Leibnitz, as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.' A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of selfdevelopment into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.' In a letter recently published, Darwin writes-"It seems absurd to me to doubt that a man can be an ardent Theist and Evolutionist ;" and a few words in the Descent of Man may help still further to clear away some of the mists of prejudice that have gathered about his views of human life and destiny:-"For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstition. Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future."

Mr. Darwin's name is associated almost exclusively in the minds of many persons with the doctrine of Evolution, and there is some danger of overlooking the general influence of his writings on the study of natural history. Other men have taken the lead, from time to time, in geology, or botany, or zoology; he writes of each as if he had made it his peculiar study, and each owes more to him than to any other writer of the day. "He seemed (to use Mr. Thiselton Dyer's words) by gentle persuasion to have penetrated that reserve of nature which baffles smaller men. In other words his

long experience had given him a kind of instinctive insight into the method of attack of any biological problem, however unfamiliar to him, while he rigidly controlled the fertility of his mind in hypothetical explanations by the equal fertility of ingeniously devised experiment. Whatever he touched, he was sure to draw from it something that it had never before yielded, and he was wholly free from that familiarity which comes to the professed student in every branch of science, and blinds the mental eye to the significance of things which are overlooked because always in view.' " The same writer, dealing with Mr. Darwin's influence on the study of botany, says that a sentence from the Origin of Species "may almost be said to be the key-note of Sachs's well-known text-book, which is the most authoritative modern exposition of the facts and principles of plant-structure and function; and there is probably not a botanical class-room or work-room in the civilized world where they are not the animating principle of both instruction and research." Mr. Archibald Geikie writes that "no man of his time has exercised upon the science of Geology a profounder influence than Charles Darwin: " and Mr. Romanes uses stronger language in dealing with Zoology. "The influence which our great naturalist has exerted upon Zoology (he says) is unquestionably greater than that which has been exerted by any other individual.” In other departments of thought and investigation Mr. Darwin was equally great. "The effects of his writings upon Psychology have been immense;" and it is not too much to say that there is scarcely a subject of the highest moment upon which the human mind is engaged, that is not looked at from a new standpoint, and in a different way, because of Mr. Darwin's works.

even

Of Mr. Darwin's character it is difficult to write truthfully without appearing to indulge in the language of

1 From papers on Darwin by various writers, contributed to Nature and republished in a collected form.

extravagant eulogy. It was acknowledged with universal consent at the time of his death that one of the best as well as one of the greatest of Englishmen had passed away; and persons who may be troubled by Mr. Darwin's theories cannot fail to observe that, whatever else his career has done for us, it has not diminished in the smallest degree the reverence for what is morally and spiritually beautiful. He shared none of the feeling of those persons who seem to suppose that to acknowledge relationship with an ape is something like a surrender of the finer attributes of humanity; but, on the contrary, set an example of a great and beautiful life, which only the best of his contemporaries, whatever their beliefs might be, could hope to imitate. Professor Huxley writes of "the fascination of personal contact with an intellect which had no superior, and with a character which was even nobler than the intellect ;" and he says that very few, even of those who had studied Darwin's influence most deeply, "could have been prepared for the extraordinay manifestation of affectionate regard for the man and profound reverence for the philosopher" which followed the announcement of his death. Another of his friends, Dr. William Carpenter, after speaking of the "unsurpassed nobility of his character," observes that "in him there was no other side;'" and a finer or juster estimate could scarcely be written! Everybody agrees that devotion to truth was the master-passion of his soul; that he was "the genuine lover, not alone of his fellow-man, but of every creature;" that his genius was only equalled by his modesty. Up to the last he would send a letter to some periodical for publication "with more than the modesty of a tyro;" and a story is told, that six or seven years ago "one of the two most powerful statesmen of the day," Mr. Gladstone, we believe," was taken to call upon him one Sunday afternoon. Mr. Darwin accompanied his visitor to the gate, and, with cheerful complacency, watched his departing figure through the fields.

'It is a wonderful honour to me,' he said in his

"Yet,

bright and hearty way, to one of the younger of the company, 'to have a visit from such a great man. who can doubt that in the long records of time the man who felt himself so greatly honoured will take the higher place, however high the statesman's rank may be?

For who before had brought to light so many of the secrets of Nature, or worked with so much grace and such a winning courtesy so great a revolution in human thought? He conquered by his methods as well as by his facts. Of the "strife for triumph more than truth" he was simply incapable; and nothing could stand before a controversialist, armed at every point, who yet welcomed criticism, as he hailed a new discovery, because each in its different way helped to bring him near his goal. More than once the name of Socrates has been associated with that of Darwin. "There was the same desire to find some one wiser than himself (says Huxley), the same belief in the sovereignty of reason; the same ready humour; the same sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of men." Another picture rises in the mind, and that is the picture of a good man, as it is drawn for us by Marcus Aurelius. "For the man who no longer delays being among the number of the best is like a priest and minister of the gods, using too the deity which is planted within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep with justice." Of such a man it is little to say that he is the greatest of Shropshire Worthies; when, of all his illustrious countrymen, so few can be reckoned as his peers, and it is not impossible that future ages will give him the same pre-eminence in Science which is given to Shakespeare in Poetry. As his fame increases with the lapse of time, men will come from far to visit the birthplace of Darwin; and some day, we may be sure, though not yet, they will find in Shrewsbury a fair memorial of his renown.

THE SWEATING SICKNESS OF 1551.

By S. CLEMENT SOUTHAM.

ENGLAND had been visited by this terrible and malignant scourge no fewer than four times when it broke out once again in Shrewsbury during the reign of Edward the 6th. The town had probably not escaped the previous visitations, and it has been stated, though with very little apparent authority, that the disease showed itself, though it did not originate in Shrewsbury, in 1485, the first recorded appearance in England. There does not, however, appear to be any record of its appearance in Shrewsbury in the years 1506, 1517, and 1528, when death was busy in the land, and the great mortality," spoken of by the old Historians, made homes desolate and plunged the country into the greatest consternation and grief.

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"The fifth tyme of this fearful Ephemera of Englande & pestilent sweat," says Dr. John Caius, Doctour in Phisicke, "is this in the yeare MDLI. of oure_Lord GOD, and the fifth yeare of oure Soueraigne Lorde King Edwarde the sixth, beginning at Shrewesbury in the middest of April, proceadinge with greate niortalitie to Ludlowe, Prestene, and other places in Wales, then to Westchestre, Couentre, Drenfoorde,1 and other townes in the Southe, & suche as were in & aboute the way to London, whether it came notablie the seuenth of July, & then continuing sore, with the loss of vii. c. lxi. from the ix day vntil the xvi daye, besides those that died in the vii & viii dayes, of whō no registre was kept, fro that it abated vntil the xxx day of the