait that hung in the anteroom of the artist's studio, marking out the words "Miss Linlay," and writing over it, "Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan."

The Bath porchers who looked after other people's business, having none of their own, burbled and chortled like siphons of soda, and the marvel to all was that such a brilliant girl should thus throw herself away on a sprig of the law. "He acts, too, I believe," said Goldsmith to Doctor Johnson.

And Doctor Johnson said, "Sir, he does nothing else," thus anticipating James McNeil Whistler by more than a hundred years.

But alas for the luckless Linlay, the Delsarte of his day, poor man! he used words not to be found in Johnson's Dictionary, and outdid Cassius in the quarrel-scene to the Brutus of Richard Brinsley.

But very soon things settled down—they always do when mixed with time—and all were happy, or reasonably so, forever after.

Herschel resigned from Brabandt's Orchestra and remained in Bath. He taught music, played the organ, became first violinist for Professor Linlay and later led the orchestra when Linlay was on the road starring the one-night stands and his beautiful daughter.

Things seemed to prosper with the kindly and talented German. He was reserved, intellectual, and was respected by the best. He was making money—not as London brokers might count money, but prosperous for a mere music-teacher.

And so there came a day when he bought out the school of Professor Linlay, and became proprietor and leader of the famous Bath Orchestra.

But the talented Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was sorely missed—a woman soloist of worth was needed.

Herschel thought and pondered. He tried candidates from London and a few from Paris. Some had voices, but no intellect. A very few had intellect, but were without voice. Some thought they had a voice when what they had was a disease. Other voices he tried and found guilty.

Those who had voice and spirit had tempers like a tornado.

Herschel decided to educate a soloist and assistant. To marry a woman for the sake of educating her was risky business—he knew of men who had tried it—for men have tried it since the time of the Cavemen.

A bright thought came to him! He would go back to Deutschland and get one of his sisters, and bring her over to England to help him do his work—just the very thing!

* * * * *

It was a most fortunate stroke for Herschel when he went back home to get one of his sisters to come over into Macedonia and help him. No man ever did a great work unless he was backed up by a good woman. There were five of these Herschel girls—three were married, so they were out of the question, and another was engaged. This left Caroline as first, last and only choice. Caroline was twenty-two and could sing a little.

She had appeared in concerts for her father when a child. But when the father died, the girl was set to work in a dressmaking and millinery shop, to help support the big family. The mother didn't believe that women should be educated—it unfitted them for domesticity, and to speak of a woman as educated was to suggest that she was a poor housekeeper.

In Greece of old, educated women were spoken of as "companions"—and this meant that they were not what you would call respectable. They were the intellectual companions of men. The Greek term of disrespect carried with it a trifle of a suggestion not intended, that is, that women who were not educated—not intellectual—were really not companionable—but let that pass. It is curious how this idea that a woman is only a scullion and a drudge has permeated society until even the women themselves partake of the prejudice against themselves.

Mother Herschel didn't want her daughters to become educated, nor study the science of music nor the science of anything. A goodly grocer of the Dutch School had been picked out as a husband for Caroline, and now if she went away her prospects were ruined—Ach, Mein Gott! or words to that effect. And it was only on William's promise to pay the mother a weekly sum equal to the wages that Caroline received in the dressmaking-shop that she gave consent to her daughter's going. Caroline arrived in England, wearing wooden shoon and hoops that were exceeding Dutch, but without a word of English. In order to be of positive use to her brother, she must acquire English and be able to sing—not only sing well, but remarkably well. In less than a year she was singing solo parts at her brother's concerts, to the great delight of the aristocrats of Bath.

They heard her sing, but they did not take her captive and submerge her in their fashionable follies as they would have liked to do.

The sister and the brother kept close to their own rooms. Caroline was the housekeeper, and took a pride in being able to dispense with all outside help. She was small in figure, petite, face plain but full of animation. All of her spare time she devoted to her music. After the concerts she and her brother would leave the theater, change their clothes and then walk off into the country, getting back as late as one or two o'clock in the morning. On these midnight walks they used to study the stars and talk of the wonderful work of Kepler and Copernicus. There were various requests that Caroline should go to London and sing, but she steadfastly refused to appear on a stage except where her brother led the orchestra. About this time Caroline wrote a letter home, which missive, by the way, is still in existence, in which she says: "William goes to bed early when there are no concerts or rehearsals. He has a bowl of milk on the stand beside him, and he reads Smith's 'Harmonics' and Ferguson's 'Astronomy.' I sit sewing in the next room, and occasionally he will call to me to listen while he reads some passage that most pleases him. So he goes to sleep buried beneath his favorite authors, and his first thought in the morning is how to obtain instruments so we can study the harmonics of the sky." And a way was to open: they were to make their own telescopes—what larks! Brother and sister set to work studying the laws of optics. In a secondhand store they found a small Gregorian reflector which had an aperture of about two inches.

This gave them a little peep into the heavens, but was really only a tantalization.

They set to work making a telescope-tube out of pasteboard. It was about eighteen feet long, and the "board" was made in the genuine pasteboard way—by pasting sheet after sheet of paper together until the substance was as thick and solid as a board.

So this brother and sister worked at all odd hours pasting sheet after sheet of paper—old letters, old books—with occasional strips of cloth to give extra strength. Lenses were bought in London, and at last our precious musical pair, with astronomy for their fad, had the satisfaction of getting a view of Saturn that showed the rings.

It need not be explained that astronomical observations must be made out of doors. Further, the whole telescope must be out of doors so as to get an even temperature. This is a fact that the excellent astronomers of the Mikado of Japan did not know until very recently. It seems they constructed a costly telescope and housed it in a costly observatory-house, with an aperture barely large enough for the big telescope to be pointed out at the heavens. Inside, the astronomer had a comfortable fire, for the season was then Winter and the weather cold. But the wise man could see nothing and the belief was getting abroad that the machine was bewitched, or that their Yankee brothers had lawsonized the buyers, when our own David P. Todd, of Amherst, happened along and informed them that the heat-waves which arose from their warm room caused a perturbation in the atmosphere which made star-gazing impossible. At once they made their house over, with openings so as to insure an even temperature, and Prince Fusiyama Noguchi wrote to Professor Todd, making him a Knight of the Golden Dragon on special order of the heaven-born Mikado.

The Herschels knew enough of the laws of heat and refraction to realize they must have an even temperature, but they forgot that pasteboard was porous.

One night they left their telescope out of doors, and a sudden shower transformed the straight tube into the arc of a circle. All attempts to straighten it were vain, so they took out the lenses and went to work making a tube of copper. In this, brother, sister and genius—which is concentration and perseverance—united to overcome the innate meanness of animate and inanimate things. A failure was not a failure to them—it was an opportunity to meet a difficulty and overcome it.

The partial success of the new telescope aroused the brother and the sister to fresh exertions. The work had been begun as a mere recreation—a rest from the exactions of the public which they diverted and amused with their warblings, concussions and vibrations.

They were still amateur astronomers, and the thought that they would ever be anything else had not come to them. But they wanted to get a better view of the heavens—a view through a Newtonian reflecting-telescope. So they counted up their savings and decided that if they could get some instrument-maker in London to make them a reflecting-telescope six feet long, they would be perfectly willing to pay him fifty pounds for it. This study of the skies was their only form of dissipation, and even if it was a little expensive it enabled them to escape the Pump-Room rabble and flee boredom and introspection. A hunt was taken through London, but no one could be found who would make such an instrument as they wanted for the price they could afford to pay. They found, however, an amateur lens-polisher who offered to sell his tools, materials and instruments for a small sum. After consultation, the brother and sister bought him out. So at the price they expected to pay for a telescope they had a machine-shop on their hands.

The work of grinding and polishing lenses is a most delicate business. Only a person of infinite patience and persistency can succeed at it.

In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, lives John Brashear, who, by his own efforts, assisted by a noble wife, graduated from a rolling-mill and became a maker of telescopes.

Brashear is practically the one telescope lens-maker of America since Alvan Clark resigned. There is no competition in this line—the difficulties are too appalling for the average man. The slightest accident or an unseen flaw, and the work of months or years goes into the dustbin of time, and all must be gone over again.

So when we think of this brother and sister sailing away upon an unknown ocean—working day after day, night after night, week after week, and month after month, discarding scores of specula which they had worked upon many weary hours in order to get the glass that would serve their purpose—we must remove our hats in reverence.

