272 EETIEEMENT, TO 1897 : BOTANICAL WORK 



great extent of smell and taste ; but his sight remained ; 

 and save that in 1904 one eye troubled him, he could repeat 

 contentedly at ninety as at eighty that working at the simple 

 microscope, his eyes were as good, his hand as steady and 

 agile, as when he had first begun such work. By that time, 

 too, his patience, as he said, ought to be inexhaustible. And 

 though in 1895 he admits to Mr. La Touche, ' What you say 

 about anxiety pressing on the old is true indeed ; I feel very 

 acutely that " the Grasshopper is a burden," ' he adds with 

 a quietly sardonic touch, ' Then too I have so little to com- 

 plain of and so much to be thankful for, that any little 

 grievance takes Cyclopean form.' 



These ' little grievances ' are no doubt the things he men- 

 tions in 1897 when sympathising with his friend's worries : 



Certainly the Clergy are, taken as a whole, the most 

 long-suffering class of the community ; and then you, 

 like me, suffer from what I regard as .the worst evil of old 

 age, the accumulation of petty duties, calls and inroads 

 upon one's time, temper and pocket. The very calls for 

 subscriptions mount up to something appalling, and most 

 of them are reasonable calls (which is the worst of it !). 



For himself, it was as he prophesied it would be with 

 his friend George Maw (May 26, 1886) : 



I do hope you may feel your release from business 

 trammels as keenly as I do that from official drudgery 

 though I fancy you should enjoy it more than I do, as you 

 had not the many bright spots in the daily intercourse 

 with people worth knowing that I had. 



It will, I suppose, be with you as with me, no cessation 

 from work that would be no pleasure ; but the feeling 

 that you can break away at any time with ' none daring 

 to make you afraid,' and best of all, without the feeling 

 that you are neglecting duty, is a most enjoyable state of 

 existence for me. 



Now he had the work he desired, not the work he was 

 constrained to do. He still had a year to serve on the R.S. 

 Council ; he continued on that of the Geographical Society 



