ether with
music. In the summer the whole family used often to sit on the steps
of the old portico, with the flower-garden in front, and with the steep
wooded bank opposite the house reflected in the lake, with here and
there a fish rising or a water-bird paddling about. Nothing has left a
more vivid picture on my mind than these evenings at Maer. I was
also attached to and greatly revered my Uncle Jos; he was silent and
reserved, so as to be a rather awful man; but he sometimes talked openly
with me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the clearest
judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could have made him
swerve an inch from what he considered the right course. I used to apply
to him in my mind the well-known ode of Horace, now forgotten by me, in
which the words "nec vultus tyranni, etc.," come in.

(Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida.)

CAMBRIDGE 1828-1831.

After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or
he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a
physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very
properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which
then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider,
as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples
about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England;
though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman.
Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other
books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict
and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself
that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems
ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention
and my father's wish ever formerly given up, but died a natural death
when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the "Beagle" as naturalist. If the
phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be
a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological
society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and
some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings,
in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a