These lectures to working men, no less than his profound interest and exhausting work on behalf of popular education, illustrate his intense belief that science is not solely a thing of the laboratory, but a vital factor in right living.  It was still true that the people perish for want of knowledge.  And as he said when talking of posthumous fame:  “If I am to be remembered at all, I should like to be remembered as one who did his best to help the people.”

Nor did he lack appreciation among those whom he tried thus to aid.  Professor Mivart tells the following story:—­

I recollect going [in 1874] with him and Mr. John Westlake, Q.C., to a meeting of artisans in the Blackfriars Road, to whom he gave a friendly address.  He felt a strong interest in working men, and was much beloved by them.  On one occasion, having taken a cab home, on his arrival there, when he held out his fare to the cabman, the latter replied:  “Oh no, Professor; I have had too much pleasure and profit from hearing you lecture to take any money from your pocket; proud to have driven you, Sir!”

Another story is told by Mr. Raymond Blaythwayt:—­

Only to-day I had a most striking instance of sentiment come beneath my notice.  I was about to enter my house, when a plain, simply dressed working man came up to me with a note in his hand, and, touching his hat, he said:  “I think this is for you, Sir”; and then he added:  “Will you give me the envelope, Sir, as a great favour?” I looked at it, and, seeing it bore the signature of Professor Huxley, I replied:  “Certainly I will; but why do you ask for it?” “Well,” said he; “it’s got Professor Huxley’s signature, and it will be something for me to show my mates and keep for my children.  He has done me and my like a lot of good; no man more.”

In these special lectures of his very best and in his other essays, which, however far-reaching, were always intelligible to plain readers, may be seen one side of his desire to spread clear thinking among the less instructed masses; another was his work on the first School Board.  By 1870 his health was already shaken by the heavy work which filled his days and nights; nevertheless, whatever the cost in time and labour and health, he felt it imperative to try, with all his power, to give rational shape to the new lines of universal education, and to revivify it with the fresh breath of the new renascence in aim and method.  Science must be represented in the new Parliament of Education, and there was no one else ready to undertake the part.  Moreover, he had already enjoyed some practical experience of the workings of elementary education while examiner under the Science and Art Department, the establishment of which he considered