824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



picnics were held under Burnham Beeclies, one or more on St. 

 George's Hill, Weybridge, and another in Windsor Forest. As 

 our spirits in those days had not been subdued by years, and as 

 we had the added pleasure of ladies' society, these gatherings were 

 extremely enjoyable. If Tyndall did not add to the life of our 

 party by his wit he did by his hilarity. But my special motive 

 for naming these rural meetings of the x is that I may mention a 

 fact which, to not a few, will be surprising and perhaps instruct- 

 ive. We sometimes carried with us to our picnic a volume of 

 verse, which was duly utilized after the repast. On one occasion, 

 while we reclined under the trees of Windsor Forest, Huxley read 

 to us Tennyson's " GEnone," and on another occasion we listened 

 to Tyndall's reading of Mrs. Browning's poem, " Lady Geraldine's 

 Courtship." The vast majority of people suppose that science and 

 poetry are antagonistic. Here is a fact which may perhaps cause 

 some of them to revise their opinions. 



From the impressions of Tyndall which these facts indirectly 

 yield, let me return to impressions more directly yielded. Though 

 it is scarcely needful to say anything about his sincerity, yet it 

 can not properly be passed over, since it was a leading trait in his 

 nature. It has been conspicuous to all, alike in his acts and his 

 words. The Belfast address to the British Association exhibited 

 his entire thought on questions which most men of science pass 

 over from prudential considerations. But in him there was no 

 spirit of compromise. It never occurred to him to ask what it was 

 politic to say, but simply to ask what was true. The like has of 

 late years been shown in his utterances concerning political mat- 

 ters shown, it may be, with too great an outspokenness. This 

 outspokenness was displayed, also, in private, and sometimes per- 

 haps too much displayed ; but every one must have the defects of 

 his qualities, and where absolute sincerity exists, it is certain now 

 and then to cause an expression of a feeling or opinion not ade- 

 quately restrained. But the contrast in genuineness between him 

 and the average citizen was very conspicuous. In a community 

 of Tyndalls (to make a wild supposition) there would be none of 

 that flabbiness characterizing current thought and action no 

 throwing overboard of principles elaborated by painful experience 

 in the past, and adoption of a hand-to-mouth policy un guided by 

 any principle. He was not the kind of man who would have voted 

 for a bill or a clause which he secretly believed would be injurious, 

 out of what is euphemistically called " party loyalty," or would 

 have endeavored to bribe each section of the electorate by ad cap- 

 tandum measures, or would have hesitated to protect life and prop- 

 erty for fear of losing votes. What he saw right to do he would 

 have done, regardless of proximate consequences. 



The ordinary tests of generosity are very defective. As rightly 



