Next, the Royal Institution.  This is where, as I told you, you ought to be looking to Faraday’s place.  Have no scruple about your chemical knowledge; you won’t be required to train a college of students in abstruse analyses; and if you were, a year’s work would be quite enough to put you at ease.  What they want, and what you have, are clear powers of exposition—­so clear that people may think they understand even if they don’t.  That is the secret of Faraday’s success, for not a tithe of the people who go to hear him really understand him.

However, I am afraid that a delay must occur before you can get placed at the Royal Institution, as you cannot hold the Professorship until you have given a course of lectures there, and it would seem that there is no room for you this year.  However, I must try and learn more about this.

Under these circumstances the London Institution looks tempting.  I have been talking over the matter with Forbes, whose advice I look upon as first-rate in all these things, and he is decidedly of the opinion that you should take the London Institution if it is offered you.  He says that lecturing there and lecturing at other Institutions, and writing, you could with certainty make more than you at present receive, and that you would have the command of a capital laboratory and plenty of time.

Then as to position—­of which I was doubtful—­it appears that Grove has made it a good one.

It is of great importance to look to this point in London—­to be unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the highest places, and it was only my fear on this head that made me advise you to hesitate about the London Institution.  More consideration leads me to say, take that, if it will bring you up to London at once, so that you may hammer your reputation while it is hot.

However, consider all these things well, and don’t be hasty.  I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly.  Write to me if there is anything you want done, supposing always there is nobody who will do it better—­which is improbable.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[But this year of victory was not to pass away without one last blow from fate.  On November 18, Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had found a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and sincerity as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh.  The strong but delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon intellectual affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong characters, where each subordinated interest to ideal, and treated others by the measure of his own self-respect.  As early as March 1851 he had written:—­]

I wish you knew my friend Professor Forbes.  He is the best creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways.  A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific men.  Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend.  He is one of the few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a particle of independence or self-respect.