We find ourselves very well off.  The hotel is perched up 1800 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the west and of the Urner See on the south.  On the north we have the Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is very good and fresh.  There are plenty of long walks to be had without much fatigue, which suits the wife.  Leonard promises to have very good legs of his own with plenty of staying power.  I have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he has plenty of vigour and endurance.  But he is not thirteen yet and I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on a visit to a glacier.  I began to tell him something about the glaciers the other day, but I was promptly shut up with, “Oh, yes!  I know all about that.  It’s in Dr. Tyndall’s book.”—­which said book he seems to me to have got by heart.  He is the sweetest little fellow imaginable; and either he has developed immensely in the course of the last year, or I have never been so much thrown together with him alone, and have not had the opportunity of making him out.

You are a fatherly old bachelor, and will not think me a particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a power of goose about him.

I suppose you know that in company with yourself and Hooker, the paternal gander (T.H.H.) has been honoured by the King of Sweden and made into a Polar Goose by the order of the North Star.  Hooker has explained to the Swedish Ambassador that English officials are prohibited by order in Council from accepting foreign orders, and I believe keeps the cross and ribbon on these conditions.  If it were an ordinary decoration I should decline with thanks, but I am told it is a purely scientific and literary affair like the Prussian “pour le merite”; so when I get back I shall follow Hooker’s line.

I met Laugel on board the Luzerne steamboat the other day, and he told me that you were at the Belalp—­gallivanting as usual, and likely to remain there for some time.  So I send this on the chance of finding you.

With best love from us all, ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

I am as well as I ever was in my life—­regularly set up—­in token whereof I have shaved off my beard.

[In another letter to his wife, dated August 8, from Baden, there is a very interesting passage about himself and his aims.  He has just been speaking about his son’s doings at school:—­]

I have been having a great deal of talk with myself about my future career too, and I have often thought over what you say in the letter you wrote to the Puy.  I don’t quite understand what —­ meant about the disputed reputation, unless it is a reputation for getting into disputes.  But to say truth I am not greatly concerned about any reputation except that of being entirely honest and straightforward, and that reputation I think and hope I have.