the privilege of being present at the interview between Goethe and Napoleon, and interposed tactful references to the works of the great poet. Daru fulfilled his usual duties in the campaign of 1809 against Austria. Afterwards, when the subject of the divorce of Josephine and the choice of a Russian or of an Austrian princess came to be discussed, Daru, on being consulted by Napoleon, is said boldly to have counselled his marriage with a French lady; and Napoleon, who admired his frankness and honesty, took the reply in good part.
In 1811 he became secretary of state in succession to Maret, duc de Bassano, and showed his usual ability in the administration of the vast and complex affairs of the French empire, including the arrangements connected with the civil list and the imperial domains. But neither his devotion to civic duty nor to the administration of the affairs of the Grand Army could ward off disaster. Late in the year 1813 he took up the portfolio of military affairs. After the first abdication of Napoleon in 1814, Daru retired into private life, but aided Napoleon during the Hundred Days. After the second Restoration he became a member of the Chamber of Peers, in which he ably defended the cause of popular liberty against the attacks of the ultra-royalists. He died at Meulan on the 5th of September 1829.
Few men of the Napoleonic empire have been more generally admired and respected than Daru. On one occasion when he expressed a fear that he lacked all the gifts of a courtier, Napoleon replied, “Courtiers! They are common enough about me; I shall never be in want of them. What I want is an enlightened, firm and vigilant administrator; and that is why I have chosen you.” At another time Napoleon said, “Daru is good on all sides; he has good judgment, a good intellect, a great power for work, and a body and mind of iron.” The only occasion on which he is known to have sunk beneath the weight of his duties was in the course of writing letters at the emperor’s dictation for the third night in succession.
Of Daru’s literary works may be mentioned his Histoire de Venise, published at Paris in 7 vols. in 1819; the Histoire de Bretagne, in 3 vols. (Paris, 1826); a poetical translation of Horace (of which Le Brun remarked: “Je ne lis point Daru, j’aime trop mon Horace”); Discours en vers sur les facultés de l’homme (Paris, 1825), and Astronomie, a didactic poem in six cantos (Paris, 1820).
See the “Notice” by Viennet prefixed to the fourth edition of Daru’s Histoire de la république de Venise (9 vols., 1853), and three articles by Sainte-Beuve in Causeries du lundi, vol. ix. For the many letters of Napoleon to Daru see the Correspondance de Napoléon Ier (32 vols., Paris, 1858–1870). (J. Hl. R.)
DARWEN, a municipal borough in the Darwen parliamentary
division of Lancashire, England, 20 m. N.W. from Manchester
by the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1891) 34,192;
(1901) 38,212. It lies on the river Darwen, which traverses a
densely populated manufacturing district, and is surrounded by
high-lying moors. Darwen is a centre of the cotton trade and
has also blast furnaces, and paper-making, paper-staining and
fire-clay works. In the neighbourhood are collieries and stone
quarries. The market hall is the chief public building; there are
technical schools, a free library, and two public parks. Darwen
was incorporated in 1788. The corporation consists of a mayor,
six aldermen and eighteen councillors.
DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT (1809–1882), English naturalist,
author of the Origin of Species, was born at Shrewsbury on the
12th of February 1809. He was the younger of the two sons and
the fourth child of Dr Robert Waring Darwin, son of Dr Erasmus Darwin
(q.v.). His mother, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood
(1730–1795), died when Charles Darwin was eight years old.
Charles Darwin’s elder brother, Erasmus Alvey (1804–1881),
was interested in literature and art rather than science: on the
subject of the wide difference between the brothers Charles wrote
that he was “inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing
that education and environment produce only a small effect on
the mind of anyone, and that most of our qualities are innate”
(Life and Letters, London, 1887, p. 22). Darwin considered that
his own success was chiefly due to “the love of science, unbounded
patience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing
and collecting facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of
common sense” (l.c. p. 107). He also says: “I have steadily
endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis,
however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every
subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it” (l.c.
p. 103). The essential causes of his success are to be found in this
latter sentence, the creative genius ever inspired by existing
knowledge to build hypotheses by whose aid further knowledge
could be won, the calm unbiassed mind, the transparent honesty
and love of truth which enabled him to abandon or to modify his
own creations when they ceased to be supported by observation.
The even balance between these powers was as important as their
remarkable development. The great naturalist appeared in the
ripeness of time, when the world was ready for his splendid
generalizations. Indeed naturalists were already everywhere
considering and discussing the problem of evolution, although
Alfred Russel Wallace was the only one who, independently of
Darwin, saw his way clearly to the solution. It is true that
hypotheses essentially the same as natural selection were suggested
much earlier by W. C. Wells (Phil. Trans., 1813), and
Patrick Matthew (Naval Timber and Arboriculture, 1831), but
their views were lost sight of and produced no effect upon the
great body of naturalists. In the preparation for Darwin Sir
Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology played an important part,
accustoming men’s minds to the vast changes brought about by
natural processes, and leading them, by its lucid and temperate
discussion of Lamarck’s and other views, to reflect upon evolution.
Darwin’s early education was conducted at Shrewsbury, first for a year at a day-school, then for seven years at Shrewsbury School under Dr Samuel Butler (1774–1839). He gained but little from the narrow system which was then universal. In 1825 he went to Edinburgh to prepare for the medical profession, for which he was unfitted by nature. After two sessions his father realized this, and in 1828 sent him to Cambridge with the idea that he should become a clergyman. He matriculated at Christ’s College, and took his degree in 1831, tenth in the list of those who do not seek honours. Up to this time he had been keenly interested in sport, and in entomology, especially the collecting of beetles. Both at Edinburgh, where in 1826 he read his first scientific paper, and at Cambridge he gained the friendship of much older scientific men—Robert Edmond Grant and William Macgillivray at the former, John Stevens Henslow and Adam Sedgwick at the latter. He had two terms’ residence to keep after passing his last examination, and studied geology with Sedgwick. Returning from their geological excursion together in North Wales (August 1831), he found a letter from Henslow urging him to apply for the position of naturalist on the “Beagle,” about to start on a surveying expedition. His father at first disliked the idea, but his uncle, the second Josiah Wedgwood, pleaded with success, and Darwin started on the 27th of December 1831, the voyage lasting until the 2nd of October 1836. It is practically certain that he never left Great Britain after this latter date. After visiting the Cape de Verde and other islands of the Atlantic, the expedition surveyed on the South American coasts and adjacent islands (including the Galapagos), afterwards visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Keeling Island, Maldives, Mauritius, St Helena, Ascension; and Brazil, de Verdes and Azores on the way home. His work on the geology of the countries visited, and that on coral islands, became the subject of volumes which he published after his return, as well as his Journal of a Naturalist, and his other contributions to the official narrative. The voyage must be regarded as the real preparation for his life-work. His observations on the relation between animals in islands and those of the nearest continental areas, near akin and yet not the same, and between living animals and those most recently extinct and found fossil in the same country, here again related but not the same, led him even then to reflect deeply upon the modification of species. He had also been much impressed by “the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards” in South America. On his return home Darwin worked at his