* * * * *

God sends great men in groups. From Seventeen Hundred Forty for the next thirty-five years the intellectual sky seemed full of shooting-stars. Watt had watched to a purpose his mother's teakettle; Boston Harbor was transformed into another kind of Hyson dish; Franklin had been busy with kite and key; Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; Fate was pitting the Pitts against Fox; Hume was challenging worshipers of a Fetish and supplying arguments still bright with use; Voltaire and Rousseau were preparing the way for Madame Guillotine; Horace Walpole was printing marvelous books at his private press at Strawberry Hill; Sheridan was writing autobiographical comedies; David Garrick was mimicking his way to immortality; Gainsborough was working the apotheosis of a hat; Reynolds, Lawrence, Romney, and West, the American, were forming an English School of Art; George Washington and George the Third were linking their names preparatory to sending them down the ages; Boswell was penning undying gossip; Blackstone was writing his "Commentaries" for legal lights unborn; Thomas Paine was getting his name on the blacklist of orthodoxy; Burke, the Irishman, was polishing his brogue so that he might be known as England's greatest orator; the little Corsican was dreaming dreams of conquest; Wellesley was having presentiments of coming difficulties; Goldsmith was giving dinners with bailiffs for servants; Hastings was defending a suit where the chief participants were to die before a verdict was rendered; Captain Cook was giving to this world new lands; while William Herschel and his sister were showing the world still other worlds, till then unknown.

* * * * *

When the brother and sister had followed the subject of astronomy as far as Ferguson had followed it, and knew all that he knew, they thought they surely would be content.

Progress depends upon continually being dissatisfied. Now Ferguson aggravated them by his limitations.

In their music they amused, animated and inspired the fashionable idlers.

William gave lessons to his private pupils, led his orchestra, played the organ and harpsichord, and managed to make ends meet, and would have gotten reasonably rich had he not invested his spare cash in lenses, brass tubes, eyepieces, specula and other such trifles, and stood most of the night out on the lawn peering at the sky.

He had been studying stars for seven years before the Bath that he amused awoke to the fact that there was a genius among them. And this genius was not the idolized Beau Nash whose statue adorned the Pump-Room! No, it was the man whose back they saw at the concerts.

During all these years Herschel had worked alone, and he had scarcely ever mentioned the subject of astronomy with any one save his sister.

One night, however, he had moved his telescope into the middle of the street to get away from the shadows of the houses. A doctor who had been out to answer a midnight call stopped at the unusual sight and asked if he might look through the instrument.

Permission was courteously granted. The next day the doctor called on the astronomer to thank him for the privilege of looking through a better telescope than his own. The doctor was Sir William Watson, an amateur astronomer and all-round scientist, and member of the Royal Society of London.

Herschel had held himself high—he had not gossiped of his work with the populace, cheapening his thought by diluting it for cheap people. Watson saw that Herschel, working alone, isolated, had surpassed the schools.

There is a nugget of wisdom in Ibsen's remark, "The strongest man is he who stands alone," and Kipling's paraphrase, "He travels the fastest who travels alone."

The chance acquaintance of Herschel and Watson soon ripened into a very warm friendship.

Herschel amused the neurotics, Watson dosed and blistered them—both for a consideration. Each had a beautiful contempt for the society they served. Watson's father was of the purple, while Herschel's was of the people, but both men belonged to the aristocracy of intellect. Watson introduced Herschel into the select scientific circle of London, where his fine reserve and dignity made their due impress. Herschel's first paper to the Royal Society, presented by Doctor Watson, was on the periodical star in Collo Ceti. The members of the Society, always very jealous and suspicious of outsiders, saw they had a thinker to deal with.

Some one carried the news to Bath—a great astronomer was now among them! About this time Horace Walpole said, "Mr. Herschel will content me if, instead of a million worlds, he can discover me thirteen colonies well inhabited by men and women, and can annex them to the Crown of Great Britain in lieu of those it has lost beyond the Atlantic."

Bath society now took up astronomy as a fad, and fashionable ladies named the planets both backward and forward from a blackboard list set up in the Pump-House by Fanny Burney, the clever one.

Herschel was invited to give popular lectures on the music of the spheres. Herschel's music-parlors were besieged by good people who wanted to make engagements with him to look through his telescope.

One good woman gave the year, month, day, hour and minute of her birth and wanted her fortune told. Poor Herschel declined, saying he knew nothing of astronomy, but could give her lessons in music if desired.

In answer to the law of supply and demand, thus proving the efficacy of prayer, an itinerant astronomer came down from London and set up a five-foot telescope on the Parade and solicited the curious ones at a tuppence a peep. This itinerant interested the populace by telling them a few stories about the stars that were not recorded in Ferguson, and passed out his cards showing where he could be consulted as a fortune-teller during the day. Herschel was once passing by this street astronomer, who was crying his wares, and a sudden impulse coming over him to see how bad the man's lens might be, he stopped to take a peep at Earth's satellite. He handed out the usual tuppence, but the owner of the telescope loftily passed it back saying, "I takes no fee from a fellow-philosopher!"

This story went the rounds, and when it reached London it had been amended thus: Charles Fox was taking a ramble at Bath, ran across William Herschel at work, and mistaking him for an itinerant, the great statesman stopped, peeped through the aperture, and then passing out a tuppence moved along blissfully unaware of his error, for Herschel being a perfect gentleman would not embarrass the great man by refusing his copper.

When Herschel was asked if the story was true he denied the whole fabric, which the knowing ones said was further proof of his gentlemanly instincts—for a true gentleman will always lie under two conditions: first, to save a woman's honor; and second, to save a friend from embarrassment. As a profession, astrology has proved a better investment than astronomy. Astronomy has nothing to offer but abstract truth, and those who love astronomy must do so for truth's sake.

Astronomical discoveries can not be covered by copyright or patent, nor can any new worlds be claimed as private property and financed by stock companies, frenzied or otherwise. Astrology, on the other hand, relates to love-affairs, vital statistics, goldmines, misplaced jewels and lost opportunities.

Yet, in this year of grace, Nineteen Hundred Five, Boston newspapers carry a column devoted to announcements of astrologers, while the Cambridge Astronomical Observatory never gets so much as a mention from one year's end to the other. Besides that, astronomers have to be supported by endowment—mendicancy—while astrologers are paid for their prophecies by the people whose destinies they invent. This shows us how far as a nation we have traveled on the stony road of Science.

Science, forsooth? Oh, yes, of course—science—bang! bang! bang!

* * * * *

In the month of March, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one, Herschel, by the discovery of Uranus, found his place as a fixed star among the world's great astronomers. Years before this, William and Caroline had figured it out that there must be another planet in our system in order to account plausibly for the peculiar ellipses of the others. That is to say, they felt the influence of this seventh planet; its attractive force was realized, but where it was they could not tell. Its discovery by Herschel was quite accidental. He was sweeping the heavens for comets when this star came within his vision. Others had seen it, too, but had classified it as "a vagrant fixed star."

It was the work of Herschel to discover that it was not a fixed star, but had a defined and distinct orbit that could be calculated. To look up at the heavens and pick out a star that could only be seen with a telescope—pick it out of millions and ascertain its movement—seems like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The present method of finding asteroids and comets by means of photography is simple and easy. The plate is exposed in a frame that moves by clockwork with the earth, so as to keep the same field of stars steady on the glass. After two, three or four hours' exposure, the photograph will show the fixed stars, but the planets, asteroids and comets will reveal themselves as a white streak of light, showing plainly where the sitters moved.

Herschel had to watch each particular star in person, whereas the photographic lens will watch a thousand.

How close and persistent an observer a man must be who, watching one star at a time, discovers the one in a million that moves, is apparent. Chance, surely, must also come to his aid and rescue if he succeeds.

Herschel found his moving star, and at first mistook it for a comet. Later, he and Caroline were agreed that it was in very truth their long-looked-for planet. There are no proprietary rights in newly discovered worlds—the reward is in the honor of the discovery, just as the best recompense for a good deed lies in having done it.

The Royal Society was the recording station, as Kiel, Greenwich and Harvard are now. Herschel made haste to get his new world on record through his kind neighbor, Doctor Watson.

The Royal Society gave out the information, and soon various other telescopes corroborated the discovery made by the Bath musician. Herschel christened his new discovery "Georgium Sidus," in honor of the King; but the star belonged as much to Germany and France as to England, and astronomers abroad scouted the idea of peppering the heavens with the names of nobodies.

