Thus out of sympathy with the prevalent studies, the youth showed no fondness for his schoolfellows' sports. He was reserved, frequently lost in thought, and fond of long solitary rambles, according to one schoolfellow, the Rev. W. A. Leighton; another, the Rev. John Yardley, Vicar of St. Chad's, Shrewsbury, remembers him as cheerful, good-tempered, and communicative. One of the recorded incidents of his boyish days is a fall from the old Shrewsbury wall, while walking in a "brown study." Even at this early period he was fond of collecting objects which many schoolboys delight in, such as shells and minerals, seals, franks, and coins; and the mechanical aptitude derived from both the Darwins and the Wedgwoods was manifested by keen interest in mechanism. One especially remembered youthful treat was when his uncle Josiah Wedgwood explained to him the principle of the vernier. No doubt the pigeons, the exotics, the shrubs and flowers of his father's grounds impressed themselves indelibly on the boy's mind and unconsciously prepared him for his future. Schooldays were for him fortunately not protracted, for in 1825, at the age of sixteen, he went to Edinburgh University, where his father and grandfather had likewise studied, with the idea of devoting himself to medicine. The youth of sixteen was well equipped with the results of long thinking and observing rather than with book-learning, and was prepared to play an independent part without noise and show, assimilating that which commended itself to his mind, and rejecting that which found no appropriate soil in him, in a manner characteristic of genuine originality. FOOTNOTES: [1: This is the Erasmus Earle who forms the subject of "A Lawyer's Love Letters," in _The National Review_, February, 1887. Letters of his are also printed in the Tenth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission.] [2: "The house is seen," says Mr. Woodall, "from the line immediately beyond the low tower of St. George's Church. Visitors who make a pilgrimage there, after crossing the Welsh Bridge, follow the main street until St. George's Church is passed, and the continuous line of houses ceases. The next carriage drive, on the right, cutting in two a lofty side-walk, is the entrance to The Mount. A short street of new houses, near St. George's Church, has been called 'Darwin Street;' as yet the only public recognition in the town of the greatest of Salopians. A memorial of a more private character has been placed in the Unitarian Chapel, in the form of a tablet bearing the following inscription:--'To the memory of Charles Robert Darwin, author of "The Origin of Species," born in Shrewsbury, February 12th, 1809. In early life a member and constant worshipper in this church. Died April 19th, 1882.' Mrs. Darwin, we believe, was not strict in her adhesion to the communion in which she had been brought up, but often attended St. Chad's Church, where Charles and his brother were baptized."] CHAPTER II.