It was probably after a meeting of the x Club, in the freedom of which debate was likely to be of the liveliest, that Spencer wrote accusing himself of losing his temper, and received the following reply:—­

    Your conscience has been treating you with the most extreme
    and unjust severity.

I recollect you looked rather savage at one point in our discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made upon you.

What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don’t know, but, so far as I am concerned, I assure you I have often said that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better than yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of the extent to which I have tried your patience.

So you see that you have what the Buddhists call a stock of accumulated merit, envers moi; and if you should ever feel inclined to “d——­ my eyes,” you can do so and have a balance left.

    Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to
    apologize to me about any such matters, but believe me (d—­ned
    or und—­d),—­Ever yours faithfully....

If he was comrade and brother among the friends of his own generation, he was a living inspiration to the friends of the next generation, especially to the pupils and teaching lieutenants who worked in close touch with him.  His younger disciples always felt that in acute criticism and vast learning nobody surpassed him; but what they yet more admired than his learning was his wisdom.  It was a delight to read an essay fresh from his pen, but an ever so much higher delight to hear him talk for five minutes.  “His,” says Professor Hubrecht, “was the most beautiful and the most manly intellect I ever knew of.”  The personal affection as well as admiration he inspired may be gathered from Sir E. Ray Lankester’s words:  “There has been no man or woman whom I have met in my journey through life whom I have loved and regarded as I have him, and I feel that the world has shrunk and become a poor thing now that his splendid spirit and delightful presence are gone from it.”  And Professor Jeffery Parker concludes his Recollections of his old chief with these words:—­

Whether a professor is usually a hero to his demonstrator I cannot say; I only know that, looking back across an interval of many years and a distance of half the circumference of the globe, I have never ceased to be impressed with the manliness and sincerity of his character, his complete honesty of purpose, his high moral standard, his scorn of everything mean or shifty, his firm determination to speak what he held to be truth at whatever cost of popularity.  And for these things “I loved the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.”

Indeed, his relations with his demonstrators were typical of his judgment of men, his distinction between the essential and the unessential, which made him a successful administrator.