Several astronomers suggested the name "Herschel," if the discoverer would consent, but this he would not do. Doctor Bode then named the new star "Uranus," and Uranus it is, although perhaps with any other name 't would shine as bright.

Herschel was forty-three years old when he discovered Uranus. He was still a professional musician, and an amateur astronomer.

But it did not require much arguing on the part of Doctor Watson when he presented Herschel's name for membership in the Royal Society for that most respectable body of scholars to at once pass favorably on the nomination. As one member in seconding the motion put it, "Herschel honors us in accepting this membership, quite as much as we do him in granting it."

And so the next paper presented by Herschel to the Royal Society appears on the record signed "William Herschel, F.R.S."

Some time afterwards, it was to appear, "William Herschel, F.R.S., LL.D. (Edinburgh)"; and then "Sir William Herschel, F.R.S., LL.D., D.C.L. (Oxon)."

* * * * *

George the Third, in about the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two, had invited his distinguished Hanoverian countryman to become an attache of the Court with the title of "Astronomer to the King." The Astronomer-Royal, in charge of the Greenwich Observatory, was one Doctor Maskelyne, a man of much learning, a stickler for the fact, but with a mustard-seed imagination. Being asked his opinion of Herschel he assured the company thus: "Herschel is a great musician—a great musician!" Afterwards Maskelyne explained that the reason Herschel saw more than other astronomers was because he had made himself a better telescope.

One real secret of Herschel's influence seems to have been his fine enthusiasm. He worked with such vim, such animation, that he radiated light on every side. He set others to work, and his love for astronomy as a science created a demand for telescopes, which he himself had to supply. It does not seem that he cared especially for money—all he made he spent for new apparatus. He had a force of about a dozen men making telescopes. He worked with them in blouse and overalls, and not one of his workmen excelled him as a machinist. The King bought several of his telescopes for from one hundred to three hundred pounds each, and presented them to universities and learned societies throughout the world. One fine telescope was presented to the University of Gottingen, and Herschel was sent in person to present it. He was received with the greatest honors, and scientists and musicians vied with one another to do him homage.

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two Herschel and his sister gave up their musical work and moved from Bath to quarters provided for them near Windsor Castle. Herschel's salary was then the modest sum of two hundred pounds a year.

Caroline was honored with the title "Assistant to the King's Astronomer" with the stipend of fifty pounds a year. It will thus be seen that the kingly idea of astronomy had not traveled far from what it was when every really respectable court had a retinue of singers, musicians, clowns, dancers, palmists and scientists to amuse the people somewhat ironically called "nobility." King George the Third paid his Cook, Master of the Kennels, Chaplain and Astronomer the same amount. The father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan was "Elocutionist to the King," and was paid a like sum.

When Doctor Watson heard that Herschel was about to leave Bath he wrote, "Never bought King honor so cheap."

It was nominated in the bond that Herschel should act as "Guide to the heavens for the diversification of visitors whenever His Majesty wills it."

But it was also provided that the astronomer should be allowed to carry on the business of making and selling his telescopes.

Herschel's enthusiasm for his beloved science never abated. But often his imagination outran his facts.

Great minds divine the thing first—they see it with their inward eye. Yet there may be danger in this, for in one's anxiety to prove what he first only imagined, small proof suffices. Thus Herschel was for many years sure that the moon had an atmosphere and was inhabited; he thought that he had seen clear through the Milky Way and discovered empty space beyond; he calculated distances, and announced how far Castor was from Pollux; he even made a guess as to how long it took for a gaseous nebula to resolve itself into a planetary system; he believed the sun was a molten mass of fire—a thing that many believed until they saw the incandescent electric lamp—and in various other ways made daring prophecies which science has not only failed to corroborate, but which we now know to be errors.

But the intensity of his nature was both his virtue and his weakness. Men who do nothing and say nothing are never ridiculous. Those who hope much, believe much, and love much, make mistakes.

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping-stones of genius.

In all, Herschel contributed sixty-seven important papers to the proceedings of the Royal Society, and in one of these, which was written in his eightieth year, he says, "My enthusiasm has occasionally led me astray, and I wish now to correct a statement which I made to you twenty-eight years ago." He then enumerates some particular statement about the height of mountains in the moon, and corrects it. Truth was more to Herschel than consistency. Indeed, the earnestness, purity of purpose, and simplicity of his mind stamp him as one of the world's great men.

At Windsor he built a two-story observatory. In the wintertime every night when the stars could be seen, was sacred. No matter how cold the weather, he stood and watched; while down below, the faithful Caroline sat and recorded the observations that he called down to her.

Caroline was his confidante, adviser, secretary, servant, friend. She had a telescope of her own, and when her brother did not need her services she swept the heavens on her own account for maverick comets. In her work she was eminently successful, and five comets at least are placed to her credit on the honor-roll by right of priority. Her discoveries were duly forwarded by her brother to the Royal Society for record.

Later, the King of Prussia was to honor her with a gold medal, and several learned societies elected her an honorary member. When Herschel reached the discreet age of fifty he married the worthy Mrs. John Pitt, former wife of a London merchant. It is believed that the marriage was arranged by the King in person, out of his great love for both parties. At any rate Miss Burney thought so. Miss Burney was Keeper of the Royal Wardrobe at the same salary that Herschel had been receiving—two hundred pounds a year. She also took charge of the Court Gossip, with various volunteer assistants. "Gold, as well as stars, glitters for astronomers," said little Miss Burney. "Mrs. Pitt is very rich, meek, quiet, rather pretty and quite unobjectionable." But poor Caroline!

It nearly broke her heart. William was her idol—she lived but for him—now she seemed to be replaced. She moved away into a modest cottage of her own, resolved that she would not be an encumbrance to any one. She thought she was going into a decline, and would not live long anyway—she was so pale and slight that Miss Burney said it took two of her to make a shadow.

But we get a glimpse of Caroline's energy when we find her writing home explaining how she had just painted her house, inside and out, with her own hands.

Things are never so bad as they seem. It was not very long before William was sending for Caroline to come and help him out with his mathematical calculations. Later, when a fine boy baby arrived in the Herschel solar system, Caroline forgave all and came to take care of what she called "the Herschel planetoid." She loved this baby as her own, and all the pent-up motherhood in her nature went out to the little "Sir John Herschel," the knighthood having been conferred on him by Caroline before he was a month old.

Mrs. Herschel was beautiful and amiable, and she and Caroline became genuine sisters in spirit. Each had her own work to do; they were not in competition save in their love for the baby. As the boy grew, Caroline took upon herself the task of teaching him astronomy, quite to the amusement of the father and mother. Fanny Burney now comes with a little flung-off nebula to the effect that "Herschel is quite the happiest man in the kingdom." There is a most charming little biography of Caroline Herschel, written by the good wife of Sir John Herschel, wherein some very gentle foibles are laid bare, and where at the same time tribute is paid to a great and beautiful spirit. The idea that Caroline was not going to live long after the marriage of her brother was "greatly exaggerated"—she lived to be ninety-eight, a century lacking two years! Her mind was bright to the last—when ninety she sang at a concert given for the benefit of an old ladies' home. At ninety-six she danced a minuet with the King of Prussia, and requested that worthy not to introduce her as "the woman astronomer, because, you know, I was only the assistant of my brother!" William Herschel died in his eighty-fourth year, with his fame at full, honored, respected, beloved.

Sir John Herschel, his son, was worthy to be called the son of his father. He was an active worker in the field of science—a strong, yet gentle man, with no jealousy nor whim in his nature. "His life was full of the docility of a sage and the innocence of a child."

John Herschel died at Collingwood, May Eleventh, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, and his dust is now resting in Westminster Abbey, close by the grave of England's famous scholar, Sir Isaac Newton.



CHARLES DARWIN

I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.

—Charles Darwin to Asa Gray

None have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated into the common thoughts of men. What shall a man desire more than this?

—Thomas Huxley, Address, April Twenty-seventh, Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two

CHARLES DARWIN

Evolution is at work everywhere, even in the matter of jokes. Once in the House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, who prided himself on his fine scholarship as well as on his Hyperion curl, interrupted a speaker and corrected him on a matter of history.

"I would rather be a gentleman than a scholar!" the man replied. "My friend is seldom either," came the quick response.

When Thomas Brackett Reed was Speaker of the House of Representatives, a member once took exception to a ruling of the "Czar," and having in mind Reed's supposed Presidential aspirations closed his protests with the thrust, "I would rather be right than President." "The gentleman will never be either," came the instant retort.

