204 LOSS AND GAIN 



And remembering the kind words about re-marriage that 

 had come to him from his friend's mother, he adds with a 

 look from his own history towards his friend's future : * I 

 can but hold the prospect for him deep down in a far off corner 

 of my heart.' 



The new era at home was rendered yet more happy by 

 the engagement of his elder daughter in the following spring 

 to Professor Dyer, now for two years established as Assistant 

 Director at Kew. As he confided to Darwin, the only objection 

 (a crumpled roseleaf) was 



that it is ridiculously apropos, i.e. commonplace, and reminds 

 me of Hogarth's industrious apprentice. I never had any 

 ambitious desires for my sons and daughters, and a good 

 scientific man though poor (if otherwise honest, as Sydney 

 Smith ? said of a poor man) is the best of all matches in 

 my eyes. . . . What especially pleases me is that he is just 

 the brother-in-law I should like my sons to have. 



The birth of a son (Joseph Symonds) in 1877 opened another 

 happy phase in his varied life. That the infant son of the 

 President of the Eoyal Society should visit Burlington House 

 was an unusual episode. 



To Mrs. Hodgson 



March 10, 1878. 



Hyacinth and I went to the Old Masters the other day, 

 the first dissipation ! either of us have had since my return. 

 She took the baby and left it at the Eoyal Society's rooms 

 with the Porter's wife, who has a baby of her own, and ' the 

 President's baby ' created quite a sensation in the House ! 

 What a ' rum world ' it is the more I think of my own life 

 and career, the more unintelligible it appears to me. I feel 

 as if I had been divested of my individuality every ten years 

 or so of my life, and then given quite another body and 

 mind. 



And though at times in these years memory could not but 

 cast lingering looks behind and catch the shadows of past 

 sorrows, still he could say ' nothing can be brighter than my 

 visible future, little as I now dare to trust to it.' (1878.) 



