Darwin, he wrote and declined the offer; and if
it had not been for the immediate intervention of his uncle, Mr. Josiah
Wedgwood (to whose house he went the following day to begin the shooting
season), who took quite a different view of the proposition, the
"Journal of Researches during the Voyage of H.M.S. _Beagle_," by Charles
Darwin, would never have been written.
At length, however, after much preparation and many delays, the
_Beagle_ sailed from Plymouth on December 27th, 1831, and five years
elapsed before Darwin set foot again on English soil. The period,
therefore, in Darwin's life which we find covered by his term at
Edinburgh and Cambridge, until at the age of 22 he found himself
suddenly launched on an entirely new experience full of adventure and
fresh association, was spent by Wallace in a somewhat similar manner in
so far as his outward objective in life was more or less distinct from
the pursuits which gradually dawned upon his horizon, though they were
followed as a "thing apart" and not as an ultimate end.
With Wallace's removal into Bedfordshire an entirely new life opened up
before him.
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