1871 HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADVERSARIES 43 



Huxley in the first months of the Board's existence has 

 been carried forward by others, and is now affecting the 

 minds of the half million of boys and girls in the Board 

 Schools of London, and indirectly the still greater number 

 in other schools throughout the land. 



I must further express my thanks to Bishop Barry 

 for permission to make use of the following passages 

 from the notes contributed by him to Dr. Gladstone : 



I had the privilege of being a member of his committee 

 for defining the curriculum of study, and here also the 

 religious question being disposed of I was able to follow 

 much the same line as his, and I remember being struck 

 not only with his clear-headed ability, but with his strong 

 commonsense, as to what was useful and practicable, and 

 the utter absence in him of doctrinaire aspiration after 

 ideal impossibilities. There was (I think) very little 

 under his chairmanship of strongly-accentuated difference 

 of opinion. 



In his action on the Board generally I was struck 

 with these three characteristics : First, his remarkable 

 power of speaking I may say, of oratory not only on 

 his own scientific subjects, but on all the matters, many 

 of which were of great practical interest and touched the 

 deepest feelings, which came before the Board at that 

 critical time. Had he chosen and we heard at that 

 time that he was considering whether he should choose 

 to enter political life, it would certainly have made 

 him a great power, ^/essibly a leader, in that sphere. 

 Next, what constantly appears in his writings, even 

 those of the most polemical kind a singular candour 

 in recognising truths which might seem to militate 

 against his own position, and a power of understanding 

 and respecting his adversaries' opinions, if only they 

 were strongly and conscientiously held. I remember his 

 saying on one occasion that in his earlier experience of sick- 



