ever, who like you educate people's minds as well as teach
them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice
done them except by posterity, for the mind thus insensibly
improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent.'

Very heartily, as I can bear witness from long intercourse with him, was
this deep affection of Darwin reciprocated by the man who was addressed
by him in his letters as 'Your affectionate pupil.' But a stranger who
conversed with Lyell would have thought that he was the junior and a
disciple; so profound was his reverence for the genius of Darwin.

There can be no doubt that Lyell's extreme caution in statement, and his
candour in admitting and replying to objections, had much to do with his
acquirement of that authority with general, no less than with
scientific, readers, which he so long enjoyed. In his candour he
resembled his friend Darwin; but his caution was carried so far that,
even after full conviction had entered his mind on a subject, he would
still hesitate to avow that conviction. He was always obsessed by a
feeling that there still _might be_ objections, which he had not
foreseen and met, and therefore felt it unsafe to declare himself. No
doubt the peculiarly trying circumstances under which his work was
written--a seemingly hopeless protest against ideas held unswervingly by
teachers and fellow-workers--led to the creation in him of this habit of
mind.

Darwin, with all his candour, was of a far more sanguine and optimistic
temperament than Lyell, and the difference between them, in this
respect, often comes out in their correspondence.

Thus Darwin, from the horrors he had witnessed in South America, had
come to entertain a most fanatical hatred of slavery--his abhorrence of
which he used to express in most unmeasured terms. Lyell, in his travels
in the Southern United States, was equally convinced of the
undesirability of the institution; but he thought it just to state the
grounds on which it was defended, by those who had been his hosts in the
Slave-states. Even this, however, was too much for Darwin, and he felt
that he must 'explode' to his friend 'How could you relate so placidly
that atrocious sentiment' (it was of course only quoted by Lyell) 'about
separating children from their parents; and in the next page speak of
being distressed at the whites not having prospered: I assure you the
contrast made me exclaim out. But I have broken my intention