262 KEW: 1879-1885 



quiet one to Boston, which I should dearly enjoy and still look 

 forward to, but until I retire I see no chance of it.' 



But by that time circumstances had changed, though till 

 then the hope was constantly in the foreground. 



To Asa Gray 



April 5, 1885. 



I do indeed trust that California will set you both up, 

 and that we shall find you both nourishing when we cross the 

 Atlantic to visit you. This I assure you we have still in our 

 minds, and only to-day, when my wife said, can we not go 

 to Switzerland with the children this autumn ? I sternly 

 answered : No, we must lay by for a return trip to the Grays 

 next year, if possible and she meekly assented, or rather 

 joyfully consented. . . . 



Your account of the views in Mexico and the Cypresses 

 makes me quite green with envy, 



As older friends dropped out, the correspondence with 

 Huxley, always active, gradually takes a leading place in the 

 record of friendship. Huxley was eight years the younger, just 

 as much his junior as Darwin had been his senior. That also 

 was a lifelong friendship which lasted over forty years, un- 

 broken by a shadow of discord, but constantly strengthened 

 by fellowship in work and aims and proven trust in each 

 other's character. 



/ They had entered the same profession, for medicine was the 

 one practicable channel to biological science ; they had the 

 same after-career of scientific opportunity on an exploring ship 

 tempered by the personal regime of naval discipline ; they 

 had the same unceasing impulse to unriddle the palimpsest of 

 Nature and find a new basis for speculative truth in place of 

 the stifling infallibilities of the time ; they shared the struggle, 

 the obloquy and the triumph that were symbolised by their 

 friendship with Darwin. In the end, each in his turn was 

 President of the Eoyal Society ; and in the roll of the Society 

 their names stood next one another in the list of Copley and 

 Darwin medallists. 



As Huxley wrote of their friendship in 1888 : 



