398 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xxn 



Details apart, the cardinal situation was reversed. The 

 genius of the place had indeed altered. The representatives 

 of the party, whose prophet had once contemptuously come 

 here to anathematise the ' Origin," returned at length to 

 the same spot to admit if not altogether ungrudgingly 

 the greatness of the work accomplished by Darwin. 



Once under promise to go, he could not escape without 

 the " few words " which he now found so tiring ; but he took 

 the part which assured him greatest freedom, as seconder 

 of the vote of thanks to the president for his address. The 

 study of an advance copy of the address raised an " almost 

 overwhelming temptation ' to criticise certain statements 

 contained in it ; but this would have been out of place in 

 seconding a vote of thanks ; and resisting the temptation, 

 he only ' conveyed criticism," as he writes to Professor 

 Lewis Campbell, " in the form of praise " : going so far as 

 to suggest " it might be that, in listening to the deeply 

 interesting address of the President, a thought had occasion- 

 ally entered his mind how rich and profitable might be the 

 discussion of that paper in Section D" (Biology). It was 

 not exactly an off-hand speech. Writing to Sir M. Foster 

 for any good report which might appear in an Oxford paper, 

 he says : 



I have no notes of it. I wrote something on Tuesday night, 

 but this draft is no good, as it was metamorphosed two or three 

 times over on Wednesday. 



One who was present and aware of the whole situation 

 once described how he marked the eyes of another interested 

 member of the audience, who knew that Huxley was to 

 speak, but not what he meant to say, turning anxiously 

 whenever the president reached a critical phrase in the ad- 

 dress, to see how he would take it. But the expression of 

 his face told nothing; only those who knew him well could 

 infer a suppressed impatience from a little twitching of his 

 foot. 



Of this occasion Professor Henry F. Osborn, one of his 

 old pupils, writes in his " Memorial Tribute to Thomas H. 

 Huxley" (Transactions of the N. Y. Acad. Soc. vol. xv.) : 



