PS.—­Have just seen the Swiss “Times”; am intensely disgusted to find that while I was brooding over the calamities possibly consequent on your lending me a hand, that you have been at the Derby Statue, and are to make an oration apropos of the Priestley Statue in Birmingham on the 1st August!!!]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., July 22, 1874.

My dear Tyndall,

I hope you have been taking more care of your instep than you did of your leg in old times.  Don’t try mortifying the flesh again.

I was uncommonly amused at your disgustful wind-up after writing me such a compassionate letter.  I am as jolly as a sandboy so long as I live on a minimum and drink no alcohol, and as vigorous as ever I was in my life.  But a late dinner wakes up my demoniac colon and gives me a fit of blue devils with physical precision.

Don’t believe that I am at all the places in which the newspapers put me.  For example, I was not at the Lord Mayor’s dinner last night.  As for Lord Derby’s statue, I wanted to get a lesson in the art of statue unveiling.  I help to pay Dizzie’s salary, so I don’t see why I should not get a wrinkle from that artful dodger.

I plead guilty to having accepted the Birmingham invitation [to unveil the statue of Joseph Priestley].  I thought they deserved to be encouraged for having asked a man of science to do the job instead of some noble swell, and, moreover, Satan whispered that it would be a good opportunity for a little ventilation of wickedness.  I cannot say, however, that I can work myself up into much enthusiasm for the dry old Unitarian who did not go very deep into anything.  But I think I may make him a good peg whereon to hang a discourse on the tendencies of modern thought.

I was not at the Cambridge pow-wow—­not out of prudence, but because I was not asked.  I suppose that decent respect towards a Secretary of the Royal Society was not strong enough to outweigh University objections to the incumbent of that office.  It is well for me that I expect nothing from Oxford or Cambridge, having burned my ships so far as they were concerned long ago.

I sent your note on to Knowles as soon as it arrived, but I have heard nothing from him.  I wrote to him again to-night to say he had better let me see it in proof if he is going to print it.  I am right glad you find anything worth reading again in my old papers.  I stand by the view I took of the origin of species now as much as ever.

Shall I not see the address?  It is tantalising to hear of your progress, and not to know what is in it.

I am thinking of taking Development for the subject of my evening lecture, the concrete facts made out in the last thirty years without reference to Evolution. [I.e. at the British Association; he actually took “Animals as Automata.”] If people see that it is Evolution, that is Nature’s fault, and not mine.

We are all flourishing, and send our love.