I have taken
several looks, as you will readily believe, into the drawing-room; I
suppose my taste [for] harmonious colours is already deteriorated, for
I declare the room begins to look less ugly. I take so much pleasure
in the house (10/1. No. 12, Upper Gower Street, is now No. 110, Gower
Street, and forms part of a block inhabited by Messrs. Shoolbred's
employes. We are indebted, for this information, to Mr. Wheatley, of the
Society of Arts.), I declare I am just like a great overgrown child with
a new toy; but then, not like a real child, I long to have a co-partner
and possessor.

(10/2. The following passage is taken from the MS. copy of the
"Autobiography;" it was not published in the "Life and Letters" which
appeared in Mrs. Darwin's lifetime:--)

You all know your mother, and what a good mother she has ever been to
all of you. She has been my greatest blessing, and I can declare that in
my whole life I have never heard her utter one word I would rather have
been unsaid. She has never failed in kindest sympathy towards me, and
has borne with the utmost patience my frequent complaints of ill-health
and discomfort. I do not believe she has ever missed an opportunity of
doing a kind action to any one near her. I marvel at my good fortune
that she, so infinitely my superior in every single moral quality,
consented to be my wife. She has been my wise adviser and cheerful
comforter throughout life, which without her would have been during a
very long period a miserable one from ill-health. She has earned the
love of every soul near her.

LETTER 11. C. LYELL TO C. DARWIN. [July?, 1841?].

(11/1. Lyell started on his first visit to the United States in July,
1841, and was absent thirteen months. Darwin returned to London July
23rd, 1841, after a prolonged absence; he may, therefore, have missed
seeing Lyell. Assuming the date 1841 to be correct, it would seem
that the plan of living in the country was formed a year before it was
actually carried out.)

I have no doubt that your father did rightly in persuading you to stay
[at Shrewsbury], but we were much disappointed in not seeing you before
our start for a year's absence. I cannot tell you how often since your
long illness I have missed the friendly intercourse which we had so
frequently before, and on which I built more than ever after your
marriage. It will not happen easily that twice in one's life, even in
the large world of London, a congenial soul so oc