234 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xiv 



aggravated, as time goes on, by the action of the Upper House 

 in repeatedly snubbing the Lower, about this question, I should 

 have thought it (from a Conservative point of view) good 

 policy to heal the sore. 



The talk of Class v. Mass is generally mere clap-trap ; but, 

 in this case, there is really no doubt that a fraction of the Classes 

 stands in the way of the fulfilment of a very reasonable demand 

 on the part of the Masses. 



A clear-headed man like Lord Salisbury would surely see 

 this if it were properly pressed on his attention. 



I do not presume to say whether it is practicable or con- 

 venient for the Leader of the Liberal Unionist party to take any 

 steps in this direction; and I should hardly have ventured to 

 ask you to take this suggestion into consideration if the in- 

 terest I have always taken in the D.W.S. Bill had not recently 

 been quickened by the marriage of one of my daughters as a 

 Deceased Wife's Sister. I am, etc. 



Meantime the effect of Eastbourne, which Sir John 

 Donnelly had induced him to try, was indeed wonderful. 

 He found in it the place he had so long been looking for. 

 References to his health read very differently from those 

 of previous years. He \valked up Beachy Head regularly 

 without suffering from any heart symptoms. And though 

 Beachy Head was not the same thing as the Alps, it made 

 a very efficient substitute for a while, and it \vas not till 

 April that the need of change began to make itself felt. 

 And so he made up his mind to listen no more to the eager 

 friends who wished him to pitch his tent near them at either 

 end of Surrey, but to settle dow<n at Eastbourne, and, by 

 preference, to build a house of the size and on the spot that 

 suited himself, rather than to take any existing house lower 

 down in the to\vn. He must have been a trifle irritated by 

 unsolicited advice when he wrote the following : 



It is very odd that people won't give one credit for common 

 sense. We have tried one winter here, and if we tried another 

 we should be just as much dependent upon the experience of 

 longer residents as ever we were. However, as I told X. I was 

 going to settle matters to-morrow, there won't be any oppor- 

 tunity for discussing that topic when he comes. If we had taken 

 W.'s house, somebody would have immediately told us that we 



