No one can say what the future has in store for him, but at present I know of no inducement, not even the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, which would lead me, even temporarily and partially, to forsake that work again.

I am, dear sir, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[I give here a letter to me from Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, who also at one period was anxious to induce him to enter Parliament:—­

Lexden Park, Colchester, 4th November, 1898.

Dear Mr. Huxley,

I have met men who seemed to me to possess powers of mind even greater than those of your father—­his friend Henry Smith for example; but I never met any one who gave me the impression so much as he did, that he would have gone to the front in any pursuit in which he had seen fit to engage.  Henry Smith had, in addition to his astonishing mathematical genius, and his great talents as a scholar, a rare faculty of persuasiveness.  Your father used to speak with much admiration and some amusement of the way in which he managed to get people to take his view by appearing to take theirs; but he never could have been a power in a popular assembly, nor have carried with him by the force of his eloquence, great masses of men.  I do not think that your father, if he had entered the House of Commons and thrown himself entirely into political life, would have been much behind Gladstone as a debater, or Bright as an orator.  Whether he had the stamina which are required not only to reach but to retain a foremost place in politics, is another question.  The admirers of Prince Bismarck would say that the daily prayer of the statesman should be there “une bonne digestion et un mauvais coeur.”  “Le mauvais coeur” does not appear to be “de toute necessite,” but, assuredly, the “bonne digestion” is.  Given an adequate and equal amount of ability in two men who enter the House of Commons together, it is the man of strong digestion, drawing with it, as it usually does, good temper and power of continuous application, who will go furthest.  Gladstone, who was inferior to your father in intellect, might have “given points” to the Dragon of Wantley who devoured church steeples.  Your father could certainly not have done so, and in that respect was less well equipped for a lifelong parliamentary struggle.

I should like to have seen these two pitted against each other with that “substantial piece of furniture” between them behind which Mr. Disraeli was glad to shelter himself.  I should like to have heard them discussing some subject which they both thoroughly understood.  When they did cross swords the contest was like nothing that has happened in our times save the struggle at Omdurman.  It was not so much a battle as a massacre, for Gladstone had nothing but a bundle of antiquated prejudices wherewith to encounter your father’s luminous thought and exact knowledge.