But some years before the reign of the American Czar, Gladstone, Premier of England, said, "I would rather be right and believe in the Bible, than excite a body of curious, infidelic, so-called scientists to unbecoming wonder by tracing their ancestry to a troglodyte." And Huxley replied, "I, too, would rather be right—I would rather be right than Premier."

Charles Darwin was a Gentle Man. He was the greatest naturalist of his time, and a more perfect gentleman never lived. His son Francis said: "I can not remember ever hearing my father utter an unkind or hasty word. If in his presence some one was being harshly criticized, he always thought of something to say in way of palliation and excuse."

One of his companions on the "Beagle," who saw him daily for five years on that memorable trip, wrote: "A protracted sea-voyage is a most severe test of friendship, and Darwin was the only man on our ship, or that I ever heard of, who stood the ordeal. He never lost his temper or made an unkind remark."

Captain Fitz-Roy of the "Beagle" was a disciplinarian, and absolute in his authority, as a sea-captain must be. The ship had just left one of the South American ports where the captain had gone ashore and been entertained by a coffee-planter. On this plantation all the work was done by slaves, who, no doubt, were very well treated.

The captain thought that negroes well cared for were very much better off than if free. And further, he related how the owner had called up various slaves and had the Captain ask them if they wished their freedom, and the answer was always, "No."

Darwin interposed by asking the Captain what he thought the answer of a slave was worth when being interrogated in the presence of his owner.

Here Fitz-Roy flew into a passion, berating the volunteer naturalist, and suggested a taste of the rope's end in lieu of logic. Young Darwin made no reply, and seemingly did not hear the uncalled-for chidings.

In a few hours a sailor handed him a note from Captain Fitz-Roy, full of abject apology for having so forgotten himself. Darwin was then but twenty-two years old, but the poise and patience of the young man won the respect and then the admiration and finally the affection of every man on board that ship. This attitude of kindness, patience and good-will formed the strongest attribute of Darwin's nature, and to these godlike qualities he was heir from a royal line of ancestry. No man was ever more blest—more richly endowed by his parents with love and intellect—than Darwin. And no man ever repaid the debt of love more fully—all that he had received he gave again.

Darwin is the Saint of Science. He proves the possible; and when mankind shall have evolved to a point where such men will be the rule, not the exception—as one in a million—then, and not until then, can we say we are a civilized people.

Charles Darwin was not only the greatest thinker of his time (with possibly one exception), but in his simplicity and earnestness, in his limpid love for truth—his perfect willingness to abandon his opinion if he were found to be wrong—in all these things he proved himself the greatest man of his time.

Yet it is absurd to try to separate the scientist from the father, neighbor and friend. Darwin's love for truth as a scientist was what lifted him out of the fog of whim and prejudice and set him apart as a man.

He had no time to hate. He had no time to indulge in foolish debates and struggle for rhetorical mastery—he had his work to do.

That statesmen like Gladstone misquoted him, and churchmen like Wilberforce reviled him—these things were as naught to Darwin—his face was toward the sunrising. To be able to know the truth, and to state it, were vital issues: whether the truth was accepted by this man or that was quite immaterial, except possibly to the man himself. There was no resentment in Darwin's nature.

Only love is immortal—hate is a negative condition. It is love that animates, beautifies, benefits, refines, creates. So firmly was this truth fixed in the heart of Darwin that throughout his long life the only things he feared and shunned were hate and prejudice. "They hinder and blind a man to truth," he said—"a scientist must only love."

* * * * *

Emerson has been called the culminating flower of seven generations of New England culture. Charles Darwin seems a similar culminating product.

Surely he showed rare judgment in the selection of his grandparents. His grandfather on his father's side was Doctor Erasmus Darwin, a poet, a naturalist, and a physician so discerning that he once wrote: "The science of medicine will some time resolve itself into a science of prevention rather than a matter of cure. Man was made to be well, and the best medicine I know of is an active and intelligent interest in the world of Nature."

Erasmus Darwin had the felicity to have his biography written in German, and he also has his place in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" quite independent of that of his gifted grandson.

Charles Darwin's grandfather on his mother's side was Josiah Wedgwood, one of the most versatile of men. He was as fine in spirit as those exquisite designs by Flaxman that you will see today on the Wedgwood pottery. Josiah Wedgwood was a businessman—an organizer, and he was beyond this, an artist, a naturalist, a sociologist and a lover of his race. His portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds reveals a man of rare intelligence, and his biography is as interesting as a novel by Kipling. His space in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" is even more important than that occupied by his dear friend and neighbor, Doctor Erasmus Darwin. The hand of the Potter did not shake when Josiah Wedgwood was made. Josiah Wedgwood and Doctor Darwin had mutually promised their children in marriage. Wedgwood became rich and he made numerous other men rich, and he enriched the heart and the intellect of England by setting before it beautiful things, and by living an earnest, active and beautiful life.

Josiah Wedgwood coined the word "queensware." He married his cousin, Sarah Wedgwood. Their daughter, Susannah Wedgwood, married Doctor Robert Darwin, and Charles Darwin, their son, married Emma Wedgwood, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood the Second. Caroline Darwin, a sister of Charles Darwin, married Josiah Wedgwood the Third. Let those who have the time work out this origin of species in detail and show us the relationship of the Darwins and Wedgwoods. And I hope we'll hear no more about the folly of cousins marrying, when Charles Darwin is before us as an example of natural selection.

From his mother Darwin inherited those traits of gentleness, insight, purity of purpose, patience and persistency that set him apart as a marked man.

The father of Charles Darwin, Doctor Robert Darwin, was a most successful physician of Shrewsbury.

His marriage to Susannah Wedgwood filled his heart, and also placed him on a firm financial footing, and he seemed to take his choice of patients. Doctor Darwin was a man devoted to his family, respected by his neighbors, and he lived long enough to see his son recognized, greatly to his surprise, as one of England's foremost scientists.

Charles Darwin in youth was rather slow in intellect, and in form and feature far from handsome. Physically he was never strong. In disposition he was gentle and most lovable. His mother died when he was eight years of age, and his three older sisters then mothered him. Between them all existed a tie of affection, very gentle, and very firm.

The girls knew that Charles would become an eminent man—just how they could not guess—but he would be a leader of men: they felt it in their hearts. It was all the beautiful dream that the mother has for her babe as she sings to the man-child a lullaby as the sun goes down.

In his autobiographical sketch, written when he was past sixty, Darwin mentions this faith and love of his sisters, and says, "Personally, I never had much ambition, but when at college I felt that I must work, if for no other reason, so as not to disappoint my sisters."

At school Charles was considerable of a grubber: he worked hard because he felt that it was his duty. English boarding-schools have always taught things out of season, and very often have succeeded in making learning wholly repugnant. Perhaps that is the reason why nine men out of ten who go to college cease all study as soon as they stand on "the threshold," looking at life ere they seize it by the tail and snap its head off. To them education is one thing and life another.

But with many headaches and many heartaches Charles got through Cambridge and then was sent to attend lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Of one lecturer in Scotland he says, "The good man was really more dull than his books, and how I escaped without all science being utterly distasteful to me I hardly know." To Cambridge, Darwin owed nothing but the association with other minds, yet this was much, and almost justifies the college. "Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them," said Emerson.

The most beneficent influence for Darwin at Cambridge was the friendship between himself and Professor Henslow. Darwin became known as "the man who walks with Henslow." The professor taught botany, and took his classes on tramps a-field and on barge rides down the river, giving out-of-door lectures on the way. This commonsense way of teaching appealed to Darwin greatly, and although he did not at Cambridge take up botany as a study, yet when Henslow had an out-of-door class he usually managed to go along.

In his autobiography Darwin gives great credit to this very gentle and simple soul, who, although not being great as a thinker, yet could animate and arouse a pleasurable interest.

Henslow was once admonished by the faculty for his lack of discipline, and young Darwin came near getting himself into difficulty by declaring, "Professor Henslow teaches his pupils in love; the others think they know a better way!"

The hope of his father and sisters was that Charles Darwin would become a clergyman. For the army he had no taste whatsoever, and at twenty-one the only thing seemed to be the Church. Not that the young man was filled with religious zeal—far from that—but one must, you know, do something. Up to this time he had studied in a desultory way; he had also dreamed and tramped the fields. He had done considerable grouse-shooting and had developed a little too much skill in that particular line.

