468 LIFE O F PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. 



Like the old Greek sage and statesman, my father might 

 have declared that old age found him ever learning. Not 

 indeed with the fiery earnestness of his young days of stress 

 and storm ; but with the steady advance of a practised 

 worker who cannot be unoccupied. History and philoso- 

 phy, especially biblical criticism, composed his chief reading 

 in these later years. 



Fortune had ceased her buffets ; broken health was re- 

 stored ; and from his resting-place among his books and his 

 plants he watched keenly the struggle which had now passed 

 into other hands, still ready to strike a blow if need be, 

 or even, on rare occasions, to return to the fighting line, 

 as when he became a leader in the movement for London 

 University reform. 



His days at Eastbourne, then, were full of occupation, if 

 not the occupation of former days. The day began as 

 early ; he never relaxed from the rule of an eight o'clock 

 breakfast. Then a pipe and an hour and a half of letter- 

 writing or working at an essay. Then a short expedition 

 around the garden, to inspect the creepers, tend the saxi- 

 frages, or see how the more exposed shrubs could best be 

 sheltered from the shrivelling winds. The gravelled terrace 

 immediately behind the house was called the Quarterdeck ; 

 it w^as the place for a brisk patrolling in uncertain weather 

 or in a north wind. In the lower garden was a parallel 

 walk protected from the south by a high double hedge of 

 cypress and golden elder, designed for shelter from the 

 summer sun and southerly winds. 



Then would follow another spell of -work till near one 

 o'clock ; the weather might tempt him out again before 

 lunch ; but afterwards he was certain to be out for an hour 

 or two from half-past two. However hard it blew, and 

 Eastbourne is seldom still, the tiled walk along the sea-wall 

 always offered the possibility of a constitutional. But the 

 high expanse of the Downs was his favourite walk. The 

 air of Beachy Head, 560 feet up, was an unfailing tonic. 

 In the summer he used to keep a look-out for the little 

 flowers of the short, close turf of the chalk which could 

 remind him of his Alpine favourites, in particular the curious 



