I beg leave, therefore, with much gratitude for the crowning honour of my life which you have conferred upon me, to be permitted to vacate the chair of the Society as soon as the business of this meeting is at an end.

[The settlement of the terms of the pension upon which, after thirty-one years of service under Government, he retired from his Professorship at South Kensington and the Inspectorship of Fisheries, took a considerable time.  The chiefs of his own department, that of Education, wished him to retire upon full pay, 1500 pounds.  The Treasury were more economical.  It was the middle of June before the pension they proposed of 1200 pounds was promised; the end of July before he knew what conditions were attached to it.

On June 20, he writes to Mr. Mundella, Vice-President of the Council:—­]

My dear Mundella,

Accept my warmest thanks for your good wishes, and for all the trouble you have taken on my behalf.  I am quite ashamed to have been the occasion of so much negotiation.

Until I see the Treasury letter, I am unable to judge what the 1200 pounds may really mean [I.e.  Whether he was to draw his salary of 200 pounds as Dean or not.], but whatever the result, I shall never forget the kindness with which my chiefs have fought my battle.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[On July 16, he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

The blessed Treasury can’t make up their minds whether I am to be asked to stay on as Dean or not, and till they do, I can’t shake off any of my fetters.

[Early in the year he had written to Sir John Donnelly of the necessity of resigning:—­]

Nevertheless [he added], it will be a sad day for me when I find myself no longer entitled to take part in the work of the schools in which you and I have so long been interested.

[But that “sad day” was not to come yet.  His connection with the Royal College of Science was not entirely severed.  He was asked to continue, as Honorary Dean, a general supervision of the work he had done so much to organise, and he kept the title of Professor of Biology, his successors in the practical work of the chair being designated Assistant Professors.]

“I retain,” [he writes,] “general superintendence as part of the great unpaid.”

It is a comfort [he writes to his son] to have got the thing settled.  My great desire at present is to be idle, and I am now idle with a good conscience.

[Later in the year, however, a change of Ministry having taken place, he was offered a Civil List Pension of 300 pounds a year by Lord Iddesleigh.  He replied accepting it:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, November 24, 1885.

My dear Lord Iddesleigh,

Your letters of the 20th November reached me only last night, and I hasten to thank you for both of them.  I am particularly obliged for your kind reception of what I ventured to say about the deserts of my old friend Sir Joseph Hooker.