Can you tell me what I shall have to do in the dim and distant future?  I suppose I shall have to go and swear somewhere (I am always ready to do that on occasion).  Is admission to the awful presence of Her Majesty involved?  Shall I have to rig up again in that Court suit, which I hoped was permanently laid up in lavender?  Resolve me these things.

We shall be here I expect at least another week; and bring up at Gloucester about the 3rd September.  Hope to get back to Hodeslea latter part of September.

Ever yours faithfully.

T.H.  Huxley.

To Sir J.D.  Hooker.

August 20.

You will have seen that I have been made a P.C.  If I had been offered to be made a police constable I could not have been more flabbergasted than I was when the proposition came to me a few weeks ago.  I will tell you the story of how it all came about when we meet.  The Archbishopric of Canterbury is the only object of ambition that remains to me.  Come and be Suffragan; there is plenty of room at Lambeth and a capital garden!

[To his youngest daughter:—­]

Cors-y-Gedol Hotel, Barmouth, August 22, 1892.

Dearest Babs,

If Lord Salisbury had known my address, M—­ and I should have had our little joke out before leaving Saundersfoot [Where he had been staying with his daughter.], as the letter was dated 16th.  It must be a month since Lord Cranbrook desired Donnelly to find out if I would accept the P.C., and as I heard no more about it up to the time of dissolution, I imagined there was a hitch somewhere.  And really, the more I think of it the queerer does it seem, that a Tory and Church Government should have delighted to honour the worst-famed heretic in the three kingdoms.

I am sure Donnelly has been at the bottom of it, as he is the only person to whom I ever spoke of the fitness of the P.C. for men of science and letters.

The queer thing is that his chief and Lord Salisbury listened to the suggestion.

Tell Jack he is simply snuffed out—­younger sons of peers go with the herd of Barts and knights, I believe.  But a table of precedence is not to be had for love or money—­and my anxiety is wearing.

This place is as perfectly delightful as Aberystwith was t’other...

With best love to you all.

Ever your Pater.

To Mrs. W.K.  Clifford.

Cors-y-Gedol Hotel, Barmouth, August 22, 1892.

My dear Lucy,

I am glad to think that it is the honours that blush and not the recipient, for I am past that form of vascular congestion.

It was known that the only peerage I would accept was a spiritual one; and as Her Majesty shares the not unnatural prejudice which led her illustrious predecessor (now some time dead) to object to give a bishopric to Dean Swift, it was thought she could not stand the promotion of Dean Huxley; would see * him in fact... * This is a pun.