I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England, though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed, and a few other books on divinity; and, as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our creed must be fully accepted. Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formally given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the Beagle as naturalist. If the phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump of reverence developed enough for ten priests. The result was that early in 1828 Darwin went to Cambridge, the three years spent at which were "time wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned." His passion for shooting and hunting led him into a sporting, card-playing, drinking company, but science was his redemption. No pursuit gave him so much pleasure as collecting beetles, of his zeal in which the following is an example: "One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one." Happily for his future career, and therefore for the interests of science, Darwin became intimate with men like Whewell, Henslow, and Sedgwick, while the reading of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, and of Sir John Herschel's Introduction to Natural Philosophy, stirred up in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science." The vow to eschew geology was quickly broken when he came under the spell of Sedgwick's influence, but it was the friendship of Henslow that determined his after career, and prevented him from becoming the "Rev. Charles Darwin." For on his return from a geological tour in Wales with Sedgwick he found a letter from Henslow awaiting him, the purport of which is in the following extract:--