Personal.

Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been-the love of science, unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and collecting facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common-sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points.

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son, Mr Francis Darwin, appeared in three volumes in 1887; More Letters, two volumes edited by Mr Darwin and Mr A. C. Seward, followed in 1903. See the obituary notices by Huxley in Nature (April 1888), Proc. Royal Soc. (1888), and the Collected Essays, vol. ii.; also, Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection, by E. B. Poulton (1896), and the short Lives by Grant Allen (1885), G. T. Bettany (1887), and C. F. Holder (1891). J. ARTHUR THOMSON.

He

Alexander William Kinglake (1809-91), born at Wilton House near Taunton, from Eton passed in 1828 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1837, acquired a considerable Chancery practice, and retired in 1856 to devote himself to literature and politics. A tour about 1835 had already given birth to Eōthen 1844), one of the most brilliant and popular books of Eastern travel. Returned for Bridgwater as a Liberal in 1857, he took a prominent part against Lord Palmerston's Conspiracy Bill, and denounced the French annexation of Savoy. was with the French army in Algiers in 1845, and in the Crimea, where he was present at the battle of the Alma, and made the intimate acquaintance of Lord Raglan. It was at Lady Raglan's request that he undertook his Invasion of the Crimea: its Origin, and its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan (8 vols. 1863-87), largely based upon Lord Raglan's papers. The work has been blamed as prejudiced; but on the literary side it is one of the outstanding historical works of the century. No doubt, as Lord Raglan's friend, he did perhaps more than justice to the English commander's merits, and his abhorrence of the character and career of Napoleon III. made him a somewhat unfair judge of the Emperor's policy. generally felt that the history is too long, but the picturesque details give it all the vivacity of the best special correspondent's daily reports. The criticism of Napoleon was, indeed, so severe that the circulation of the history was prohibited in France during the Empire. Kinglake examined into all the episodes of the war with

It is

enormous and painstaking particularity; and the too great detail of this record has unquestionably injured the permanent popularity its clear and lively narrative and its polished and admirable style would otherwise have secured. In 1868 Kinglake was again returned for Bridgwater, but was unseated on petition. The borough was shown to be corrupt, but Kinglake was free from all suspicion of complicity in the irregular methods employed at the election.

At his death Kinglake was remembered less as the author of the bulky, elaborate, exhaustive story of the Crimean war than as the self-centred, vivacious, humorous, luxurious hero of Eōthen, a comparatively slight volume which defies the ordinary canons of travel-book making, and owes its charm solely to the author's constantly and fully revealed personality. The most objective part is the circumstantial account of the traveller's reception by Lady Hester Stanhope, and the conversation he held with that uncanny recluse of the Lebanon elsewhere you have mainly sensations, impressions, reflections-and in Palestine rarely of the deepest. Tiberias suggests only a disquisition on the fleas of all countries; Cairo only the aspects of a plague-stricken town. It is not a Sentimental Journey, indeed, but an impressionist one, with some actual objective experiences, certainly, but almost no geographical, historical, or political facts, and nothing whatever of the guidebook, even of the glorified guide-book, about it. See the Memoir by Innes Shand prefixed to a new edition of Eōthen (1896).

With an Osmanli Pasha.

The truth is, that most of the men in authority have risen from their humble stations by the arts of the courtier, and they preserve in their high estate those gentle powers of fascination to which they owe their success. Yet unless you can contrive to learn a little of the language, you will be rather bored by your visits of ceremony; the intervention of the interpreter, or Dragoman, as he is called, is fatal to the spirit of conversation. I think I should mislead you if I were to attempt to give the substance of any particular conversation with Orientals. A traveller may write and say that the Pasha of So-and-So was particularly interested in the vast progress which has been made in the application of steam, and appeared to understand the structure of our machinery; that he remarked upon the gigantic results of our manufacturing industry, showed that he possessed considerable knowledge of our Indian affairs, and of the constitution of the Company, and expressed a lively admiration of the many sterling qualities for which the people of England are distinguished.' But the heap of commonplaces thus quietly attributed to the Pasha will have been founded perhaps on some such talking as this:

Pasha. The Englishman is welcome; most blessed among hours is this, the hour of his coming.

Dragoman (to the Traveller). The Pasha pays you his compliments.

Traveller. Give him my best compliments in return, and say I'm delighted to have the honour of secing him.