To paraphrase Herbert Spencer, to shoot fairly well is a manly accomplishment, but to shoot too well is evidence of an ill-spent youth. Doctor Darwin was having fears that his son was going to be an idle sportsman, and he was urging the divinity-school.

The real fact was that sportsmanship was already becoming distasteful to young Darwin, and his hunting expeditions were now largely carried on with a botanist's drum and a geologist's hammer.

But to the practical Doctor these things were no better than the gun—it was idling, anyway. Natural History as a pastime was excellent, and sportsmanship for exercise and recreation had its place, but the business of life must not be neglected—Charles should get himself to a divinity-school, and quickly, too.

Things urged become repellent; and Charles was groping around for an excuse when a letter came from Professor Henslow, saying, among other things, that the Government was about to send a ship around the world on a scientific surveying tour, especially to map the coast of Patagonia and other parts of South America and Australia. A volunteer naturalist was wanted—board and passage free, but the volunteer was to supply his own clothes and instruments.

The proposition gave Charles a great thrill: he gave a gulp and a gasp and went in search of his father. The father saw nothing in the plan beyond the fact that the Government was going to get several years' work out of some foolish young man, for nothing—gadzooks!

Charles insisted—he wanted to go! He urged that on this trip he would be to but very little expense. "You say I have cost you much, but the fellow who can spend money on board ship must be very clever." "But you are a very clever young man, they say," the father replied. That night Charles again insisted on discussing the matter. The father was exasperated and exclaimed, "Go and find me one sane man who will endorse your wild-goose chase and I will give my consent."

Charles said no more—he would find that "sane man." But he knew perfectly well that if any average person endorsed the plan his father would declare the man was insane, and the proof of it lay in the fact that he endorsed the wild-goose chase.

In the morning Charles started of his own accord to see Henslow. Henslow would endorse the trip, but both parties knew that Doctor Darwin would not accept a mere college professor as sane. Charles went home and tramped thirty miles across the country to the home of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood the Second. There he knew he had an advocate for anything he might wish, in the person of his fair cousin, Emma. These two laid their heads together, made a plan and stalked their prey.

They cornered Josiah the Second after dinner and showed him how it was the chance of a lifetime—this trip on H.M.S. the "Beagle"! Charles wasn't adapted for a clergyman, anyway; he wanted to be a ship-captain, a traveler, a discoverer, a scientist, an author like Sir John Mandeville, or something else. Josiah the Second had but to speak the word and Doctor Darwin would be silenced, and the recommendation of so great a man as Josiah Wedgwood would secure the place.

Josiah the Second laughed—then he looked sober. He agreed with the proposition—it was the chance of a lifetime. He would go back home with Charles and put the Doctor straight. And he did.

And on the personal endorsement of Josiah Wedgwood and Professor Henslow, Charles Robert Darwin was duly booked as Volunteer Naturalist in Her Majesty's service.

* * * * *

Captain Fitz-Roy of the "Beagle" liked Charles Darwin until he began to look him over with a very professional eye. Then he declared his nose was too large and was not rightly shaped; besides, he was too tall for his weight: outside of these points the Volunteer would answer. On talking with young Darwin further, the Captain liked him better, and he waived all imperfections, although no promise was made that they would be remedied. In fact, Captain Fitz-Roy liked Charles so well that he invited him to share his own cabin and mess with him. The sailors, on seeing this, touched respectful forefingers to their caps and began addressing the Volunteer as "Sir."

The "Beagle" sailed on December Twenty-seven, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one, and it was fully four years and ten months before Charles Darwin saw England again. The trip decided the business of Darwin for the rest of his life, and thereby an epoch was worked in the upward and onward march of the race.

Captain Fitz-Roy of the British Navy was but twenty-three years old. He was a draftsman, a geographer, a mathematician and a navigator. He had sailed around the world as a plain tar, and taken his kicks and cuffs with good grace. At the Portsmouth Naval School he had won a gold medal for proficiency in study, and another medal had been given him for heroism in leaping from a sailing-ship into the sea to save a drowning sailor.

Let us be fair—the tight little island has produced men. To evolve these few good men she may have produced many millions of the spawn of earth, but let the fact stand—England has produced men. Here was a beardless youth, slight in form, silent by habit, but so well thought of by his Government that he was given charge of a ship, five officers, two surgeons and forty-one picked men to go around the world and make measurements of certain coral-reefs, and map the dangerous coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

The ship was provisioned for two years, but the orders were, "Do the work, no matter how long it may take, and your drafts on the Government will be honored."

Captain Fitz-Roy was a man of decision: he knew just where he wanted to go, and what there was to do. He was to measure and map dreary wastes of tossing tide, and to do the task so accurately that it would never have to be done again: his maps were to remain forever a solace, a safety and a security to the men who go down to the sea in ships.

England has certainly produced men—and Fitz-Roy was one of them. Fitz-Roy is now known to us, not for his maps which have passed into the mutual wealth of the world, but because he took on this trip, merely as an afterthought, a volunteer naturalist.

Before the "Beagle" sailed, Captain Fitz-Roy and young Mr. Darwin went down to Portsmouth, and the Captain showed him the ship. The Captain took pains to explain the worst. It was to be at least two years of close, unremitting toil. It was no pleasure-excursion—there were no amusements provided, no cards, no wine on the table; the fare was to be simple in the extreme. This way of putting the matter was most attractive to Darwin—Fitz-Roy became a hero in his eyes at once. The Captain's manner inspired much confidence—he was a man who did not have to be amused or cajoled. "You will be left alone to do your work," said Fitz-Roy to Darwin, "and I must have the cabin to myself when I ask for it." And that settled it. Life aboard ship is like life in jail. It means freedom, freedom from interruption—you have your evenings to yourself, and the days as well. Darwin admired every man on board the ship, and most of all, the man who selected them, and so wrote home to his sisters. He admired the men because each was intent on doing his work, and each one seemed to assume that his own particular work was really the most important.

Second Officer Wickham was entrusted to see that the ship was in good order, and so thorough was he that he once said to Darwin, who was constantly casting his net for specimens, "If I were the skipper, I'd soon have you and your beastly belittlement out of this ship with all your devilish, damned mess." And Darwin, much amused, wrote this down in his journal, and added, "Wickham is a most capital fellow." The discipline and system of ship-life, the necessity of working in a small space, and of improving the calm weather, and seizing every moment when on shore, all tended to work in Darwin's nature exactly the habit that was needed to make him the greatest naturalist of his age.

Every sort of life that lived in the sea was new and wonderful to him. Very early on this trip Darwin began to work on the "Cirripedia" (barnacles), and we hear of Captain Fitz-Roy obligingly hailing homeward-bound ships, and putting out a small boat, rowing alongside, asking politely, to the astonishment of the party hailed, "Would you oblige us with a few barnacles off the bottom of your ship?" All this that the Volunteer, who was dubbed the "Flycatcher," might have something upon which to work.

When on shore a sailor was detailed by Captain Fitz-Roy just to attend the "Flycatcher," with a bag to carry the specimens, geological, botanical and zoological, and a cabin-boy was set apart to write notes. This boy, who afterward became Governor of Queens and a K.C.B., used in after years to boast a bit, and rightfully, of his share in producing "The Origin of Species." When urged to smoke, Darwin replied, "I am not making any new necessities for myself."

When the weather was rough the "Flycatcher" was sick, much to the delight of Wickham; but if the ship was becalmed, Darwin came out and gloried in the sunshine, and in his work of dissecting, labeling, and writing memoranda and data. The sailors might curse the weather—he did not. Thus passed the days. At each stop many specimens were secured, and these were to be sorted and sifted out at leisure.

On shore the Captain had his work to do, and it was only after a year that Darwin accidentally discovered that the sailor who was sent to carry his specimens was always armed with knife and revolver, and his orders were not so much to carry what Wickham called, "the damned plunder," as to see that no harm befell the "Flycatcher."

Fitz-Roy's interest in the scientific work was only general: longitude and latitude, his twenty-four chronometers, his maps and constant soundings, with minute records, kept his time occupied.

For Darwin and his specimens, however, he had a constantly growing respect, and when the long five-year trip was ended, Darwin realized that the gruff and grim Captain was indeed his friend. Captain Fitz-Roy had trouble with everybody on board in turn, thus proving his impartiality; but when parting was nigh, tears came to his eyes as he embraced Darwin, and said, with prophetic yet broken words, "The 'Beagle's' voyage may be remembered more through you than me—I hope it will be so!" And Darwin, too moved for speech, said nothing except through the pressure of his hand.

