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'The Mount." Having thus provided the nest, in 1796 he brought home his wife, Susannah Wedgwood, eldest daughter of the celebrated potter, to whom he was married at Marylebone Church on April 18th.

The character and education of Charles Darwin's mother is a matter of considerable interest, notwithstanding that her death when he was only eight years old cut short her opportunities of influencing him. She was born at Burslem in January, 1765, and a year after her father describes her as a "fine, sprightly lass:" she became his best-beloved child. She was partly educated in London, under the eye of her father's partner, the accomplished Thomas Bentley, in whose heart she won as tender a place as in her father's. Later she continued her education at home with her brothers, under good tuition. Many > visits were exchanged between the Darwins and the

"The house is seen," says Mr. Woodall, "from the line immediately beyond the low tower of St. George's Church. Visitors who make a pilgrimage there, after crossing the Welsh Bridge, follow the main street until St. George's Church is passed, and the continuous line of houses ceases. The next carriage drive, on the right, cutting in two a lofty side-walk, is the entrance to The Mount. A short street of new houses, near St. George's Church, has been called 'Darwin Street ;' as yet the only public recognition in the town of the greatest of Salopians. A memorial of a more private character has been placed in the Unitarian Chapel, in the form of a tablet bearing the following inscription:-'To the memory of Charles Robert Darwin, author of "The Origin of Species," born in Shrewsbury, February 12th, 1809. In early life a member and constant worshipper in this church. Died April 19th, 1882.' Mrs. Darwin, we believe, was not strict in her adhesion to the communion in which she had been brought up, but often attended St. Chad's Church, where Charles and his brother were baptized."

Wedgwoods, and old Erasmus Darwin became very fond of Miss Wedgwood. By the time of her marriage she was matured by much intercourse with notable people, as well as by extensive reading, and from her experience of London society and varied travel in England was well fitted to shine as the county doctor's wife. From her father, who died in 1795, she had doubtless inherited, in addition to a handsome fortune, many valuable faculties, and probably she transmitted more of them to her son Charles than she herself manifested. Josiah Wedgwood, over whose career it would be delightful to linger, is well described by Miss Meteyard in words which might be precisely applied to Charles Darwin, as "patient, stedfast, humble, simple, unconscious of half his own greatness, and yet by this very simplicity, patience, and stedfastness displaying the high quality of his moral and intellectual characteristics, even whilst insuring that each step was in the right direction, and firmly planted." A truly experimental genius in artistic manufacture, Wedgwood foreshadowed a far greater experimental genius in science.

Before her famous son was born, however, Mrs. Darwin's health had begun to fail, and in 1807 she wrote to a friend: "Every one seems young but me." Her second son (four daughters having preceded him) was born at The Mount on February 12, 1809, and christened "Charles Robert," at St. Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, on November 17th following. No doubt her declining health emphasised her attachment to home pursuits, to quiet reading, to the luxuriant garden, and to her numerous domestic pets. The beauty, variety, and tameness of The Mount pigeons was well known in the town and far

beyond. Mr. Woodall states that one of Darwin's schoolfellows, the Rev. W. A. Leighton, remembers him plucking a plant and recalling one of his mother's elementary lessons in botany. Too soon however the mother was taken from The Mount; she died in July, 1817, when Charles was between eight and nine years old.

E.

The eldest son of Dr. Robert Darwin, on whom the grandfather's name of Erasmus had been bestowed, is notable as the intimate friend of the Carlyles. "He had something of original and sarcastically ingenious in him," says Carlyle, in his "Reminiscences," "one of the sincerest, naturally truest, and most modest of men.. Darwin it was who named the late Whewell, seeing him :sit, all ear (not all assent), at some of my lectures, 'The Harmonious Blacksmith.' My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin always; many a road to shops, and the like, he drove her in his cab, in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most unaffected form." He died in 1881, aged 77, leaving no memorial to the public of his undoubtedly great abilities. Like his younger brother, he was a member of Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.B., in 1828.

Early in 1817, the closing year of his mother's life, Charles Darwin was placed at school with the Rev. George Case, minister of the Shrewsbury Unitarian church, to which the Darwins were attached, in this resembling the Wedgwoods. At midsummer, 1818, how

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