In Westminster Abbey there repose, almost side by side, by no conscious
design yet with deep significance, the mortal remains of Isaac Newton
and of Charles Darwin. "'The Origin of Species,'" said Wallace, "will
live as long as the 'Principia' of Newton." Near by are the tombs of Sir
John Herschel, Lord Kelvin and Sir Charles Lyell; and the medallions in
memory of Joule, Darwin, Stokes and Adams have been rearranged so as to
admit similar memorials of Lister, Hooker and Alfred Russel Wallace. Now
that the plan is completed, Darwin and Wallace are together in this
wonderful galaxy of the great men of science of the nineteenth century.
Several illustrious names are missing from this eminent company;
foremost amongst them being that of Herbert Spencer, the lofty master of
that synthetic philosophy which seemed to his disciples to have the
proportions and qualities of an enduring monument, and whose
incomparable fertility of creative thought entitled him to share the
throne with Darwin. It was Spencer, Darwin, Wallace, Hooker, Lyell and
Huxley who led that historic movement which garnered the work of Lamarck
and Buffon, and gave new direction to the ceaseless interrogation of
nature to discover the "how" and the "why" of the august progression of
life.

Looking over the long list of the departed whose names are enshrined in
our Minster, one has sorrowfully to observe that contemporary opinion of
their place in history and abiding worth was not infrequently astray;
that memory has, indeed, forgotten their works; and their memorials
might be removed to some cloister without loss of respect for the dead,
perhaps even with the silent approval of their own day and generation
could it awake from its endless sleep and review the strange and
eventful course of human life since they left "this bank and shoal of