Herbert Spencer was born April 27, 1820, in the town of Derby, and died in his eighty-fourth year, December 8, 1903, at 5, Percival Terrace, Brighton, next door to his friend, Sir James Knowles, the editor of the _Nineteenth Century_. At the time of his birth, Derby was emerging from the sleepy, dreamy, stagnant, obfuscated condition in which it had lain since the days of the Romans. It is difficult to write of Spencer without wondering how a thinker of his quality should have been born in Derby--a town which had a determined objection to individuality in ideas. It has a Charter--its first act of enterprise in a thousand years--obtained by the solicitations of the inhabitants from Richard I., which gave them the power of expelling every Jew who resided in the town, or ever after should approach it. Centuries later, in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., not a Roman Catholic, an Independent, a Baptist, an Israelite, nor even an un-molesting Quaker could be found in Derby. There still remains one lineal descendant of the stagnant race which procured the Charter of Darkness from Richard I.--Mr. Alderman W. Winter, who opposed in the Town Council a resolution of honour in memory of Spencer, who had given Derby its great distinction, because his views contradicted the antediluvian Scriptural account of the Creation, when there was no man present to observe what took place, and no man of science existed capable of verifying the Mosaic tradition. The only recorded instance of independency of opinion was that of a humble Derby girl, who was born blind, yet could see, like others, into the nature of things. She doubted the Real Presence. What could it matter what the poor, helpless thing thought of that? But the town burned her alive. The brave, unchanging girl, whose convictions were torment-proof, was only twenty-two years old. The only Derby man of free thought who preceded Herbert Spencer was William Hutton, a silk weaver, who became the historian of Derby and Birmingham. In sagacity, boldness and veracity he excelled. The wisdom of his opinions was a century in advance of his time (1770-1830). There were no photographs in the time of Mr. Spencer's parents, and their lineaments are little known. Mr. Spencer's uncle I knew, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, a clergyman of middle stature, slender, with a paternal Evangelical expression. But his sympathies were with Social Reform, in which field he was an insurgent worker for projects then unregarded or derided.