I should have been home within a fortnight of the time I had originally fixed.  This would have been ample time to have enabled me to fulfil all the engagements I had made before starting; and Donnelly had given me to understand that “My Lords” would not trouble their heads about my stretching my official leave.  Nevertheless I was very glad to find the official extension (which was the effect of my wife’s and your and Bence Jones’s friendly conspiracy) awaiting me at Cairo.  A rapid journey home via Brindisi might have rattled my brains back into the colloid state in which they were when I left England.  Looking back through the past six months I begin to see that I have had a narrow escape from a bad breakdown, and I am full of good resolutions.

As the first-fruit of these you see that I have given up the School Board, and I mean to keep clear of all that semi-political work hereafter.  I see that Sandon (whom I met at Alexandria) and Miller have followed my example, and that Lord Lawrence is likely to go.  What a skedaddle!

It seems very hard to escape, however.  Since my arrival here, on taking up the “Times” I saw a paragraph about the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews.  After enumerating a lot of candidates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, “But we understand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance.”  It is really too bad if any one has been making use of my name without my permission.  But I don’t know what to do about it.  I had half a mind to write to Tulloch to tell him that I can’t and won’t take any such office, but I should look rather foolish if he replied that it was a mere newspaper report, and that nobody intended to put me up.

Egypt interested me profoundly, but I must reserve the tale of all I did and saw there for word of mouth.  From Alexandria I went to Messina, and thence made an excursion along the lovely Sicilian coast to Catania and Etna.  The old giant was half covered with snow, and this fact, which would have tempted you to go to the top, stopped me.  But I went to the Val del Bove, whence all the great lava streams have flowed for the last two centuries, and feasted my eyes with its rugged grandeur.  From Messina I came on here, and had the great good fortune to find Vesuvius in eruption.  Before this fact the vision of good Bence Jones forbidding much exertion vanished into thin air, and on Thursday up I went in company with Ray Lankester and my friend Dohrn’s father, Dohrn himself being unluckily away.  We had a glorious day, and did not descend till late at night.  The great crater was not very active, and contented itself with throwing out great clouds of steam and volleys of red-hot stones now and then.  These were thrown towards the south-west side of the cone, so that it was practicable to walk all round the northern and eastern lip, and look down into the Hell Gate.  I wished you were there to enjoy the sight as much as I did.  No lava was issuing from the great