390 MY LIFE 



was arrived at. I was to pay all the costs of the suit and 

 £l20, amounting to £277 \ while £410 still remained nomi- 

 nally due to me from Hampden. 



These terms were formally agreed to by Hampden and 

 his son-in-law, and were duly carried out. Of course I had 

 also to pay Mr. Walsh's costs in the action and my own 

 lawyer's bill for the settlement, as well as those of the action 

 for libel, and the various criminal prosecutions of Hampden I 

 had been compelled to undertake. 



Notwithstanding this settlement, however, Hampden was 

 by no means silenced. The very day after his recognizances 

 expired, in 1878, he began again with his abusive post-cards, 

 circulars, and other forms of libel. In 1885 he wrote and 

 printed a long letter to Huxley, as President of the Royal 

 Society, chiefly on his biblical discussion with Mr. Gladstone, 

 in a postscript to which he writes as follows : — 



" I have thoroughly exposed that degraded blackleg, 

 Alfred Russel Wallace, as I would every one who publicly 

 identifies himself with such grossly false science, which he 

 had the audacity to claim to be true ! If this man's experi- 

 ment on the Bedford canal was founded on fact, then the 

 whole of the Scriptures are false, from the first verse to the 

 last. But your whole system is based upon falsehood and 

 fraud, and refusal of all discussion ; and such characters as 

 Wallace seem to be your only champions." And he has an 

 appendix on " Modern Education Conducted on Wrong 

 Principles," in which we find such gems as this: — 



" When Mr. Mundella and Mr. Gladstone were schoolboys, 

 the educational professors were all newly indoctrinated with 

 the pretentious learning of the ' Principia ' of Newton. The 

 Bible was not regarded as of any authority upon such sub- 

 jects, and a flood of writers were all extolling the immortal 

 genius of the ' incomparable mathematician.' Newton and 

 his apple-tree were spoken of as the foundation of all true 

 philosophy. The plausibly sounding phrases ' Attraction ' 

 and ' Gravitation ' were in every pedagogue's mouth, and the 

 poor children were birched into repeating them every hour 

 of their lives." And so on for three closely printed pages. 



