I am afraid I must deny myself at present.

I am glad you liked the sermon.  Did you see the “Devonshire man’s” attack in the “Pall Mall?”

I have been wasting my time in polishing that worthy off.  I would not have troubled myself about him, if it were not for the political bearing of the Celt question just now.

My wife sends her love to all you.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The reference to the “Devonshire Man” is as follows:—­Huxley had been speaking of the strong similarity between Gaul and German, Celt and Teuton, before the change of character brought about by the Latin conquest; and of the similar commixture, a dash of Anglo-Saxon in the mass of Celtic, which prevailed in our western borders and many parts of Ireland, e.g.  Tipperary.

The “Devonshire Man” wrote on January 18 to the “Pall Mall Gazette,” objecting to the statement that “Devonshire men are as little Anglo-Saxons as Northumbrians are Welsh.”  Huxley replied on the 21st, meeting his historical arguments with citations from Freeman, and especially by completing his opponent’s quotation from Caesar, to show that under certain conditions, the Gaul was indistinguishable from the German.  The assertion that the Anglo-Saxon character is midway between the pure French or Irish and the Teutonic, he met with the previous question, Who is the pure Frenchman?  Picard, Provencal, or Breton? or the pure Irish?  Milesian, Firbolg, or Cruithneach?

But the “Devonshire Man” did not confine himself to science.  He indulged in various personalities, to the smartest of which, a parody of Sydney Smith’s dictum on Dr. Whewell, Huxley replied:—­]

“A Devonshire Man” is good enough to say of me that “cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible.”  With your permission, I propose to cut up “A Devonshire Man”; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or to the latter category.

[For this he was roundly lectured by the “Spectator” on January 29, in an article under the heading “Pope Huxley.”  Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the controversy, he was chidden for the abusive language of the above paragraph, and told that he was a very good anatomist, but had better not enter into discussions on other subjects.

The same question is developed in the address to the Ethnological Society later in the year and in “Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology” (see above), and reiterated in an address from the chair in Section D at the British Association in 1878 at Dublin, and in a letter to the “Times” for October 12, 1887, apropos of a leading article upon “British Race-types of To-day.”

Letter-writing was difficult under such pressure of work, but the claims of absent friends were not wholly forgotten, though left on one side for a time, and the warm-hearted Dohrn, could not bear to think himself forgotten, managed to get a letter out of him—­not on scientific business.]