ck at my own life. Nor have
I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no
pains about my style of writing.

I was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809, and my earliest
recollection goes back only to when I was a few months over four years
old, when we went to near Abergele for sea-bathing, and I recollect some
events and places there with some little distinctness.

My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old,
and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except
her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed
work-table. In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school
in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much
slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, and I believe that
I was in many ways a naughty boy.

By the time I went to this day-school (Kept by Rev. G. Case, minister of
the Unitarian Chapel in the High Street. Mrs. Darwin was a Unitarian
and attended Mr. Case's chapel, and my father as a little boy went there
with his elder sisters. But both he and his brother were christened and
intended to belong to the Church of England; and after his early boyhood
he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr. Case's. It
appears ("St. James' Gazette", Dec. 15, 1883) that a mural tablet has
been erected to his memory in the chapel, which is now known as the
'Free Christian Church.') my taste for natural history, and more
especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out
the names of plants (Rev. W.A. Leighton, who was a schoolfellow of my
father's at Mr. Case's school, remembers his bringing a flower to school
and saying that his mother had taught him how by looking at the inside
of the blossom the name of the plant could be discovered. Mr. Leighton
goes on, "This greatly roused my attention and curiosity, and I enquired
of him repeatedly how this could be done?"--but his lesson was naturally
enough not transmissible.--F.D.), and collected all sorts of things,
shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting
which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser,
was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or
brother ever had this taste.

One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my
mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having been
afterwards sorely trouble