everything he desired--and he wanted nothing except for
science--was cheerfully supplied to his hand by admiring givers. Those
who knew the man during the twenty-seven years of his American life, can
quite understand the contagious enthusiasm and confidence which he
evoked. The impression will in some degree be transmitted by these
pleasant and timely volumes, which should make the leading lines of the
life of Agassiz clear to the newer generation, and deepen them in the
memory of an older one.

CHARLES DARWIN

Extracts from "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," by ARCH. GEIKIE,
LL.D., F.R.S.

(1809-1882)

[Illustration: Charles Darwin. [TN]]

By the universal consent of mankind, the name of Charles Darwin was,
even during his lifetime, among those of the few great leaders who stand
forth for all time as the creative spirits who have founded and
legislated for the realm of science. It is too soon to estimate with
precision the full value and effect of his work. The din of controversy
that rose around him has hardly yet died down, and the influence of the
doctrines he propounded is extending into so many remote departments of
human inquiry, that a generation or two may require to pass away before
his true place in the history of thought can be definitely fixed. But
the judgment of his contemporaries as to his proud pre-eminence is not
likely ever to be called in question. He is enrolled among Dii majorum
gentium, and there he will remain to the end of the ages. When he was
laid beside the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey, there arose far
and wide a lamentation as of personal bereavement. Thousands of mourners
who had never seen him, who knew only his writings, and judged of the
gentleness and courtesy of his nature from these, and from such hearsay
reports as passed outward from the privacy of his country home, grieved
as for the loss of a friend. It is remarkable that probably no
scientific man of his day was personally less familiar to the mass of
his fellow-countrymen. He seemed to shun all the usual modes of contact
with them. His weak health, domestic habits, and absorbing work kept him
in the seclusion of his own quiet home. His face was seldom to be seen
at the meetings of scientific societies, or at those gatherings where
the discoveries of science are expounded to more popular audiences. He
shrank from public controversy, although no man was ever more vigorously
attacked and more completely m