RETIREMENT 177 



" The change here is wonderfully to the good. We are 

 perched more than a thousand feet above the sea, looking over 

 the Tuscan hills for twenty or thirty miles every way. It is 

 warm enough to sit with the window wide open and yet the air 

 is purer and more bracing than in any place we have visited. . , . 

 Then there is one of the most wonderful cathedrals to be seen 

 in all North Italy — free from all gaudy linery and atrocious bad 

 taste which have afflicted me all over South Italy. The town 

 is the quaintest place imaginable — built of narrow streets on 

 several steep hills to start with, and then apparently stirred up 

 with a poker to prevent monotony of effect " (Life, ii, p. 96). 



Huxley was back in England on April 8, and being 

 ordered by Sir Andrew Clark to give up all serious 

 work, resigned his Professorship and Fishery Inspector- 

 ship in May, immediately after his sixtieth birthday. At 

 this age he had been wont to declare men of science 

 ought to be strangled ! It was, however, arranged that 

 he should retain the title of Professor of Biology, and 

 asked to undertake some general superintendence at the 

 Royal College of Science, in the capacity of Honorary 

 Dean. The work of the chair was divided into botanical 

 and zoological moieties, entrusted to two assistant Pro- 

 fessors, D. W. Scott and G. B. Howes. The untiring 

 devotion of the latter, first as Demonstrator, and later as 

 Deputy Professor during Huxley's illness, had prevented 

 any serious hitches in the course for which the latter was 

 responsible as Professor. 



Huxley's retiring allowances, after thirty-one years' 

 Government service, were fixed at ^^1200 per annum, 

 and to this a Civil List Pension of ;^3oo was added 

 later in the year, on the initiative of Lord Iddesleigh. 

 Retirement, therefore, meant no loss of official income. 



In reply (November 24, 1885) to Lord Iddesleigh's 

 letter, the Pension was accepted in the following terms : — 



" With respect to your Lordship's offer to submit my name 

 M 



