586 THE JOUENEY TO PALESTINE 



To Huxley he made a similar profession of good resolutions, 

 and received a reply in kind. 



Kew : December 12, 1860. 



We are not likely to meet except at the Linnean, for I 

 have inaugurated a new era in my life, and am going to take 

 the world and all that is therein as coolly as I can. When 

 perfect myself I shall commence operating on you. What 

 is the use of tearing your life to pieces before you are 50 ? 

 which you are (and I was) doing as fast as possible. 



From T. H. Huxley 



Jermyn Street : December 19, I860. 



And finally as to your resolutions, my holy pilgrim, they 

 will be kept about as long as the resolutions of the anchorites 

 who are thrown into the busy world. Or, I won't say that, 

 for assm-edly you will take the world ' as coolly as you 

 can ' — and so shall I. But that coolness amounts to the 

 red heat of properly constructed mortals. 



It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. 

 You and I, if we last ten years longer — and you by a long 

 while first — will be the representatives of our respective 

 lines in the country. In that capacity we shall have certain 

 duties to perform, to ourselves, to the outside world, and 

 to Science. W^e shall have to swallow praise, which is no 

 great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and 

 irritations, which will involve a good deal of unquestion- 

 able pain. Don't flatter yourself that there is any moral 

 chloroform by which either you or I can render ourselves 

 insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly. 



It is assuredly of no great use to tear one's life to pieces 

 before one is fifty. But the alternative, for men constituted 

 on the high pressure tubular boiler principle like ourselves, 

 is to lie still and let the devil have his own way. And I will 

 be torn to pieces before I am forty sooner than see that. 



Fortified by a few months of this regime, he can point 

 the moral to his friend Anderson in Calcutta (April 22, 1861) 

 apropos of T. Thomson's break- down in India. 



That cursed Society of Calcutta and Sunday labour 

 in entertaining is at the root of all the mischief, and I do 



