You will certainly have to run down to Margate and see my wife—­or never expect forgiveness in this world.

I shall be at the Science Schools, South Kensington, to-morrow till four—­and if I do not see you before that time I shall come and look you up at the Palace Hotel.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

“Is it not provoking,” [he writes to his wife,] “that we should all be dislocated when I should have been so glad to show him a little attention?” [Still, apart from this weekend at the seaside, Professor Marsh was not entirely neglected.  He writes in his “Recollections” (page 6):—­

How kind Huxley was to everyone who could claim his friendship, I have good cause to know.  Of the many instances which occur to me, one will suffice.  One evening in London at a grand annual reception of the Royal Academy, where celebrities of every rank were present, Huxley said to me,] “When I was in America, you showed me every extinct animal that I had read about, or even dreamt of.  Now, if there is a single living lion in all Great Britain that you wish to see, I will show him to you in five minutes.” [He kept his promise, and before the reception was over, I had met many of the most noted men in England, and from that evening, I can date a large number of acquaintances, who have made my subsequent visits to that country an ever-increasing pleasure.

As for his summer occupations, he writes to his eldest daughter on July 2:—­]

No, young woman, you don’t catch me attending any congresses I can avoid, not even if F. is an artful committee-man.  I must go to the British Association at Dublin—­for my sins—­and after that we have promised to pay a visit in Ireland to Sir Victor Brooke.  After that I must settle myself down in Penmaenmawr and write a little book about David Hume—­before the grindery of the winter begins.

[The meeting of the British Association took place this year in the third week of August at Dublin.  Huxley gave an address in the Anthropological subsection ("Informal Remarks on the Conclusions of Anthropology” “British Association Report” 1878 pages 573-578.), and on the 20th received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Dublin University, the Public Orator presenting him in the following words:—­

Praesento vobis Thomam Henricum Huxley—­hominem vere physicum—­hominem facundum, lepidum, venustum—­eundem autem nihil (philosophia modo sua lucem praeferat) reformidantem—­ne illud quidem Ennianum,

Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis.

The extract above given contains the first reference to the book on Hume (In the “English Men of Letters” series, edited by Mr. John Morley.), written this summer as a holiday occupation at Penmaenmawr.  The speed at which it was composed is remarkable, even allowing for his close knowledge of the subject, acquired many years before.  Though he had been “picking at it” earlier in the summer, the whole of the philosophical part was written during September, leaving the biographical part to be done later.