LETTER FROM OXFORD 525 



A great commotion followed. Excitement rose high on 

 either side. A lady fainted and had to be carried out. The 

 hostile part of the audience was staggered and confused, not 

 subjected. With doubt still hot and opinion shaken, this was 

 the moment to strike anew with scientific argument, and 

 Hooker, though he hated public speaking, nerved himself to 

 come forward, and took his share in giving the Bishop ' such 

 a trouncing as he never got before.' 



Botanic Gardens, :0xford : July 2, 1860. 



DEAR DARWIN, I have just come from my last moon- 

 light saunter at Oxford and been soliloquizing over the 

 Radcliffe .and our old rooms at the corner, and cannot go 

 to bed without inditing a few lines to you, my dear old 

 Darwin. I came here on Thursday afternoon and im- 

 mediately fell into a lengthened reverie : without you 

 and my wife I am as dull as ditchwater, and crept about 

 the once familiar streets feeling like a fish out of water. I 

 swore I would not go near a Section and did not for two 

 days, but amused myself with the College buildings and 

 attempted sleeps in the sleepy gardens and rejoiced in my 

 indolence. Huxley and Owen had had a furious battle 

 over Darwin's absent body, at Section D, before my arrival, 

 of which more anon. H. was triumphant ; you and your 

 book forthwith became the topics of the day, and I d d 

 the days and double d d the topics too, and like a craven 

 felt bored out of my life by being woke out of my reveries 

 to become referee on Natural Selection, &c., &o., &c. On 

 Saturday I walked with my old friend of the Erebus, Capt. 

 Dayman, to the Sections and swore as usual I would not 

 go in ; but getting equally bored of doing nothing I did. 

 A paper of a Yankee donkey called Draper on ' Civilisation 

 according to the Darwinian Hypothesis,' or some such title, 

 was being read, and it did not mend my temper, for of all 

 the flatulent stuff and all the self-sufficient stuffers, these 



outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the end of the sentence) " to 

 discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to 

 make." f ..-.^ & iyr^4v#-*-'>iH 



' No doubt your Father's words were better than these, and they gained 

 effect from his clear deliberate utterance, but in outline and in scale this 

 represents truly what was said.' 