Dragoman (to the Pasha). His Lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe for a moment, and has crossed the broad waters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue of followers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of the Pasha among Pashas-the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik of Karagholookoldour.

Traveller (to his Dragoman). What on earth have you been saying about London? The Pasha will be taking me for a mere cockney. Have not I told you always to say that I am from a branch of the family of Mudcombe Park, and that I am to be a magistrate for the county of Bedfordshire, only I've not qualified, and that I should have been a Deputy-Lieutenant, if it had not been for the extraordinary conduct of Lord Mountpromise, and that I was a candidate for Goldborough at the last election, and that I should have won easy, if my committee had not been bought? I wish to heaven that if you do say anything about me, you'd tell the simple truth. Dragoman [is silent].

Pasha. What says the friendly Lord of London? Is there aught that I can grant him within the pashalik of Karagholookoldour?

Dragoman (growing sulky and literal). This friendly Englishman—this branch of Mudcombe-this head-purveyor of Goldborough-this possible policeman of Bedfordshire is recounting his achievements, and the number of his titles.

Pasha. The end of his honours is more distant than the ends of the Earth, and the catalogue of his glorious deeds is brighter than the firmament of Heaven!

Dragoman (to the Traveller). The Pasha congratulates your Excellency.

Traveller. About Goldborough? The deuce he does! -but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman Empire; tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a Speech from the throne, pledging England to preserve the integrity of the Sultan's dominions.

Dragoman (to the Pasha). This branch of Mudcombe, this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England the talking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan's dominions has been assured for ever and ever, by a speech from the velvet chair.

Pasha. Wonderful chair! Wonderful houses!-whirr ! whirr all by wheels!-whiz! whiz! all by steam!— wonderful chair! wonderful houses! wonderful people! -whirr! whirr! all by wheels!-whiz! whiz! all by steam!

Traveller (to the Dragoman). What does the Pasha mean by that whizzing? He does not mean to say, does he, that our Government will ever abandon their pledges to the Sultan?

Dragoman. No, your Excellency; but he says the English talk by wheels and by steam.

Traveller. That's an exaggeration; but say. Pasha (after having received the communication of the Dragoman). The ships of the English swarm like flies; their printed calicoes cover the whole earth, and by the side of their swords the blades of Damascus are blades of grass. All India is but an item in the Ledgerbooks of the Merchants, whose lumber-rooms are filled with ancient thrones !-whirr! whirr! all by wheels!whiz! whiz! all by steam!

Dragoman. The Pasha compliments the cutlery of England, and also the East India Company.

Traveller. The Pasha's right about the cutlery (I tried my scimitar with the common officers' swords belonging to our fellows at Malta, and they cut it like the leaf of a Novel). Well (to the Dragoman), tell the Pasha I am exceedingly gratified to find that he entertains such a high opinion of our manufacturing energy, but I should like him to know, though, that we have got something in England besides that. These foreigners are always fancying that we have nothing but ships, and railways, and East India Companies; do just tell the Pasha that our rural districts deserve his attention, and that even within the last two hundred years there has been an evident improvement in the culture of the turnip, and if he does not take any interest about that, at all events you can explain that we have our virtues in the country--that the British yeoman is still, thank God! the British yoeman :-Oh! and by-the-by, whilst you are about it, you may as well say that we are a truth-telling people, and, like the Osmanlees, are faithful in the performance of our promises.

Pasha (after hearing the Dragoman). It is true, it is true-through all Feringhistan the English are foremost, and best; for the Russians are drilled swine, and the Germans are sleeping babes, and the Italians are the servants of Songs, and the French are the sons of Newspapers, and the Greeks they are weavers of lies, but the English and the Osmanlees are brothers together in righteousness; for the Osmanlees believe in one only God, and cleave to the Koran, and destroy idols; so do the English worship one God, and abominate graven images, and tell the truth, and believe in a book, and though they drink the juice of the grape, yet to say that they worship their prophet as God, or to say that they are eaters of pork, these are lies-lies born of Greeks, and nursed by Jews!

Dragoman. The Pasha compliments the English.

Traveller (rising). Well, I've had enough of this. Tell the Pasha I am greatly obliged to him for his hospitality, and still more for his kindness in furnishing me with horses, and say that now I must be off.

