Mr. Herbert goes on:--"It stirred one's inmost depth of feeling to hear him descant upon, and groan over, the horrors of the slave-trade, or the cruelties to which the suffering Poles were subjected at Warsaw...These, and other like proofs have left on my mind the conviction that a more humane or tender-hearted man never lived."
His old college friends agree in speaking with affectionate warmth of his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. From what they have been able to tell me, I gain the impression of a young man overflowing with animal spirits--leading a varied healthy life--not over-industrious in the set of studies of the place, but full of other pursuits, which were followed with a rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, riding, shooting in the fens, suppers and card-playing, music at King's Chapel, engravings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, walks with Professor Henslow--all combined to fill up a happy life. He seems to have infected others with his enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert relates how, during the same Barmouth summer, he was pressed into the service of "the science"--as my father called collecting beetles. They took their daily walks together among the hills behind Barmouth, or boated in the Mawddach estuary, or sailed to Sarn Badrig to land there at low water, or went fly-fishing in the Cors-y-gedol lakes. "On these occasions Darwin entomologized most industriously, picking up creatures as he walked along, and bagging everything which seemed worthy of being pursued, or of further examination. And very soon he armed me with a bottle of alcohol, in which I had to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common kind. I performed this duty with some diligence in my constitutional walks; but alas! my powers of discrimination seldom enabled me to secure a prize--the usual result, on his examining the contents of my bottle, being an exclamation, 'Well, old Cherbury' (No doubt in allusion to the title of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.) (the nickname he gave me, and by which he usually addressed me), 'none of these will do.'" Again, the Rev. T. Butler, who was one of the Barmouth reading-party in 1828, says: "He inoculated me with a taste for Botany which has stuck by me all my life."
Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my father's, remembers him unearthing beetles in the willows between Cambridge and Grantchester, and speaks of a certain beetle the remembrance of whose name is "Crux major." (Panagaeus crux-major.) How enthusiastically must my father have exulted over this beetle to have impressed its name on a companion so that he remembers it after half a century! Archdeacon Watkins goes on: "I do not forget the long and very interesting conversations that we had about Brazilian scenery and tropical vegetation of all sorts. Nor do I forget the way and the vehemence with which he rubbed his chin when he got excited on such subjects, and discoursed eloquently of lianas, orchids, etc."
He became intimate with Henslow, the Professor of Botany, and through him with some other older members of the University. "But," Mr. Herbert writes, "he always kept up the closest connection with the friends of his own standing; and at our frequent social gatherings--at breakfast, wine or supper parties--he was ever one of the most cheerful, the most popular, and the most welcome."
My father formed one of a club for dining once a week, called the Gourmet (Mr. Herbert mentions the name as 'The Glutton Club.') Club, the members, besides himself and Mr. Herbert (from whom I quote), being Whitley of St. John's, now Honorary Canon of Durham (Formerly Reader in Natural Philosophy at Durham University.); Heaviside of Sidney, now Canon of Norwich; Lovett Cameron of Trinity, now vicar of Shoreham; Blane of Trinity, who held a high post during the Crimean war; H. Lowe (Brother of Lord Sherbrooke.) (Now Sherbrooke) of Trinity Hall; and Watkins of Emmanuel, now Archdeacon of York. The origin of the club's name seems already to have become involved in obscurity. Mr. Herbert says that it was chosen in derision of another "set of men who called themselves by a long Greek name signifying 'fond of dainties,' but who falsified their claim to such a designation by their weekly practice of dining at some roadside inn, six miles from Cambridge, on mutton chops or beans and bacon." Another old member of the club tells me that the name arose because the members were given to making experiments on "birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate." He says that hawk and bittern were tried, and that their zeal broke down over an old brown owl, "which was indescribable." At any rate, the meetings seemed to have been successful, and to have ended with "a game of mild vingt-et-un."
Mr.