460 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. 



After he had retired to Eastbourne, his grandchildren 

 reaped the benefit of his greater leisure. In his age his love 

 of children brimmed over with undiminished force, unim- 

 peded by circumstances. He would make endless fun with 

 them, until one little mite, on her first visit, with whom 

 her grandfather was trying to ingratiate himself with a vast 

 deal of nonsense, exclaimed : " Well, you are the curious'test 

 old man I ever seen." 



Another, somewhat older, developed a great liking for 

 astronomy under her grandfather's tuition. One day a vis- 

 itor, entering unexpectedly, was astonished to find the pair 

 of them kneeling on the floor in the hall before a large sheet 

 of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram 

 of the solar system on a large scale, with a little pellet 

 and a large ball to represent earth and sun, while the 

 child was listening with the closest attention to an ac- 

 count of the planets and their movements, which he knew 

 so well how to make simple and precise without ever 

 being dull. 



Children seemed to have a natural confidence in the 

 expression of mingled power and sympathy which, espe- 

 cially in his later years, irradiated his " square, wise, swarthy 

 face," * and proclaimed to all the sublimation of a broad 

 native humanity tried by adversity and struggle in the pur- 

 suit of noble ends. It was the confidence that an appeal 

 would not be rejected, whether for help in distress, or for 

 the satisfaction of the child's natural desire for knowl- 

 edge. 



Spirit and determination in children always delighted 

 him. His grandson Julian, a curly-haired rogue, alternately 

 cherub and pickle, was a source of great amusement and 

 interest to him. The boy must have been about four years 

 old when my father one day came in from the garden, where 

 he had been diligently watering his favourite plants with a 

 big hose, and said : " I like that chap ! I like the way he 



* " There never was a face, I do believe" (wrote Sir Walter Besant 

 of the portrait by John Collier), "wiser, more kindly, more beautiful 

 for wisdom and the kindliness of it, than this of Huxley." The 

 Queen, Nov. 16, 1895. 



