I have been talking to some of my friends about stimulating the Royal Society to address the Universities on the subject of giving greater weight to scientific acquirements, and I find that there is a better prospect than I had hoped for of getting President and Council to move.  But I am not quite sure about the course which it will be wisest for us to adopt, and I beg a little counsel on that matter.

I presume that we had better state our wishes in the form of a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, and that we may prudently ask for the substitution of modern languages (especially German) and elementary science for some of the subjects at present required in the literary part of the examinations of the scientific and medical faculties.  If we could gain this much it would be a great step, not only in itself, but in its reaction on the schools.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, December 26, 1885.

My dear Foster,

Please read the enclosed letter from Jowett (confidentially).  I had suggested the possibility of diminishing the Greek and Latin for the science and medical people, but that, you see, he won’t have.  But he is prepared to load the classical people with science by way of making things fair.

It may be worth our while to go in for this, and trust to time for the other.  What say you?

Merry Christmas to you.  The G.O.M. is going to reply, so I am likely to have a happy New Year!  I expect some fun, and I mean to make it an occasion for some good earnest.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[So ends 1885, and with it closes another definite period of Huxley’s life.  Free from official burdens and official restraints, he was at liberty to speak out on any subject; his strength for work was less indeed, but his time was his own; there was hope that he might still recover his health for a few more years.  And though the ranks of his friends were beginning to thin, though he writes (May 20, to Professor Bartholomew Price):—­]

The “gaps” are terrible accompaniments of advancing life.  It is only with age that one realises the full truth of Goethe’s quatrain:—­

Eine Bruche ist ein jeder Tag, etc.

[and again:—­]

The x Club is going to smithereens, as if a charge of dynamite had been exploded in the midst of it.  Busk is slowly fading away.  Tyndall is, I fear, in a bad way, and I am very anxious about Hooker:—­

[Still the club hung together for many years, and outside it were other devoted friends, who would have echoed Dr. Foster’s good wishes on the last day of the year:—­

A Happy New Year! and many of them, and may you more and more demonstrate the folly of strangling men at sixty.

CHAPTER 2.18.

1886.