REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY. 7] 



Piu-t of the evening- used to bo spent m the little overcrowded lihriir 

 before a blazing tire, while we discussed all manner of themes— sciei 



title or poetical, practical or philosophical, religious or aesthetic. Hux- 

 ley, like a true epicure, smoked the sweet little briarwood pipe, but 

 he seemed to take especial satisfaction in seeing me smoke very hirge 

 full-rtavored Havanas from a box which some Yankee admirer had scmt 

 him. Whatever subject came uppermost in our talk, 1 was always 

 impressed with the fullness and accuracy of his information and the 

 keenness of his judgments; but that is, of course, what any apprecia- 

 tive reader can gather from his writings. Unlike Spencer, he was an 

 omniverous reader. Of historical and literary knowledge, such as one 

 usually gets from books, Spencer had a great deal, and of an accui-ate 

 and well-digested sort. He had some incomprehensible way of ahsorl)- 

 ing it through the pores of his skin — at least, he never seemed to read 

 books. Huxley, on the other hand, seemed to read everything worth 

 reading — history, politics, metaphysics, poetry, novels, even books of 

 science; for perhaps it may not l)e superfluous to point out to the g(Mi- 

 eral world of readers that no great man of science owes his sclent itic 

 knowledge to books. Huxley's colossal knowledge of the animal king- 

 dom was not 1)ased upon the study of Cuvier, Baer, and other prede- 

 cessors, but upon direct personal examination of thousands of organ- 

 isms, living and extinct. He cherished a wholesome contempt for 

 mere ])ookishness in matters of science, and carried on war to the 

 knife against the stupid methods of education in vogue forty years 

 ago, when students were expected to learn something of chemistry or 

 palaeontology l)y reading about black oxide of manganese or the den- 

 tition of anoplotherium. A rash clergyman once, without furth(>r 

 equipment in natural history than some desultory reading, attacked 

 the Darwinian theory in some sundry magazine articles, in which he 

 made himself uncommonly merry at Huxley's expense*. This was 

 intended to draw the great man's tire; and as the batteries remaiiKHl 

 silent the author proceeded to write to Huxley, calling his attention 

 to th(> articles, and at the same time, with mock modesty, asking 

 advice as to the further study of these deep questions. Huxley's 

 answer was ])rief and to the point: "Take a cockroach and dissect it!" 

 Too exclusive devotion, however, to scalpel and microscope may 

 leave a man of science narrow and one-sided, dead to some of the most 

 interesting aspects of human life. But Huxley was keenly ali\ .' in all 

 directions, and would have enjoyed mastering all branches of knowl- 

 edo-e if the days had only been long enough. He found rest and ivc- 

 reation in change of themes, and after a long day's scuM.tihc work at 

 South Kensington would read Sybel's French Revolution, or Lang.' s 

 History of Materialism, or the last new novel, until th.' witching l.onr 

 of midnight. This reading was in various languages. W itlx.ut a 



