he gave you, an impression of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with the gentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength—­all this belonged to Huxley and to him alone.  The first glance magnetised his audience.  The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it.  The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy.  He was masculine in everything—­look, gesture, speech.  Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory or whatever else—­he had simplicity.  The force was in the thought and the diction, and he needed no other.  The voice was rather deep, low, but quite audible, at times sonorous, and always full.  He used the chest-notes.  His manner here, in the presence of this select and rather limited audience—­for the theatre of the Royal Institution holds, I think, less than a thousand people—­was exactly the same as before a great company whom he addressed at [Liverpool], as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  I remember going late to that, and having to sit far back, yet hearing every word easily; and there too the feeling was the same, that he had mastered his audience, taken possession of them, and held them to the end in an unrelaxing grip, as a great actor at his best does.  There was nothing of the actor about him, except that he knew how to stand still, but masterful he ever was.

Up to the time of his last illness, he regularly breakfasted at eight, and avoided, as far as possible, going out to that meal, a “detestable habit” as he called it, which put him off for the whole day.  He left the house about nine, and from that time till midnight at earliest was incessantly busy.  His regular lectures involved an immensity of labour, for he would never make a statement in them which he had not personally verified by experiment.  In the Jermyn Street days he habitually made preparations to illustrate the points on which he was lecturing, for his students had no laboratory in which to work out the things for themselves.  His lectures to working-men also involved as much careful preparation as the more conspicuous discourses at the Royal Institution.

This thoroughness of preparation had no less effect on the teacher than on the taught.  He writes to an old pupil:—­]

It is pleasant when the “bread cast upon the water” returns after many days; and if the crumbs given in my lectures have had anything to do with the success on which I congratulate you, I am very glad.

I used to say of my own lectures that if nobody else learned anything from them, I did; because I always took a great deal of pains over them.  But it is none the less satisfactory to find that there were other learners.