Pasha (after hearing the Dragoman, and standing up on his Divan). Proud are the sires, and blessed are the dams of the horses that shall carry his Excellency to the end of his prosperous journey.-May the saddle beneath him glide down to the gates of the happy city, like a boat swimming on the third river of Paradise.-May he sleep the sleep of a child, when his friends are around him, and the while that his enemies are abroad, may his eyes flame red through the darkness-more red than the eyes of ten tigers!-farewell!

Dragoman. The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey.

itself against the strength of the hard, square-built column which was solemnly coming to meet it.

But he who could halt his men on the bank of a cool stream when they were rushing down to quench the rage of their thirst was able to quiet them in the midst of their warlike fury. Sir Colin got the regiment to halt and dress its ranks. By this time it was under the fire of the approaching column.

Campbell's charger, twice wounded already, but hitherto not much hurt, was now struck by a shot in the heart. Without a stumble or a plunge the horse sank down gently to the earth, and was dead. Campbell took his aide-de-camp's charger; but he had not been long in Shadwell's saddle when up came Sir Colin's groom with his second horse. The man, perhaps, under some former master, had been used to be charged with the 'second horse' in the hunting-field. At all events, here he was; and if Sir Colin was angered by the apparition, he could not deny that it was opportune. The man touched his cap, and excused himself for being where he was. In the dry, terse way of those Englishmen who are much accustomed to horses, he explained that towards the rear the balls had been dropping about very thick, and that, fearing some harm might come to his master's second horse, he had thought it best to bring him up to the front.

When the 93rd had recovered the perfectness of its array, it again moved forward, but at the steady pace imposed upon it by the chief. The 42nd had already resumed its forward movement; it still advanced firing.

There are things in the world which, eluding the resources of the dry narrator, can still be faintly imagined by that subtle power which sometimes enables mankind to picture dim truth by fancy. According to the thought which floated in the mind of the churchman who taught to All the Russias their grand form of prayer for victory, there are angels of light' and 'angels of darkness and horror,' who soar over the heads of soldiery destined to be engaged in close fight, and attend them into battle. When the fight grows hot, the angels hover down near to earth with their bright limbs twined deep in the wreaths of the smoke which divides the combatants. But it is no coarse, bodily help that these Christian angels bring. More purely spiritual than the old Immortals, they strike no blow, they snatch no man's weapon, they lift away no warrior in a cloud. What the Angel of Light can bestow is valour, priceless valour, and light to lighten the path to victory, giving men grace to see the bare truth, and, seeing it, to have the mastery. To regiments which are to be blessed with victory the Angel of Light seems to beckon, and gently draw his men forward. What the Angel of Darkness can inflict is fear, horror, despair; and it is given him also to be able to plant error and vain fancies in the minds of the doomed soldiery. By false dread he scares them. Whether he who conceived this prayer was soldier or priest, or soldier and priest in one, it seems to me that he knew more of the true nature of the strife of good infantry than he could utter in common prose. For indeed it is no physical power which rules the conflict between two well-formed bodies of foot.

The mere killing and wounding which occurs whilst a fight is still hanging in doubt does not so alter the relative numbers of the combatants as in that way to govern the result. The use of the slaughter which takes place at that time lies mainly in the stress which it puts upon the minds of those who, themselves remaining unhurt,

one.

are nevertheless disturbed by the sight of what is befalling their comrades. In that way a command of the means necessary for inflicting death and wounds is one element of victory. But it is far from being the chief Nor is it by perfectness of discipline, nor yet by a contempt of life, that men can assure to themselves the mastery over their foes. More or less all these things are needed; but the truly governing power is that ascendency of the stronger over the weaker heart which (because of the mystery of its origin) the churchman was willing to ascribe to angels coming down from on high.

The turning moment of a fight is a moment of trial for the soul and not for the body; and it is therefore that such courage as men are able to gather from being gross in numbers can be easily outweighed by the warlike virtue of a few. To the stately 'Black Watch' and the hot 93rd, with Campbell leading them on, there was vouchsafed that stronger heart for which the brave pious Muscovites had prayed. Over the souls of the men in the columns there was spread, first the gloom, then the swarm of vain delusions, and at last the sheer horror which might be the work of the Angel of Darkness. The two lines marched straight on. The three columns shook. They were not yet subdued. They were stubborn; but every moment the two advancing battalions grew nearer and nearer, and although-dimly masking the scant numbers of the Highlanders-there was still the white curtain of smoke which always rolled on before them, yet, fitfully, and from moment to moment, the signs of them could be traced on the right hand and on the left in a long, shadowy line, and their coming was ceaseless.

