fatigue, and yesterday I was as miserable as an owl in sunshine.  Something perhaps must be put down to the relapse which our poor girl had a week ago, and which became known to us in a terrible way.  She had apparently quite recovered, and arrangements were made for their going abroad, and now everything is upset.  I warned her husband that this was very likely, but did not sufficiently take the warning to myself.

You are taking a world of trouble for me, and Donnelly writes I am to do as I like so far as they are concerned.  I have heard nothing from the Home Office, and I suppose it would be proper for me to write if I want any more leave.  I really hardly know what to do.  I can’t say I feel very fit for the hurly-burly of London just now, but I am not sure that the wholesomest thing for me would not be at all costs to get back to some engrossing work.  If my poor girl were well, I could perhaps make something of the dolce far niente, but at present one’s mind runs to her when it is not busy in something else.

I expect we shall be here a week or ten days more—­at any rate, this address is safe—­afterwards to Florence.

What am I to do in the Riviera?  Here and at Florence there is always some distraction.  You see the problem is complex.

My wife, who is very lively, thanks you for your letter (which I have answered) and joins with me in love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Writing on the same day to Sir J. Evans, he proposed a considerable alteration in the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society.]

You know that I served a seven years’ apprenticeship as Secretary, and that experience gave me very solid grounds for the conviction that, with the present arrangements, a great deal of the time of the Secretaries is wasted over the almost mechanical drudgery of proof-reading.

[He suggests new arrangements, and proceeds:—­]

At the same time it would be very important to adopt some arrangement by which the “Transactions” papers can be printed independently of one another.

Why should not the papers be paged independently and be numbered for each year.  Thus—­“Huxley Idleness and Incapacity in Italy.”  “Phil.  Trans.” 1885 6.

People grumble at the delay in publication, and are quite right in doing so, though it is impossible under the present system to be more expeditious, and it is not every senior secretary who would slave at the work as Stokes does...

But it is carrying coals to Newcastle to talk of such business arrangements as these to you.

The only thing I am strong about, is the folly of going on cutting blocks with our Secretarial razors any longer.

I am afraid I cannot give a very good account of myself.

The truth of the answer to Mallock’s question “Is life worth living?”—­that depends on the liver—­is being strongly enforced upon me in the hepatic sense of liver, and I must confess myself fit for very little.  A week hence we shall migrate to Florence and try the effect of the more bracing air.  The Pincio is the only part of Rome that is fit to live in, and unfortunately the Government does not offer to build me a house there.