"An animated conversation on Darwinism with the Princess Royal, who is a worthy daughter of her father, in the reading of good books and thinking of what she reads. She was very much _au fait_ at the _Origin_ and Huxley's book, the _Antiquity_, &c. &c., and with the Pfahlbauten Museums which she lately saw in Switzerland. She said that, after twice reading you, she could not see her way as to the origin of four things; namely, the world, species, man, or the black and white races. Did one of the latter come from the other, or both from some common stock? And she asked me what I was doing, and I explained that, in re-casting the _Principles_, I had to give up the independent creation of each species. She said she fully understood my difficulty, for after your book 'the old opinions had received a shake from which they never would recover.'" It may seem an intrusion on what should be sacred ground to touch on the religious belief of the Crown Princess, but it is a subject on which there have been a certain number of misstatements, and it may therefore be well to set forth plainly the material facts. The present generation perhaps hardly realises what a period of intellectual ferment had set in just at the time when the Princess's mind was most eagerly absorbing all that she could read and hear on the subject of religion and philosophy. She was twenty when _Essays and Reviews_ appeared: she was twenty-two when Colenso published his book on the Pentateuch: twenty-three when Renan's _Vie de Jésu_ appeared: twenty-four when Strauss's shorter _Leben Jesu_ was published: and in one year from the time in her life at which we have now arrived _Ecce Homo_ was to appear. Most important of all, Darwin had published his _Origin of Species_ in 1859, when the Princess was nineteen, and it is evident from Sir Charles Lyell's letter that she had not only read but understood that epoch-making book. Of all the giants of those days Darwin alone remains a giant; the lapse of time, as well as the work of other scholars and thinkers, has reduced the intellectual stature of those other writers whose work seemed of such crucial importance when the Princess was a young woman.