None in college, B.M.S. badly prepared.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[An incident which diversified one of the Gilchrist lectures to working men is thus recorded by the “Times” of January 23, 1867:—­]

A good example.

Last night, at the termination of a lecture on ethnology, delivered by Professor Huxley to an audience which filled the theatre of the London Mechanics’ Institute in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, the lecturer said that he had received a letter as he entered the building which he would not take the responsibility of declining to read, although it had no reference to the subject under consideration.  He then read the letter, which was simply signed “A Regular Attendant at Your Lectures,” and which in a few words drew attention to the appalling distress existing among the population out of work at the East End, and suggested that all those present at the lecture that night should be allowed the opportunity of contributing one or two pennies each towards a fund for their relief, and that the professor should become the treasurer for the evening.  This suggestion was received by the audience with marks of approval.  The professor said he would not put pressure on anyone; he would simply place his own subscription in one of the skulls on the table.  This he did, and all the audience coming on the platform, threw in money in copper and silver until the novel cash box was filled with coin which amounted to a large sum.  A gentleman present expressed a hope that the example set by that audience might be followed with good results wherever large bodies assembled either for educational or recreative purposes.

[At the end of April this year my father spent a week in Brittany with Dr. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock, rambling about the neighbourhood of Rennes and Vannes, and combining the examination of prehistoric remains with the refreshment of holiday making.

Few letters of this period exist.  The x Club was doing its work.  Most of those to whom he would naturally have written he met constantly.  Two letters to Professor Haeckel give pieces of his experience.  One suggests the limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his once saying that he himself had only twice been the aggressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged in a flanking movement; the other when a man of great public reputation had come forward to champion an untenable position of the older orthodoxy, and a blow dealt to his pretensions to historical and scientific accuracy would not only bring the question home to many who neglected it in an impersonal form, but would also react upon the value of the historical arguments with which he sought to stir public opinion in other spheres.  The other letter touches on the influence, at once calming and invigorating, as he had known it to the full for the last twelve years, which a wife can bring in the midst of outward struggles to the inner life of the home.]