182 LIFE AND FBIENDSHIP AT KEW 



merit in the branches, hailed him, and they exchanged greetings 

 and fun. As they walked back, they were met by one of the 

 Hooker boys. Hooker told him of the adventure ; the spirit 

 of rivalry was stirred, whereupon he set them on a challenge 

 climb up the cables of the great flagstaff. The result has 

 faded from memory ; the picture that remains is of the central 

 figure ordering them down when honour was satisfied. So, 

 too, he always looked in on the children's parties ; Prof. Oliver 

 remembers his appearing from under the table as a lion, and 

 a very fine lion he made. 



It was this same buoyancy of spirit that made it so difficult 

 to induce him to talk of the past. In a moment he was back 

 in the present and the future, the things that were being done, 

 the things that still might be accomplished. 



His unceasing interest in the education of his sons, as they 

 reached school age, is reflected in his letters both to Darwin, 

 whose sons were past that age, and to Huxley, whose cares 

 in that direction were beginning. In 1872 Charles Hooker was 

 at the International College at Isleworth, under Dr. Leonhard 

 Schmitz, a modern school, where the main stress was laid on 

 science and modern languages. Brian was at a preparatory 

 school. It was disappointing to find that at a scientific school 

 science was not yet emancipated from bookish methods, while 

 at a literary school the headmaster did not know what was 

 inside his books of literature. 



To T. H. Huxley 



Q g 1 ^ (Christmas 1872.) 



about!" am disgusted with the so-called Science teaching at the 



work irl a ti ona l> and have written a sharp remonstrance to 



too ! He : ^ * s an utter snam > worse by far than nothing, 



* 



reme 

 * L 



atec * to ^ rm ^ tne tmn g into contempt. 



> Brian brings from Wey bridge, as a school 

 a y of Chaucer, with all its obscenity, verbatim 

 the position pi ^ re p ro duced, a sweet thing for an ingenuous 

 at first. Still,^ii g j gen ^ a $he\l into that camp, and am 

 of keeping their t is a mistake, and that the Master (a Kev. 

 way for themselvel Chaucer and got it as a prize for another 

 Bad workmansbn examined in the " Faery Queene." I 



