This is the account any third person would give you of what I am and of what I am doing.  He would probably add that I was very ambitious and desirous of occupying a high place in the world’s estimation.  Therein, however, he would be mistaken.  An income sufficient to place me above care and anxiety, and free scope to work, are the only things I have ever wished for or striven for.  But one is obliged to toil long and hard for these, and it is only now that they are coming within my grasp.  I gave up the idea of going to Edinburgh because I doubted whether leaving London was wise.  Recently I have been tempted to put up for a good physiological chair which is to be established at Oxford; but the Government propose to improve my position at the School of Mines, and there is every probability that I shall now permanently remain in London.  Indeed, it is high time that I should settle down to one line of work.  Hitherto, as you see by the somewhat varied list of my duties, etc., above, I have been ranging over different parts of a very wide field.  But this apparent desultoriness has been necessary, for I knew not for what branch of science I should eventually have to declare myself.  There are very few appointments open to men of science in this country, and one must take what one can get and be thankful.

My health was very bad some years ago, and I had great fear of becoming a confirmed dyspeptic, but thanks to the pedestrian tours in the Alps I have taken for the past two years, I am wonderfully better this session, and feel capable of any amount of work.  It was in the course of one of these trips that I went, as you have rightly heard, half way up Mont Blanc.  But I was not in training and stuck at the Grands Mulets, while my three companions went on.  I spent seventeen hours alone on that grand pinnacle, the latter part of the time in great anxiety, for I feared my friends were lost; and as I had no guide my own neck would have been in considerable jeopardy in endeavouring to return amidst the maze of crevasses of the Glacier des Bois.  But it was glorious weather and the grandest scenery in the world.  In the previous year I saw much of the Bernese and Monte Rosa country, journeying with a great friend of mine well known as a natural philosopher, Tyndall, and partly seeking health and partly exploring the glaciers.  You will find an article of mine on that subject in the “Westminster Review” for 1857.

I used at one time to write a good deal for that Review, principally the Quarterly notice of scientific books.  But I never write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to my taste.  The articles you refer to are not mine, as, indeed, you rightly divined.  The only considerable book I have translated is Kolliker’s Histology—­in conjunction with Mr. Busk, an old friend of mine.  All translation and article writing is weary work, and I never do it except for filthy lucre.  Lecturing I do not like much better; though one way or another I have to give about sixty or seventy a year.