But, moreover, the Highlanders being men of great stature, and in strange garb, their plumes being tall, and the view of them being broken and distorted by the wreaths of the smoke, and there being, too, an ominous silence in their ranks, there were men among the Russians who began to conceive a vague terror-the terror of things unearthly; and some, they say, imagined that they were charged by horsemen strange, silent, monstrous, bestriding giant chargers. The columns were falling into that plight-we have twice before seen it this day-were falling into that plight that its officers were moving hither and thither, with their drawn swords, were commanding, were imploring, were threateningnay, were even laying hands on their soldiery, and striv ing to hold them fast in their places. This struggle is the last stage but one in the agony of a body of good infantry massed in close column. Unless help should come from elsewhere, the three columns would have to give way.

But help came. From the high ground on our left another heavy column-the column composed of the two right Sousdal battalions-was seen coming down. It moved straight at the flank of the 93rd.

So now, for the third time that day, a mass of infantry some fifteen hundred strong was descending upon the uncovered flank of a battalion in English array; and, coming as it did from the extreme right of the enemy's position, this last attack was aimed almost straight at the file-the file of only two men-which closed the line of the 93rd.

But some witchcraft, the doomed men might fancy, was causing the earth to bear giants. Above the crest or swell of ground on the left rear of the 93rd, yet another array of the tall bending plumes began to rise up in a long, ceaseless line, stretching far into the east; and pre

lator appears at its height. He possessed to an extraordinary degree the power of reproducing on his reader the effect of the original; and, though the original ideas are often altered, condensed, and transposed in an apparently reckless way, these lawless alterations and substitutions are like those in Dryden, and they all tell; the translator becomes 'alter Menander,' not 'dimidiatus Menander.' Mr Swinburne has said, 'His daring genius gave Omar Khayyám a place for ever among the greatest English poets.' Later translations were of the Agamemnon of Eschylus and of Sophocles' Edipus Tyrannus and Edipus Coloneus. He was great as a letter-writer in an age when letter-writing had almost ceased to be an art; indeed, his letters are among his most valuable literary bequests. For he was a master of style as he himself defined it: 'The saying in the most perspicuous and succinct way what one thoroughly understands, and saying it so naturally that no effort is apparent.' The di majores of his Olympus were Shakespeare, Scott, Sophocles, Lamb, Crabbe, Chaucer, and Cervantes. Thackeray and Dickens he ranked high; for Jane Austen and George Eliot, for Morris, Rossetti, or Swinburne, he had little appreciation. He was painfully frank in his criticism even of his friends; speaking of Tennyson, he said: 'I almost think I was wrong in telling him I could take no interest in his Holy Grail, which I should not have done had he not sent it to me! A perilous reason.' And a remark about Mrs Browning's poetry, made after her death and reported to her husband, provoked Browning to a bitter retort.

To Frederic Tennyson, 1844.

I dare say I should have stayed longer in London had you been there but the wits were too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one finds few in London serious men: I mean serious even in fun with a true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads have mixed us up with metropolitan civilisation. I can still find the heart of England beating healthily down here though no one will believe it.

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings; the same old books over and over again, having no command of new ones: walk with my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows, up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such verdure! white clouds moving over the new-fledged tops of oak-trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very charming book) has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont, who was of the old

classical taste, asked him if he did not find it difficult to place his brown tree in his pictures, 'Not at all,' said C.; 'I never put one in at all.' And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters' landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried at and perhaps the old masters chose a soberer

scale of things as more within the compass of lead paint. To paint dew with lead!

I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and delight in the Allegro and Penseroso, full of pomp and fancy. What a pity Handel could not have written music to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton would have written, if they had known of such a musician to write for!

To Professor C. E. Norton, 1876. What Mr Lowell says of him [Dante] recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in Regent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I suppose) said, 'What is there in old Dante's Face that is missing in Goethe's?' And Tennyson (whose Profile then had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said: The Divine.' Then Milton; I don't think I've read him these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory; but I never could read ten lines together without stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out of Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than either. Tennyson again used