“He gave workmen of his best.  The substance of Man’s Place in Nature, one of the most successful and popular of his writings, and of his Crayfish, perhaps the most perfect zooelogical treatise ever published, was first communicated to them.  In one of the last communications I had with him, I asked his views as to the desirability of discontinuing the workmen’s lectures at Jermyn Street, since the development of workmen’s colleges and institutes was regarded by some as rendering their continuance unnecessary.  He replied, almost with indignation, ’With our central situation and resources we ought to be in a position to give the workmen that which they cannot get elsewhere,’ adding that he would deeply deplore any such discontinuance.”

Huxley had no natural facility for speech.  He tells us that at first he disliked it, and that he had a firm conviction that he would break down every time he opened his mouth.  The only two possible faults of a public speaker which he believed himself to be without, were “talking at random and indulging in rhetoric.”  With practice, he lost this earlier hesitancy, and before long became known as one of the finest speakers of his time.  Certain natural gifts aided him; his well-set figure and strong features, of which the piercing eyes and firm, trap-like mouth were the most striking, riveted attention, while his voice had a wide range and was beautifully modulated.  But it was above all things the matter and not the manner of his speech that commanded success.  He cared little or nothing for the impression he might make—­everything for the ideas which he wished to convey.  He was concerned only to set forth these ideas in their clear and logical order, convinced in his own mind that, were the facts as he knew them placed before the minds of his hearers, only one possible result could follow.  The facts had convinced him:  they must equally convince any honest and intelligent person placed in possession of them.  He had not the smallest intention of overbearing by authority or of swaying by skilfully aroused emotion.  Such weapons of the orator seemed to him dishonest in the speaker and most perilous to the audience.  For him, speaking on any subject was merely a branch of scientific exposition; when emotion was to be roused or enthusiasm to be kindled the inspiration was to come from the facts and not from the orator.  The arts he allowed himself were those common to all forms of exposition; he would explain a novel set of ideas by comparison with simpler ideas obvious to all his listeners; and he sought to arrest attention or to drive home a conclusion by some brilliant phrase that bit into the memory.  These two arts, the art of the phrase-maker and the art of explaining by vivacious and simple comparison, he brought to a high perfection.  The fundamental method of his exposition was simply the method of comparative anatomy, the result of a habit of thinking which makes it impossible to have