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 collections, first at Cambridge for three months and then in London. His pocket-book for 1837 contains the words: “In July opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck from about the month of previous March [while still on the voyage and just over twenty-eight years old] on character of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts (especially latter) origin of all my views.” From 1838 to 1841 he was secretary of the Geological Society, and saw a great deal of Sir Charles Lyell, to whom he dedicated the second edition of his Journal. On the 29th of January 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer. They lived in London until September 1842, when they moved to Down, which was Darwin’s home for the rest of his life. His health broke down many times in London, and remained precarious during the whole of his life. The immense amount of work which he got through was only made possible by the loving care of his wife. For eight years (1846 to 1854) he was chiefly engaged upon four monographs on the recent and fossil Cirripede Crustacea (Roy. Soc., 1851 and 1854; Palaeontograph. Soc., 1851 and 1854). Towards the close of this work Darwin became very wearied of it, especially of the synonymy. For a time he hoped to start a movement which should discourage the habit of appending the name of the describer to the name of the species, a custom which he thought led to bad and superficial work. From this time he was engaged upon the numerous lines of inquiry which led to the great work of his life, the Origin of Species, published in November 1859.