A few extracts from letters to his wife describe his occupation at the Congress, which involved too much “society” for his liking.]

August 4.

The Congress began with great eclat yesterday, and the latter part of Paget’s address was particularly fine.  After, there was the lunch at the Paget’s with the two Royalties.  After that, an address by Virchow.  After that, dinner at Sanderson’s, with a confused splutter of German to the neighbours on my right.  After that a tremendous soiree at South Kensington, from which I escaped as soon as I could, and got home at midnight.  There is a confounded Lord Mayor’s dinner this evening ("The usual turtle and speeches to the infinite bewilderment and delight of the foreigners,” August 6), and to-morrow a dinner at the Physiological Society.  But I have got off the Kew party, and mean to go quietly down to the Spottiswoodes [i.e. at Sevenoaks] on Saturday afternoon, and get out of the way of everything except the College of Surgeons’ Soiree, till Tuesday.  Commend me for my prudence.

[On the 5th he was busy all day with Government Committees, only returning to correct proofs of his address before the social functions of the evening.  Next morning he writes:—­]

I have been toiling at my address this morning.  It is all printed, but I must turn it inside out, and make a speech of it if I am to make any impression on the audience in St. James’ Hall.  Confound all such bobberies.

August 9.

I got through my address to-day as well as I ever did anything.  There was a large audience, as it was the final meeting of the Congress, and to my surprise I found myself in excellent voice and vigour.  So there is life in the old dog yet.  But I am greatly relieved it is over, as I have been getting rather shaky.

[When the Medical Congress was over, he joined his family at Grasmere for the rest of August.  In September he attended the British Association at York, where he read a paper on the “Rise and Progress of Palaeontology,” and ended the month with fishery business at Aberystwith and Carmarthen.

The above paper is to be found in “Collected Essays,” 4 page 24.  In it he concludes an historical survey of the views held about fossils by a comparison of the opposite hypothesis upon which the vast store of recently accumulated facts may be interpreted; and declaring for the hypothesis of evolution, repeats the remarkable words of the “Coming of Age of the Origin of Species,” that] “the paleontological discoveries of the last decade are so completely in accordance with the requirements of this hypothesis that, if it had not existed, the paleontologist would have had to invent it.”

[In February died Thomas Carlyle.  Mention has already been made of the influence of his writings upon Huxley in strengthening and fixing once for all, at the very outset of his career, that hatred of shams and love of veracity, which were to be the chief principle of his whole life.  It was an obligation he never forgot, and for this, if for nothing else, he was ready to join in a memorial to the man.  In reply to a request for his support in so doing, he wrote to Lord Stanley of Alderley on March 9:—­]