262 KEW : 1879-1885 



quiet one to Boston, which I should dearly enjoy and still loo 

 forward to, but until I retire I see no chance of it.' 



But by that time circumstances had changed, though til 

 then the hope was constantly in the foreground. 



1 



ill 



To Asa Gray 



April 5, 1885. 



I do indeed trust that California will set you both up, 

 and that we shall find you both flourishing when we cross the 

 Atlantic to visit you. This I assure you we have still in our 

 minds, and only to-day, when my wife said, can we not go 

 to Switzerland with the children this autumn ? I sternly 

 answered : No, we must lay by for a return trip to the Grays 

 next year, if possible — and she meekly assented, or rather 

 joyfully consented. 



Your account of the views in Mexico and the Cypresses 

 makes me quite green with envy. 



As older friends dropped out, the correspondence with 

 Huxley, always active, gradually takes a leading place in the 

 record of friendship. Huxley was eight years the younger, just 

 as much his junior as Darwin had been his senior. That alsc 

 was > lifelong friendship which lasted over forty years, un- 

 broken by 'a shadow of discord, but constantly strengthened 

 by fellowship in work and aims and proven trust in each 

 other's 'character. 



They had entered the same profession, for medicine was th( 

 one practicable channel to biological science ; they had th( 

 same after-career of scientific opportunity on an exploring shij 

 tempered by the personal regime of naval discipline ; the} 

 had the same unceasing impulse to unriddle the palimpsest o 

 Nature and find a new basis for speculative truth in place o 

 the stifling infallibilities of the time ; they shared the struggle 

 the obloquy and the triumph that were symbolised by tnei 

 friendship with Darwin. In the end, each in his turn wa: 

 President of the Boyal Society ; and in the roll of the SocieJ 

 their names stood next one another in the list of Copley a 

 Darwin medallists. 



As Huxley wrote of their friendship in 1888 : 





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