He was buried by the side of his wife at Montford Church, near the banks of the Severn, a few miles from Shrewsbury. Dr. Darwin had passed his four score years, but it is hard to realise that one who is still remembered by many of the inhabitants of Shrewsbury married the granddaughter of a man born before the Revolution of 1688.

Of Charles Darwin's boyhood we know little. A few of his schoolfellows are still living in his native town; the Rev. W. A. Leighton, the esteemed editor of these Papers, and the venerable Vicar of St. Chad's, the Rev. John Yardley, amongst them; but sixty years have passed, and blurred the memory of his early days. We believe a short account of them, written by Mr. Darwin himself, is to be published by one of his sons. It was in the Spring of 1817, soon after completing his eighth year, that Charles entered the school kept by the Rev. George Case, minister of the Unitarian Church. In the midsummer of 1818, he was removed to the Shrewsbury Grammar School,1 where the Rev. Dr. Kennedy (who

shown by the poor. For the benefit of the district in which he lived Dr. Darwin offered to dispense medicine gratis to any one who applied and was not able to pay. He was surprised to find that very few of the sick poor availed themselves of his offer, and guessing that the reason must have been a dislike to becoming the recipients of charity, he devised a plan to neutralise this feeling. Whenever any poor

persons applied for medical aid, he told them that he would supply the medicine, but that they must pay for the bottles. This little distinction made all the difference, and ever afterwards the poor used to flock to the doctor's house for relief as a matter of right,"—G. J. Romanes in "Nature."

1 For the engraving we are indebted to the editor of the Leisure Hour, in which an interesting account of Shrewsbury School appeared in September, 1878. The school is now removed to Kingsland, outside the town, and the old building has been purchased for a Free Library and Museum, in which the many objects of interest belonging to our Society will be deposited. Some of Mr. Darwin's admirers regret that advantage was not taken of this opportunity of doing honour to his memory in an appropriate way, by converting his old school into the "Darwin Institute and Museum," where the studies to which his life was devoted might be pursued by the youth of his native town.

succeeded Dr. Butler as head master) was also one of his schoolfellows. Shrewsbury had gained a considerable reputation under the rule of Dr. Butler; but Dr. Butler's most illustrious pupil looked back upon much of the time spent there as little better than wasted; and although it is for classics that the school is distinguished, he used to say that Euclid, done as an extra subject, was the only bit of real education which he got there! He patched together his verses with scraps and endings," of which he had what was considered a fine collection; and he often regretted the time given to classics, saying that, as far as he was concerned, he considered them of little or no advantage. In this he reminds us of his uncle Charles, who had similar tastes, and of his grandfather Erasmus, both of whom believed that "the vigour of the mind languished in the pursuit of classical elegance."

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It is not surprising, therefore, that Charles made no mark at school, for, while he disliked the studies through which distinction could be won, he seems to have taken little part in the games of his schoolfellows. Mr. Leighton, who, as an older boy, sometimes heard Charles his lessons, speaks of him as reserved; and it is certain that he was fond of long, solitary rambles, and had a habit of losing himself in thought, which is not favourable to athletics. Amongst the few events remembered of his early days, is a fall that he had, while walking on the old walls of the town, in a "brown study." Mr. Yardley's recollections differ somewhat from Mr. Leighton's. The Vicar of St. Chad's speaks of Charles Darwin as "cheerful, good-tempered and communicative," qualities which certainly distinguished him in after life, and it is probable that, holding aloof from the ordinary amusements of his classmates, he was sociable with those who entered into his own pursuits. As early as

1836.

Appointed head master in 1798; became Bishop of Lichfield in