It must never be forgotten that Darwin grew up in the thoroughly conventional atmosphere of the English Church. Neither his father nor his grandfather was an active believer, but the immense tradition of staid decorum, from which the English upper middle class rarely escapes, was all about his boyhood, and left an indelible mark on it. To appreciate how haunting and oppressive the atmosphere was, one should read ‘A Century of Family Letters,’ edited by Darwin’s daughter. The flavor of established religious propriety is so overwhelming that one wonders how Darwin could ever have shaken himself intellectually free from it. Mrs. Darwin was a wise and a charming woman, and she was invaluable to her husband, but, oh, she was English. She took a proper wifely interest in Darwin’s scientific adventures, and was sometimes of assistance to him. She had her anxieties about the animosity of his critics and also about the drift of his speculations, and her daughter implies that in later years these speculations effected a change in the mother’s religious beliefs.[210] But I relish very much this lovely passage of solicitude for the husband’s eternal welfare, written in the year of the publication of the ‘Origin’: ‘I am sure you know I love you well enough to believe that I mind your sufferings, nearly as much as I should my own, and I find the only relief to my own mind is to take it as from God’s hand, and to try to believe that all suffering and illness is meant to help us to exalt our minds and to look forward with hope to a future state. When I see your patience, deep compassion for others, self-command, and above all gratitude for the smallest thing done to help you, I cannot help longing that these precious feelings should be offered to Heaven for the sake of your daily happiness.’[211] Also, Mrs. Darwin was a careful observer of that augustly hideous institution, the Victorian Sunday: ‘I remember she persuaded me,’ writes a reminiscent relative, ‘to refuse any invitation from the neighbors that involved using the carriage on that day, and it was a question in her own mind whether she might rightly embroider, knit, or play patience.’[212] It strikes me as peculiarly delightful that the Sabbath should be treated with such reverence in the house of one who was to do more than any one else to smash the God of the Sabbath altogether.