There were the usual clerical attacks on the address, among the rest a particularly violent one from a Unitarian pulpit.  Writing to Mr. Samuelson on October 5 he says:—­]

Be not vexed on account of the godly.  They will have their way.  I found Mr. —­’s sermon awaiting me on my return home.  It is an able paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the ideas of the man whom he opposes.  At least that is the case if he imagines he brings me under the range of his guns.

[On October 2 he writes to Tyndall:—­]

I have not yet thanked you properly for your great contribution to the success of our meeting [i.e. his lecture “On the Scientific Uses of the Imagination"].  I was nervous over the passage about the clergy, but those confounded parsons seem to me to let you say anything, while they bully me for a word or a phrase.  It’s the old story, “one man may steal a horse while the other may not look over the wall.”

[Tyndall was not to be outdone, and replied:—­

The parsons know very well that I mean kindness; if I correct them I do it in love and not in wrath.

One more extract from a letter to Dr. Dohrn, under date of November 17.  The first part is taken up with a long and detailed description of the best English microscopes and their price, for Dr. Dohrn wished to get one; and my father volunteered to procure it for him.  The rest of the letter has a more general interest as giving his views on the great struggle between France and Germany then in progress, his distrust of militarism, and above all, his hatred of lying, political as much as any other:—­]

This wretched war is doing infinite mischief; but I do not see what Germany can do now but carry it out to the end.

I began to have some sympathy with the French after Sedan, but the Republic lies harder than the Empire did, and the whole country seems to me to be rotten to the core.  The only figure which stands out with anything like nobility or dignity, on the French side, is that of the Empress, and she is only a second-rate Marie-Antoinette.  There is no Roland, no Corday, and apparently no man of any description.

The Russian row is beginning, and the rottenness of English administration will soon, I suppose, have an opportunity of displaying itself.  Bad days are, I am afraid, in store for all of us, and the worst for Germany if it once becomes thoroughly bitten by the military mad dog.

The “happy family” is flourishing and was afflicted, even over its breakfast, when I gave out the news that you had been ill.

The wife desires her best remembrances, and we all hope you are better.