* * * * *

The idea of evolution took a firm hold upon the mind of Darwin, in an instant, one day while on board the "Beagle." From that very hour the thought of the mutability of species was the one controlling impulse of his life.

On his return from the trip around the world he found himself in possession of an immense mass of specimens and much data bearing directly upon the point that creation is still going on.

That he could ever sort, sift and formulate his evidence on his own account, he never at this time imagined. Indeed, about all he thought he could do was to present his notes and specimens to some scientific society, in the hope that some of its members would go ahead and use the material.

With this thought in mind he began to open correspondence with several of the universities and with various professors of science, and to his dismay found that no one was willing even to read his notes, much less house, prepare for preservation, and index his thousands of specimens.

He read papers before different scientific societies, however, from time to time, and gradually in London it dawned upon the few thinkers that this modest and low-voiced young man was doing a little thinking on his own account. One man to whom he had offered the specimens bluntly explained to Darwin that his specimens and ideas were valuable to no one but himself, and it was folly to try to give such things away. Ideas are like children and should be cared for by their parents, and specimens are for the collector.

Seeing the depression of the young man, this friend offered to present the matter to the Secretary of the Exchequer. Everything can be done when the right man takes hold of it: the sum of one thousand pounds was appropriated by the Treasury for Charles Darwin's use in bringing out a Government report of the voyage of the "Beagle." And Darwin set to work, refreshed, rejoiced and encouraged. He was living in London in modest quarters, solitary and alone. He was not handsome, and he lacked the dash and flash that make a success in society. On a trip to his old home, he walked across the country to see his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood the Second.

When he left it was arranged that he should return in a month and marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. And it was all so done.

One commentator said he married his cousin because he didn't know any other woman that would have him. But none was so unkind as to say that he married her in order to get rid of her, yet Henslow wondered how he ceased wooing science long enough to woo the lady.

Doubtless the parents of both parties had a little to do with the arrangement, and in this instance it was beautiful and well. Darwin was married to his work, and no such fallacy as marrying a woman in order to educate her filled his mind.

His wife was his mental mate, his devoted helper and friend.

It is no small matter for a wife to be her husband's friend.

Mrs. Darwin had no small aspirations of her own. She flew the futile Four-o'Clock and made no flannel nightgowns for Fijis. Twenty years after his marriage, Darwin wrote thus: "It is probably as you say—I have done an enormous amount of work. And this was only possible through the devotion of my wife, who, ignoring every idea of pleasure and comfort for herself, arranged in a thousand ways to give me joy and rest, peace and most valuable inspiration and assistance. If I occasionally lost faith in myself, she most certainly never did. Only two hours a day could I work, and these to her were sacred. She guarded me as a mother guards her babe, and I look back now and see how hopelessly undone I should have been without her."

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, Darwin and his wife moved to the village of Down, County of Kent. The place where they lived was a rambling old stone house with ample garden. The country was rough and unbroken, and one might have imagined he was a thousand miles from London, instead of twenty.

There were no aristocratic neighbors, no society to speak of. With the plain farmers and simple folk of the village Darwin was on good terms. He became treasurer of the local improvement society, and thereby was serenaded once a year by a brass band. We hear of the good old village rector once saying, "Mr. Darwin knows botany better than anybody this side of Kew; and although I am sorry to say that he seldom goes to church, yet he is a good neighbor and almost a model citizen." Together the clergyman and his neighbor discussed the merits of climbing roses, morning-glories and sweet-peas. Darwin met all and every one on terms of absolute equality, and never forced his scientific hypotheses upon any one. In fact, no one in the village imagined this quiet country gentleman in the dusty gray clothes that matched his full iron-gray beard was destined for a place in Westminster Abbey—no, not even himself!

Darwin's father, seeing that the Government had recognized him, and that all the scientific societies of London were quite willing to do as much, settled on him an allowance that was ample for his simple wants.

On the death of Doctor Darwin, Charles became possessed of an inheritance that brought him a yearly income of a little over five hundred pounds. Children came to bless this happy household—seven in all. With these Darwin was both comrade and teacher. Two hours a day were sacred to science, but outside of this time the children made the study their own, and littered the place with their collections gathered on heath and dale.

The recognition of the "holy time" was strong in the minds of the children, so no prohibitions were needed. One daughter has written in familiar way of once wanting to go into her father's study for a forgotten pair of scissors. It was the "holy time," and she thought she could not wait, so she took off her shoes and entered in stocking feet, hoping to be unobserved. Her father was working at his microscope: he saw her, reached out one arm as she passed, drew her to him and kissed her forehead. The little girl never again trespassed—how could she, with the father that gave her only love! That there was no sternness in this recognition of the value of the working hours is further indicated in that little Francis, aged six, once put his head in the door and offered the father a sixpence if he would come out and play in the garden.

For several years Darwin was village magistrate. Most of the cases brought before him were either for poaching or drunkenness. "He always seemed to be trying to find an excuse for the prisoner, and usually succeeded," says his son.

One time, when a prosecuting attorney complained because he had discharged a prisoner, Darwin, who might have fined the impudent attorney for contempt of court, merely said: "Why, he's as good as we are. If tempted in the same way I am sure that I would have done as he has done. We can't blame a man for doing what he has to do!" This was poor reasoning from a legal point of view. Darwin afterward admitted that he didn't hear much of the evidence, as his mind was full of orchids, but the fellow looked sorry, and he really couldn't punish anybody who had simply made a mistake. The local legal lights gradually lost faith in Magistrate Darwin's peculiar brand of justice; he hadn't much respect for law, and once when a lawyer cited him the criminal code he said, "Tut, tut, that was made a hundred years ago!" Then he fined the man five shillings, and paid the fine himself, when he should have sent him to the workhouse for six months.

* * * * *

The men who have most benefited the world have, almost without exception, been looked down upon by the priestly class. That is to say, the men upon whose tombs society now carves the word Savior were outcasts and criminals in their day.

In a society where the priest is regarded as the mouthpiece of divinity, and therefore the highest type of man, the artist, the inventor, the discoverer, the genius, the man of truth, has always been regarded as a criminal. Society advances as it doubts the priest, distrusts his oracles, and loses faith in his institution.

In the priest, at first, was deposited all human knowledge, and what he did not know he pretended to know. He was the guardian of mind and morals, and the cure of souls. To question him was to die here and be damned for eternity.

The problem of civilization has been to get the truth past the preacher to the people: he has forever barred and blocked the way, and until he was shorn of his temporal power there was no hope. The prisons were first made for those who doubted the priest; behind and beneath every episcopal residence were dungeons; the ferocious and delicate tortures that reached every physical and mental nerve were his. His anathemas and curses were always quickly turned upon the strong men of mountain or sea who dared live natural lives, said what they thought was truth, or did what they deemed was right. Science is a search for truth, but theology is a clutch for power.

Nothing is so distasteful to a priest as freedom: a happy, exuberant, fearless, self-sufficient and radiant man he both feared and abhorred. A free soul was regarded by the Church as one to be dealt with. The priest has ever put a premium on pretense and hypocrisy. Nothing recommended a man more than humility and the acknowledgment that he was a worm of the dust. The ability to do and dare was in itself considered a proof of depravity.

The education of the young has been monopolized by priests in order to perpetuate the fallacies of theology, and all endeavor to put education on a footing of usefulness and utility has been fought inch by inch.

Andrew D. White, in his book, "The Warfare of Science and Religion," has calmly and without heat sketched the war that Science has had to make to reach the light. Slowly, stubbornly, insolently, theology has fought Truth step by step—but always retreating, taking refuge first behind one subterfuge, then another. When an alleged fact was found to be a fallacy, we were told it was not a literal fact, simply a spiritual one. All of theology's weapons have been taken from her and placed in the Museum of Horrors—all save one, namely, social ostracism. And this consists in a refusal to invite Science to indulge in cream-puffs.

We smile, knowing that the man who now successfully defies theology is the only one she really, yet secretly, admires. If he does not run after her, she holds true the poetic unities by running after him. Mankind is emancipated (or partially so).

Darwin's fame rests, for the most part, on two books, "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man."

Yet before these were published he had issued "A Journal of Research into Geology and Natural History," "The Zoology of the Voyage of the 'Beagle,'" "A Treatise on Coral Reefs, Volcanic Islands, Geological Observations," and "A Monograph of the Cirripedia." Had Darwin died before "The Origin of Species" was published, he would have been famous among scientific men, although it was the abuse of theologians on the publication of "The Origin of Species" that really made him world-famous.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's chief competitor said that "A Monograph on the Cirripedia" is enough upon which to found a deathless reputation. Darwin was equally eminent in Geology, Botany and Zoology.

