People’s sense of beauty should be more robust.  I have had apocalyptic visions looking down Oxford Street at a sunset before now.

Ever, dear lad, your loving father,

T.H.  Huxley.

[After this he took his wife to Harrogate,] “just like Clapham Common on a great scale,” [where she was ordered to drink the waters.  For himself, it was as good as Ilkley, seeing that he needed] “nothing but fresh air and exercise, and just as much work that interests me as will keep my mind from getting ‘blue mouldy.’” [The work in this case was the chapter in the Life of Charles Darwin, which he had promised Mr. F. Darwin to finish before going abroad.

On July 10, he writes to Sir M. Foster on the rejection of the Home
Rule Bill:—­]

The smashing of the G.O.M. appears to be pretty complete, though he has unfortunately enough left to give him the means of playing an ugly game of obstruction in the next Parliament.

You have taken the shine out of my exultation at Lubbock’s majority—­though I confess I was disheartened to see so many educated men going in for the disruption policy.  If it were not for Randolph I should turn Tory, but that fellow will some day oust Salisbury as Dizzy ousted old Derby, and sell his party to Parnell or anybody else who makes a good bid.

We are flourishing on the whole.  Sulphide of wife joins with me in love.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[On the 21st he writes:—­]

The formation of Huxley sulphide will be brought to a sudden termination to-morrow when we return to London.  The process has certainly done my wife a great deal of good and I wish it could have gone on a week or two longer, but our old arrangements are upset and we must start with the chicks for Switzerland on the 27th, that is next Tuesday.

CHAPTER 2.19.

1886.

[The earlier start was decided upon for the sake of one of his daughters; who had been ill.  He went first to Evolena, but the place did not suit him, and four days after his arrival went on to Arolla, whence he writes on August 3:—­]

We reached Evolena on Thursday last...We had glorious weather Thursday and Friday, and the latter day (having both been told carefully to avoid over-exertion) the wife and I strolled, quite unintentionally, as far as the Glacier de Ferpecle and back again.  Luckily the wife is none the worse, and indeed, I think in which more tired of the two.  But we saw at once that Evolena was a mistake for our purpose, and were confirmed in that opinion by the deluge of rain on Saturday.  The hotel is down in a hole at the tail of a dirty Swiss village, and only redeemed by very good cooking.  So, Sunday being fine, I, E. and H. started up here to prospect, 18 miles up and down, and 2000 feet to climb, and did it beautifully.  It is just the place for us, at the tail of a glacier in the midst of a splendid amphitheatre of 11 to 12,000 feet snow heights, and yet not bare and waste, any quantity of stone-pines growing about...I rather long for the flesh-pots of Evolena—­cooking here being decidedly rudimentary—­otherwise we are very well off.