Of events of general interest this spring, I recall a fascinating lecture by Sven Hedin on his Tibetan travels. The eminent explorer had a bumper audience and a great reception, and was given an honorary degree by Convocation next day. Kennard and I agreed in resenting his arrogant and bumptious {136} manner; and the tone of some of his remarks might have prepared us for the outburst of anti-English fanaticism for which he made himself notorious a few years later. There was a big gathering at the Schools one evening in celebration of the centenary of Darwin. The oratorical tributes and panegyrics were, as usual, so lengthy as to become wearisome; but an interesting feature was the presence of three of Darwin's sons, of whom one (Sir George) gave us some pleasant personal details and reminiscences of his distinguished father. His affectionate loyalty to a parent's memory one can sympathize with and understand; but I confess that, reading the "pulpit references" to the centenary that week, I was puzzled to comprehend how Christian ministers could "let themselves go" in indiscriminating panegyric of a man of whom I hope it is not uncharitable, as it is certainly not untrue, to say that he was, if any man ever was, a self-confessed unbeliever in revelation and in Christ.[1] The utterances on such an occasion of a distinguished occupant of the university pulpit a generation earlier[2] would certainly have been pitched in a different key; and so would those of my old friend Dr. Frederick George Lee, whose summary of the logical result of Darwin's teaching was-- The Incarnation is but a dream, the Supernatural a delusion. Our only duties are to feed and to breed. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. I received into the Church this term an undergraduate of one of the smaller colleges, who was reading {137} for natural science honours and rowed in his college boat; but he had evidently had time for reading and reflection as well, and had thought the whole matter out so carefully that I had little left to do. In order to keep him back at the eleventh hour, his tutor (an Anglican divine of some repute) kept propounding to him historical difficulties such as "How was it that Henry of Navarre was allowed by the Pope to have two wives at once?" and so on. My young friend used to bring me these nuts to crack, and we had a good deal of fun over them.