s immediately called. The Doctor spoke often, but
soon appeared fainting; and died about one o'clock.

Our dear Mrs. Darwin and family are inconsolable: their affliction is
great indeed, there being few such husbands or fathers. He will be
most deservedly lamented by all who had the honour of being known to
him.

I remain, Sir,

Your obedient humble servant,

S.M.

P.S. This letter was begun this morning by Dr. Darwin himself.

The complaint which thus suddenly terminated his life, in his
seventy-first year, was the Angina Pectoris.

The Temple of Nature was printed in the year after his death; but the
public had either read enough of his writings or were occupied with
other things, for little attention was paid to this poetical bequest.
That ingenious burlesque of his manner, the Loves of the Triangles,
probably contributed to loosen the spell by which he had for a while
taken the general ear.

His person is well described by his biographer, Miss Seward, as being
above the middle size, his form athletic, and his limbs too heavy for
exact proportion; his countenance marked by the traces of a severe
small-pox, and, when not animated by social pleasure, rather saturnine
than sprightly. In youth his exterior was rendered agreeable by florid
health, and a smile that indicated good-humour. His portrait, by Wright
of Derby, gives a very exact, but inanimate, representation of his form
and features. In justice to the painter, it must be told, that I believe
the likeness to have been taken after death.

In his medical practice he was by some accused of empiricism. From this
charge, both Miss Seward and Mr. Edgeworth have, I think, justly
vindicated him. The former has recorded a project which he suggested, on
the supposed authority of some old practitioners, but which he did not
execute, for curing one of his consumptive patients by the transfusing
of blood from the veins of a person in health. I have been told, that
when a mother, who seemed to be in the paroxysm of a delirium, expressed
an earnest wish to take her infant into her arms, and her attendants
were fearful of indulging her lest she should do some violence to the
object of her affection, he desired them to commit it to her without
apprehension, and that the result was an immediate abatement of her
disorder. This was an instance rather of strong sagacity than of
extraordinary boldness; for nothing less than a well-founded confidence
in t