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Rh cultivated; he had no ambition for that roundness of development which is a fetich of modern times; he did not fritter away his time and energy in directions in which he could not excel. It is not meant to hold up his luck in this respect as exemplary good fortune, but only to emphasize the way in which it told on his success. He was not less happy in the exterior circumstances of his life, and in those things which come by a kind of hazard. His appointment to the Beagle was a Napoleonic opportunity, and in looking back he realized its value to the full: "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me thirty miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose." But one ought not to exaggerate the element of chance; and though Captain Fitz-roy had continued to disapprove of Darwin's nose, and his uncle had not interfered to overcome the elder Darwin's objection to the voyage on the score that it would be an unbecoming adventure for a prospective clergyman, and on