Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 2

[With the year 1870 comes another turning-point in Huxley's career. From his return to England in 1850 till 1854 he had endured four years of hard struggle, of hope deferred; hi...

[Towards the end of September he went to the West country to try to improve his health before the session began again in London. Thus he writes, on September 26, to Mr. W.F. Col...

[Dyspepsia, that most distressing of maladies, had laid firm hold upon him. He was compelled to take entire rest for a time. But his first holiday produced no lasting effect, an...

[My father's health continued fairly good in 1874, and while careful to avoid excessive strain he was able to undertake nearly as much as before his illness outside his regular...

I cannot let this day go by without wishing you a happy New Year, and lamenting your absence from our customary dinner. But Hirst and Spencer and Michael Foster are coming, and...

[The last ten years had found Huxley gradually involved more and more in official duties. Now, with the beginning of 1881, he became yet more deeply engrossed in practical and a...

[On April 8, he landed at Folkestone, and stayed there a day or two before going to London. Writing to Sir J. Donnelly, he remarks with great satisfaction at getting home:--]

[The pressure of official work, which had been constantly growing since 1880, reached its highest point in 1883. Only one scientific memoir was published by him this year, and t...

[The year 1876 was again a busy one, almost as busy as any that went before. As in 1875, his London work was cut in two by a course of lectures in Edinburgh, and sittings of the...

[Much of the work noted down for 1878 reappears in my father's list for 1879. He was still at work upon, or meditating his Crayfish, his Introduction to Psychology, the Spirula...

[The controversy with Mr. Gladstone indicates the nature of the subject that Huxley took up for the employment of his newly obtained leisure. Chequered as this leisure was all t...

[In the year 1875 the bitter agitation directed against experimental physiology came to a head. It had existed in England for several years. In 1870, when President of the Briti...

[The earlier start was decided upon for the sake of one of his daughters; who had been ill. He went first to Evolena, but the place did not suit him, and four days after his arr...

[From this time forward the burden of ill-health grew slowly and steadily. Dyspepsia and the hyperchondriacal depression which follows in its train, again attacked Huxley as the...

[Huxley only delivered one address outside his regular work in 1875, on "Some Results of the 'Challenger' Expedition," given at the Royal Institution on January 29. For all thro...

[The year 1878 was the tercentenary of Harvey's birth, and Huxley was very busy with the life and work of that great physician. He spoke at the memorial meeting at the College o...

[In this year he delivered lectures and addresses on the "Geological History of Birds," at the Zoological Society's Gardens, June 7; on "Starfishes and their Allies," at the Roy...

[The year 1882 was a dark year for English science. It was marked by the death of both Charles Darwin and of Francis Balfour, the young investigator, of whom Huxley once said,]...

["In 1871" (to quote Sir M. Foster), "the post of Secretary to the Royal Society became vacant through the resignation of William Sharpey, and the Fellows learned with glad surp...

I have not received the last chapter from the printer yet. When I do I will finish revising, and then ask you to come and have a symposium over it.

[The following letter to Tyndall was called forth by an incident in connection with the starting of the "Nineteenth Century." Huxley had promised to help the editor by looking o...