Medicine being distasteful, Edinburgh had no other distinctive charms to offer to young Darwin, and he was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, early in 1828, with the idea of his becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. It might have been thought that there was scant stimulus for a biological student in the Cambridge of that period; but although the old literary and mathematical studies were still the only paths to a degree, there were men of original force and genius at work preparing the ground for a coming revolution. Sedgwick was teaching geology with the fire of a prophet, and Henslow as a botanist was showing that lessons of enthralling interest were to be learned from the humblest flower. Henslow especially attracted young Darwin, who never forgot his old teacher. In the preface to the journal of his voyage in the _Beagle_ he returns his most sincere thanks to Professor Henslow, "who," he says, "when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, was one chief means of giving me a taste for natural history; who, during my absence, took charge of the collections I sent home, and by his correspondence directed my endeavours--and who, since my return, has constantly rendered me every assistance which the kindest friend could offer." No better idea of Darwin's Cambridge days can be given than that which is derived from reading his account of Professor Henslow, contributed to the Rev. L. Jenyns's "Memoirs" of that accomplished man. There can be no doubt, also, that in thus pourtraying the character of another, he was at the same time, as Mr. Romanes puts it, "unconsciously giving a most accurate description of his own."