The best thing, from an aesthetic point of view, that could be done with Rome would be to destroy everything except St. Paolo fuori le Mure, of later date than the fourth century.

But you will have had enough of my scrawl, and your mother wants to add something.  She is in great force, and is gone prospecting to some Palazzo or other to tell me if it is worth seeing.

Ever your loving father,

T.H.  Huxley.

Hotel Victoria, Rome, Via dei due Macelli, January 25, 1885.

My dear Donnelly,

Best thanks for the telegram which arrived the day before yesterday and set my mind at ease.

I have been screwing up the old machine which I inhabit, first with quinine and now with a form of strychnia (which Clark told me to take) for the last week, and I have improved a good deal—­whether post hoc or proper hoc in the present uncertainty of medical science I decline to give any opinion.

The weather is very cold for Rome—­ice an eighth of an inch thick in the Ludovisi Garden the other morning, and every night it freezes, but mostly fine sunshine in the day. (This is a remarkable sentence in point of grammar, but never mind.) The day before yesterday we came out on the Campagna, and it then was as fresh and bracing a breeze as you could get in Northumberland.

We are very comfortable and quiet here, and I hold on—­till it gets warmer.  I am told that Florence is detestable at present.  As for London, our accounts make us shiver and cough.

News about the dynamiting gentry just arrived.  A little more mischief and there will be an Irish massacre in some of our great towns.  If an Irish Parnellite member were to be shot for every explosion I believe the thing would soon stop.  It would be quite just, as they are practically accessories.

I think —­ would do it if he were Prime Minister.  Nothing like a thorough Radical for arbitrary acts of power!

I must be getting better, as my disgust at science has ceased, and I have begun to potter about Roman geology and prehistoric work.  You may be glad to learn that there is no evidence that the prehistoric Romans had Roman noses.  But as I cannot find any particular prevalence of them among the modern—­or ancient except for Caesar—­Romani, the fact is not so interesting as it might appear, and I would not advise you to tell —­ of it.

Behold a Goak—­feeble, but promising of better things.

My wife unites with me with love to Mrs. Donnelly and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following letter refers to the fourth edition of the “Lessons in Elementary Physiology,” in the preparation of which Dr. Foster had been helping during the summer:—­]

Hotel Victoria, Rome, Via dei due Macelli, February 1, 1885.

My dear Foster,

Anything more disgraceful than the way in which I have left your letter of more than a fortnight ago unanswered, I don’t know.  I thought the wife had written about the leave (and she thought I had, as she has told you), but I knew I had not answered the questions about the title, still less considered the awful incubus (x 10,000 dinners by hepatic deep objection) of the preface.