On November Twenty-fourth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, was published "The Origin of Species." Murray had hesitated about accepting the work, but on the earnest solicitation of Sir Charles Lyell, who gave his personal guarantee to the publisher against loss, quite unknown to Darwin, twelve hundred copies of the book were printed. The edition was sold in one day, and who was surprised most, the author or the publisher, it is difficult to say.

Up to this time theology had stood solidly on the biblical assertion that mankind had sprung from one man and one woman, and that in the beginning every species was fixed and immutable. Aristotle, three hundred years before Christ, had suggested that, by cross-fertilization and change of environment, new species had been and were being evoked. But the Church had declared Aristotle a heathen, and in every school and college of Christendom it was taught that the world and everything in it was created in six days of twenty-four hours each, and that this occurred four thousand and four years before Christ, on May Tenth.

Those who doubted or disputed this statement had no standing in society, and in truth, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, were in actual danger of death—heresy and treason being usually regarded as the same thing.

Erasmus Darwin had taught that species were not immutable, but his words were so veiled in the language of poesy that they naturally went unchallenged. But now the grandson of Doctor Erasmus Darwin came forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's religious belief—in fact, in it the biblical account of Creation is not once referred to. It was a calm, judicial record of close study and observation, that seemed to prove that life began in very lowly forms, and that it has constantly ascended and differentiated, new forms and new species being continually created, and that the work of creation still goes on.

In the preface to "The Origin of Species" Darwin gives Alfred Russel Wallace credit for coming to the same conclusion as himself, and states that both had been at work on the same idea for more than a score of years, but each working separately, unknown to the other.

Andrew D. White says that the publication of Charles Darwin's book was like plowing into an ant-hill. The theologians, rudely awakened from comfort and repose, swarmed out angry, wrathful and confused. The air was charged with challenges; and soggy sermons, books, pamphlets, brochures and reviews, all were flying at the head of poor Darwin. The questions that he had anticipated and answered at great length were flung off by men who had neither read his book nor expected an answer. The idea that man had evolved from a lower form of animal especially was considered immensely funny, and jokes about "monkey ancestry" came from almost every pulpit, convulsing the pews with laughter.

In passing, it may be well to note that Darwin nowhere says that man descended from a monkey. He does, however, affirm his belief that they had a common ancestor. One branch of the family took to the plains, and evolved into men, and the other branch remained in the woods and are monkeys still. The expression, "the missing link," is nowhere used by Darwin—that was a creation of one of his critics.

Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, summed up the argument against Darwinism in the "Quarterly Review," by declaring that "Darwin was guilty of an attempt to limit the power of God"; that his book "contradicts the Bible"; that "it dishonors Nature." And in a speech before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where Darwin was not present, the Bishop repeated his assertions, and turning to Huxley, asked if he were really descended from a monkey, and if so, was it on his father's or his mother's side!

Huxley sat silent, refusing to reply, but the audience began to clamor, and Huxley slowly arose, and calmly but forcibly said: "I assert, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digression and a skilful appeal to religious prejudices." Captain Fitz-Roy, who was present at this meeting, was also called for.

He was now Admiral Fitz-Roy, and felt compelled to uphold his employer, the State, so he upheld the State Religion and backed up the Bishop of Oxford in his emptiness. "I often had occasion on board the 'Beagle' to reprove Mr. Darwin for his disbelief in the First Chapter of Genesis," solemnly said the Admiral. And Francis Darwin writes it down without comment, probably to show how much the Volunteer Naturalist was helped, aided and inspired by the Captain of the Expedition.

But the reply of Huxley was a shot heard round the world, and for the most part the echo was passed along by the enemy.

Huxley had insulted the Church, they said, and the adherents of the Mosaic account took the attitude of outraged and injured innocence.

As for himself, Darwin said nothing. He ceased to attend the meetings of the scientific societies, for fear that he would be drawn into debate, and while he felt a sincere gratitude for Huxley's friendship, he deprecated the stern rebuke to the Bishop of Oxford. "It will arouse the opposition to greater unreason," he said. And this was exactly what happened.

Even the English Catholics took sides with Wilberforce, the Protestant, and Cardinal Manning organized a society "to fight this new, so-called science that declares there is no God and that Adam was an ape."

Even the Non-Conformists and Jews came in, and there was the very peculiar spectacle witnessed of the Church of England, the Non-Conformists, the Catholics and the Jews aroused and standing as one man, against one quiet villager who remained at home and said, "If my book can not stand the bombardment, why then it deserves to go down and to be forgotten."

Spurgeon declared that Darwinism was more dangerous than open and avowed infidelity, since "the one motive of the whole book is to dethrone God."

Rabbi Hirschberg wrote, "Darwin's volume is plausible to the unthinking person; but a deeper insight shows a mephitic desire to overthrow the Mosaic books and to bury Judaism under a mass of fanciful rubbish."

In America Darwin had no more persistent critic than the Reverend DeWitt Talmage. For ten years Doctor Talmage scarcely preached a sermon without making reference to "monkey ancestry" and "baboon unbelievers."

The New York "Christian Advocate" declared, "Darwin is endeavoring to becloud and befog the whole question of truth, and his book will be of short life."

An eminent Catholic physician and writer, Doctor Constantine James, wrote a book of three hundred pages called "Darwinism, or the Man-Ape." A copy of Doctor James' book being sent to Pope Pius the Ninth, the Pope acknowledged it in a personal letter, thanking the author for his "masterly refutations of the vagaries of this man Darwin, wherein the Creator is left out of all things and man proclaims himself independent, his own king, his own priest, his own God—then degrading man to the level of the brute by declaring he had the same origin, and this origin was lifeless matter. Could folly and pride go further than to degrade Science into a vehicle for throwing contumely and disrespect on our holy religion!"

This makes rather interesting reading now for those who believe in the infallibility of popes. So well did Doctor James' book sell, coupled with the approbation of the Pope, that as late as Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two a new and enlarged edition made its appearance, and the author was made a member of the Papal Order of Saint Sylvester. It is quite needless to add that those who read Doctor James' book refuting Darwin had never read Darwin, since "The Origin of Species" was placed on the "Index Expurgatorius" in Eighteen Hundred Sixty. Some years after, when it was discovered that Darwin had written other books, these were likewise honored.

The book on barnacles being called to the attention of the Censor, that worthy exclaimed, "Some new heresy, I dare say—put it on the 'Index!'" And it was so done.

The success of Doctor James' book reveals the popularity of the form of reasoning that digests the refutation first, and the original proposition not at all.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Gladstone in an address at Liverpool said, "Upon the ground of what is called evolution, God is relieved from the labor of creation and of governing the universe."

Herbert Spencer called Gladstone's attention to the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, with his law of gravitation and the physical science of astronomy, was open to the same charge.

Gladstone then took refuge in the "Contemporary Review," and retreated in a cloud of words that had nothing to do with the subject.

Thomas Carlyle, who has facetiously been called a liberal thinker, had not the patience to discuss Darwin's book seriously, but grew red in the face and hissed in falsetto when it was even mentioned. He wrote of Darwin as "the apostle of dirt," and said, "He thinks his grandfather was a chimpanzee, and I suppose he is right—leastwise, I am not the one to deprive him of the honor."

Scathing criticisms were uttered on Darwin's ideas, both on the platform and in print, by Doctor Noah Porter of Yale, Doctor Hodge of Princeton, and Doctor Tayler Lewis of Union College. Agassiz, the man who was regarded as the foremost scientist in America, thought he had to choose between orthodoxy and Darwinism, and he chose orthodoxy. His gifted son tried to rescue his father from the grip of prejudice, and later endeavored to free his name from the charge that he could not change his mind, but alas! Louis Agassiz's words were expressed in print, and widely circulated.

There were two men in America whose names stand out like beacon-lights because they had the courage to speak up loud and clear for Charles Darwin while the pack was baying the loudest. These men were Doctor Asa Gray, who influenced the Appletons to publish an American edition of "The Origin of Species," and Professor Edward L. Youmans, who gave up his own brilliant lecture work in order that he might stand by Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Wallace.

