Beyond pottering away at my Gentians and doing a little with that extraordinary Cynanchum I have been splendidly idle.  After three weeks of the ascetic life of Arolla, we came here to acclimatise ourselves to lower levels and to fatten up.  I go straight through the table d’hote at each meal, and know not indigestion.

My wife has fared not so well, but she is all right again now.  We go home by easy stages, and expect to be in Marlborough Place on Tuesday.

With all our best wishes to Lady Hooker and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The second visit to Arolla did as much good as the first.  Though unable to stay more than a week or two in London itself, he was greatly invigorated.  His renewed strength enabled him to carry out vigorously such work as he had put his hand to, and still more, to endure one of the greatest sorrows of his whole life which was to befall him this autumn in the death of his daughter Marian.

The controversy which fell to his share immediately upon his return, has already been mentioned.  This was all part of the war for science which he took as his necessary portion in life; but he would not plunge into any other forms of controversy, however interesting.  So he writes to his son, who had conveyed him a message from the editor of a political review:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, October 19, 1887.

No political article from me!  I have had to blow off my indignation incidentally now and then lest worse might befall me, but as to serious political controversy, I have other fish to fry.  Such influence as I possess may be most usefully employed in promoting various educational movements now afoot, and I do not want to bar myself from working with men of all political parties.

So excuse me in the prettiest language at your command to Mr. A.

[Nevertheless politics very soon drew him into a new conflict, in defence, be it said, of science against the possible contamination of political influences.  Professor (now Sir) G.G.  Stokes, his successor in the chair of the Royal Society, accepted an invitation from the University of Cambridge to stand for election as their member of Parliament, and was duly elected.  This was a step to which many Fellows of the Royal Society, and Huxley in especial, objected very strongly.  Properly to fulfil the duties of both offices at once was, in his opinion, impossible.  It might seem for the moment an advantage that the accredited head of the scientific world should represent its interests officially in Parliament; but the precedent was full of danger.  Science being essentially of no party, it was especially needful for such a representative of science to keep free from all possible entanglements; to avoid committing science, as it were, officially to the policy of a party, or, as its inevitable consequence, introducing political considerations into the choice of a future President.