1887 DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER 43 



address to the Technical Education Association at 

 Manchester on November 29, and looked forward to 

 attending the anniversary meeting of the Koyal 

 Society on his way home next day, and seeing the 

 Copley medal conferred upon his old friend. Sir J. 

 Hooker. However, unexpected trouble befell him. 

 First he was much alarmed about his wife, who had 

 been ill more or less ever since leaving Arolla. 

 Happily it turned out that there was nothing worse 

 than could be set right by a slight operation. But 

 nothing had been done when news came of the 

 sudden death of his second daughter on November 

 19. "I have no heart for anything just now," he 

 writes ; nevertheless, he forced himself to fulfil this 

 important engagement at Manchester, and in the end 

 the necessity of bracing himself for the undertaking 

 acted on him as a tonic. 



It is a trifle, perhaps, but a trifle significant of the 

 disturbance of mind that could override so firmly 

 fixed a habit, that the two first letters he wrote after 

 receiving the news are undated ; almost the only 

 omission of the sort I have found in all his letters 

 of the last twenty-five years of his life. 



His daughter's long illness had left him without 

 hope for months past, but this, as he confessed, did 

 not mend matters much. In his letters to his two 

 most intimate friends, he recalls her brilliant promise, 

 her happy marriage, her " faculty for art, which some 

 of the best artists have told me amounted to genius." 

 But he was naturally reticent in these matters, and 



