234 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. IX 



Engineering, Medicine, while it was to bring into 

 connection the various teaching bodies scattered over 

 London. The proposers themselves recognised that 

 the scheme was not ideal, but a compromise which at 

 least would not hamper further progress, and would 

 supersede the Gresham scheme, which they regarded 

 as a barrier to all future academic reform. 



The Association as thus constituted Huxley now 

 joined, and was immediately asked to accept the 

 Presidency, not that he should do any more militant 

 work than he was disposed to attempt, but simply 

 that he should sit like Moltke in his tent and keep an 

 eye on the campaign. 



He felt it almost a point of honour not to refuse 

 his best services to a cause he had always had at heart, 

 though he wrote : — 



There are some points in which I go further than your 

 proposals, but they are so much, to my mind, in the right 

 direction that I gladly support them. 



And again : — 



The Association scheme is undoubtedly a compromise — 

 but it is a compromise which takes us the right way, while 

 the former schemes led nowhere except to chaos. 



He writes to Sir W. H. Flower : — 



HoDESLEA, Eastbourne, 

 June 27, 1892. 



My dear Flower — I had quite given up the hope that 

 anj^thing but some wretched compromise would come of 

 the University Commission, when I found, to my surprise, 



