340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



exposition, with which his printed books have made all readers in 

 America and England familiar. Yet it had more than that. You could 

 not listen to him without thinking more of the speaker than of his 

 science, more of the solid, beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, 

 more of his manly simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge 

 and his long services. His Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institu- 

 tion rivaled those of Tyndall in their interest and brilliance, and were 

 always keenly and justly popular. Yet, he has told us that at first he 

 had almost every fault a speaker could have. After his first Royal In- 

 stitution lecture he received an anonymous letter recommending him 

 never to try again, as whatever else he might be fit for, it was certainly 

 not for giving lectures. It is also said that after one of his first lectures, 

 'On the Relations of Animals and Plants/ at a suburban Athenaeum, a 

 general desire was expressed to the Council that they would never invite 

 that young man to lecture again. Quite late in life he told me, and 

 John Bright said the same thing, that he was always nervous when he 

 rose to speak, though it soon wore off when he warmed up to his sub- 

 ject. 



No doubt easy listening on the part of the audience means hard 

 working and thinking on the part of the lecturer, and, whether for the 

 cultivated audience at the Royal Institution or for one to workingmen, 

 he spared himself no pains to make his lectures interesting and instruc- 

 tive. There used to be an impression that Science was something up in 

 the clouds, too remote from ordinary life, too abstruse and too difficult 

 to be interesting; or else, as Dickens ridiculed it in 'Pickwick/ too 

 trivial to be worthy of the time of an intellectual being. 



Huxley was one of the foremost of those who brought our people to 

 realize that science is of vital importance in our life, that it is more 

 fascinating "than a fairy tale, more thrilling than a novel, and that any 

 one who neglects to follow the triumphant march of discovery, so start- 

 ling in its marvelous and unexpected surprises, so inspiring in its moral 

 influence and its revelations of the beauties and wonders of the world 

 in which we live and the universe of which we form an infinitesimal, but 

 to ourselves at any rate, an all-important part, is deliberately rejecting 

 one of the greatest comforts and interests of life, one of the greatest 

 gifts with which we have been endowed by Providence. 



But there is a time for all things under the sun, and we cannot fully 

 realize the profound interest and serious responsibilities of life unless 

 we refresh the mind and allow the bow to unbend. Huxley was full of 

 humor, which burst out on most unexpected occasions. I remember 

 one instance during a paper on the habits of spiders. The female spider 

 appears to be one of the most unsociable, truculent and bloodthirsty of 

 her sex. Even under the influence of love she does but temporarily 

 suspend her general hatred of all living beings. The courtship varies in 