For the man who was known as "a Darwinian" there was no place in the American Lyceum. Shut out from addressing the public by word of mouth, Youmans founded a magazine that he might express himself, and he fired a monthly broadside from his "Popular Science Monthly." And it is good to remember that the faith of Youmans was not without its reward. He lived to see his periodical grow from a confessed failure—a bill of expense that took his monthly salary to maintain—to a paying property that made its owner passing rich.

Gray, too, outlived the charge of infidelity, and was not forced to resign his position as Professor at Harvard, as was freely prophesied he would.

As for Darwin himself, he stood the storm of misunderstanding and abuse without scorn or resentment.

"Truth must fight its way," he said; "and this gauntlet of criticism is all for the best. What is true in my book will survive, and that which is error will be blown away as chaff." He was neither exalted by praise nor cast down by censure. For Huxley, Lyell, Hooker, Spencer, Wallace and Asa Gray he had a great and profound love—what they said affected him deeply, and their steadfast kindness at times touched him to tears. For the great, seething, outside world that had not thought along abstruse scientific lines, and could not, he cared little.

"How can we expect them to see as we do," he wrote to Gray; "it has taken me thirty years of toil and research to come to these conclusions. To have the unthinking masses accept all that I say would be calamity: this opposition is a winnowing process, and all a part of the Law of Evolution that works for good."

* * * * *

For forty years Darwin lived in the same house at Down, in the same quiet, simple way. Here he lived and worked, and the world gradually came to him, figuratively and literally. Gradually it dawned upon the theologians that a God who could set in motion natural laws that worked with beneficent and absolute regularity was just as great as if He had made everything at once and then stopped.

The miracle of evolution is just as sublime as the miracle of Adam's deep sleep and the making of a woman out of a man's rib. The faith of the scientist who sees order, regularity and unfailing law is quite as great as that of a preacher who believes everything he reads in a book. The scientist is a man with faith, plus.

When Darwin died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, Darwinism and infidelity were words no longer synonymous.

The discrepancies and inconsistencies of the theories of Darwin were seen by him as by his critics, and he was ever willing to admit the doubt. None of his disciples was as ready to modify his opinions as he. "We must beware of making science dogmatic," he once said to Haeckel.

And at another time he said, "I would feel I had gone too far were it not for Wallace, who came to the same conclusions, quite independently of me." Darwin's mind was simple and childlike. He was a student, always learning, and no one was too mean or too poor for him to learn from. The patience, persistency and untiring industry of the man, combined with the daring imagination that saw the thing clearly long before he could prove it, and the gentle forbearance in the presence of unkindness and misunderstanding, won the love of a nation.

He wished to be buried in the churchyard at Down, but at his death, by universal acclaim, the gates of Westminster swung wide to receive the dust of the man whom bishops, clergy and laymen alike had reviled. Darwin had won, not alone because he was right, but because his was a truly great and loving soul—a soul without the least resentment.

Archdeacon Farrar, quoting Huxley, said, "I would rather be Darwin and be right than be Premier of England—we have had and will have many Premiers, but the world will never have another Darwin."



HAECKEL

Nothing seems to me better adapted than this monistic perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of a man in Nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. This boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him into making himself "the image of God," claiming an "eternal life" for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the Riddle of the Universe.

—Haeckel

HAECKEL

There was a man, once upon a day, who lived in East Aurora and kept a store. He sold everything from cough-syrup to blue ribbon; and some of the things he sold on time to philosophers who sat on nail-kegs every evening, and settled the coal strike.

And in due course of time the storekeeper compromised with his creditors, at twenty-nine cents on the dollar.

Some say the man went busted a-purpose to quit business and get out of East Aurora. And he himself generally allowed the opinion to gain ground in later years that he had planned his life throughout, from start to finish, thus proving the supremacy of the will. Yet others there be, and men of worth and social standing in the village—known for miles up the creek as persons of probity—who claim that it was too much confidence in the Genus Smart-Setter, and trotting horses at the County Fairs, that made it possible for our friend to avail himself of the Bankruptcy Act. Still others, too inert to follow the winding ways of a strange career and give reasons, dispose of the matter by simply saying, "Providence!"—rolling their eyes upward, then walking out, leaving the wordy contestants humiliated and undone.

It will be seen that I am interested in this chapter of Ancient History: and in truth, I myself occasionally ornament the nail-kegs. I claim it was neither Providence nor astute planning that mapped this man's course, but Providence, Planning and Luck; and I silence the adversary, for the time, by citing these facts:

Very shortly after Providence and the Sheriff of Erie County—whose name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland—had disposed of the East Aurora grocery, our friend met a man in Buffalo who had a sweeping scar on his chin, a wonderful secret, and nothing else worth mentioning.

This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while attending the University of Jena. The secret was gotten by an understanding with a professor; the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a student. The secret was a plan by which you could make glucose from corn. In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, because there was no corn in Europe to speak of.

Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the farmers of Iowa were using corn for their fuel. Glucose is the active saccharine principle in maize, but it does not become active until the corn is treated chemically in a certain way, just as honey is not honey until a bee puts it through his Maeterlinck laboratory.

Glucose is a food; it can be used for all purposes where sugar is used—in degree, at least.

And every living person on earth uses sugar as food every day! Our ex-grocer knew all about Hambletonian Ten and Dexter; but dextrine, dextrose and glucose were out of his class. Yet he realized that if sugar could be made from corn, there was a fortune in it for somebody. Opportunity, we are told, knocks once at each man's door. Our David Harum was forty, past, and he had often thought Opportunity was tapping, but when he opened wide the door, darkness there, and nothing more! Opportunity had knocked, but was too timid to stay. This time, he heard the knock, and when he opened up the door, Opportunity made a rush for him, grabbed him by the collar—catch-as-catch-can—in a grip he could not shake off.

Mr. Harum examined as best he could the glucose the German student had made, and then he watched the whole experiment worked out over again. What the particular ingredients were, was still a secret. The man would not sell out; he wanted to organize a manufactory and take a certain per cent of the profits. David had saved a thousand dollars out of the wreck at East Aurora; but he knew if he could show certain men that the scheme was genuine, he would be able to raise more.

Five thousand dollars was secured. But the men who advanced the four thousand dollars demanded an insurance-policy on the life of the German chemist. This appealed to our David Harum as an excellent plan: if the man who held the secret should die, all would be lost save honor. They insured the life of the chemist for twenty thousand dollars. In a month after, he was killed in a railroad wreck on a Sunday School excursion. And the moral is—but never mind that now.

The twenty thousand dollars' insurance was paid to David Harum. He repaid his friends immediately their four thousand dollars, and reserved for himself, very properly, the sixteen thousand dollars to cover expenses. He then started for Jena.

Arriving there, he found that the making of glucose was no special secret, and to manufacture it on a large scale was simply a matter of evolving the right kind of system and a plant. He hired a young German chemist, who had just graduated, for a matter of, say, a thousand dollars a year and expenses, and the two started back for America.

From this arose the Glucose Industry in the United States. In ten years' time twelve million dollars was invested in the business; and in Nineteen Hundred Three more than a hundred million dollars was invested. Our East Aurora hero sold out his interests, in Eighteen Hundred Ninety, for some such bagatelle as thirteen million dollars.

The young German student is now back at the Jena university, taking a post-graduate course in chemistry—the first one is still dead.

* * * * *

I am told that there be folks who pooh-pooh college training and sneeze on mention of a University degree. Usually these good people have no University degrees, but have been greatly helped by those who have.

Our David Harums are not college-bred—a statement which I trust will go unchallenged.

The true type of German student is made in Germany, and when taken out of his native environment, often evolves into something less beautiful.

His lack of worldly ambition is his chief claim to immortality. His wants are few; he rises early and works late; he is most practical in his own particular specialty, but often most impractical outside of it; he is plodding, patient, painstaking, and will follow a microbe you can not see, as Thompson-Seton's hunter followed the famous Kootenay ram.

This simple reverence for the truth—this passion for an idea—this desire to know—these things have given to the world some of its richest treasures. We are aware of what the Rockfellers have done, but we seldom stop to think of the unknown laboratory students, who made possible such vast and far-reaching institutions as the Standard Oil Company, the Carborundum Company, the Amalgamated Copper Company, and the various beet-sugar factories, that give work to thousands, and lift whole counties, and even some States, from penury to plenty.

Germany honors her scholars; and one of the strongest instincts of her national life is her search for genius. Initiative is originality in motion. Originality is too rare to flout and scout. Not all originality is good, but all good things, so far as humanity is concerned, were once original. That is to say, they were the work of Genius.