xviii Introduction 



Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once 

 were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and 

 purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere 

 literary form; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest 

 hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the exist- 

 ence of other countries and other civilizations, and of a 

 great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the old- 

 est nations in the world. By the study of what other book 

 could children be so much humanized and made to feel 

 that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like 

 themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between 

 two eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all 

 time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil, 

 even as they also are earning their payment for their 

 work?" 



Huxley's success as an educational leader was due not 

 to natural gifts as a speaker or writer but to depth of con- 

 viction, to steady growth, and to persistent self-improve- 

 ment. " I have a great love and respect for my native 

 tongue," he wrote in 1891, "and take great pains to use 

 it properly. Sometimes I write essays half-a-dozen 

 times before I can get them into the proper shape; 

 and I believe I become more fastidious as I grow older." 

 His creed was: "Say that which has to be said in such 

 language that you can stand cross-examination on each 

 word." 



His best writing is in his letters, where his humor, his 

 abounding vigor, his nimble fancy, his quick feeling for 

 analogy, his wide command of illustration, his passion for 

 directness find their amplest exhibition. He brought into 

 his writings the same " unity of plan " which he found 

 " in the thousands and thousands of diverse living con- 

 structions " that surrounded him. The force and vivid- 

 ness of his style find their explanation in the fact that he 



