By the way, is there any type-writer who is to be trusted in Oxford?  Some time ago I sent a manuscript to a London type-writer, and to my great disgust I shortly afterwards saw an announcement that I was engaged on the topic.

[On the following day he writes to his wife, who was staying with her youngest daughter in town:—­]

The Vice-Chancellor has written to me and I have fixed May—­exact day by and by.  Mrs. Romanes has written a crispy little letter to remind us of our promise to go there, and I have chirrupped back.

[The “chirrup” ran as follows:—­]

Hodeslea, November 1, 1892.

My dear Mrs. Romanes,

I have just written to the Vice-Chancellor to say that I hope to be at his disposition any time next May.

My wife is “larking”—­I am sorry to use such a word, but what she is pleased to tell me of her doings leaves me no alternative—­in London, whither I go on Thursday to fetch her back—­in chains, if necessary.  But I know, in the matter of being “taken in and done for” by your hospitable selves, I may, for once, speak for her as well as myself.

Don’t ask anybody above the rank of a younger son of a Peer—­because I shall not be able to go in to dinner before him or her—­and that part of my dignity is naturally what I prize most.  Would you not like me to come in my P.C. suit?  All ablaze with gold, and costing a sum with which I could buy, oh! so many books!

Only if your late experiences should prompt you to instruct your other guests not to contradict me—­don’t.  I rather like it.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

Bon Voyage!  You can tell Mr. Jones [The hotel-keeper in Madeira.] that I will have him brought before the Privy Council and fined, as in the good old days, if he does not treat you properly.

[This letter was afterwards published in Mrs. Romanes’ Life of her husband, and three letters on that occasion, and particularly that in which Huxley tried to guard her from any malicious interpretation of his jests, are to be found on page 332.

On the afternoon of May 18, 1893, he delivered at Oxford his Romanes Lecture, on “Evolution and Ethics,” a study of the relation of ethical and evolutionary theory in the history of philosophy, the text of which is that while morality is necessarily a part of the order of nature, still the ethical principle is opposed to the self-regarding principle on which cosmic evolution has taken place.  Society is a part of nature, but would be dissolved by a return to the natural state of simple warfare among individuals.  It follows that ethical systems based on the principles of cosmic evolution are not logically sound.  A study of the essays of the foregoing ten years will show that he had more than once enunciated this thesis, and it had been one of the grounds of his long-standing criticism of Mr. Spencer’s system.

The essence of this criticism is given in portions of two letters to Mr. F.J.  Gould, who, when preparing a pamphlet on “Agnosticism writ Plain” in 1889, wrote to inquire what was the dividing line between the two Agnostic positions.]