286 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XI 



you a very patient listener, and what is more a very 

 thankful one. Ever yours, T. H. HUXLEY. 



Tyndall replied with no less frankness, thanking 

 him for the friendly promptitude of his letter, and 

 explaining that he had meant to speak privately on 

 the matter, but had been forestalled by the subject 

 coming up when it did. And he wound up by de- 

 claring that it would be too absurd to admit the 

 power of such an occasion " to put even a momentary 

 strain upon the cable which has held us together for 

 nine and twenty years." 



At the very end of the year, George Eliot died. 

 A proposal was immediately set on foot to inter her 

 remains in Westminster Abbey, and various men of 

 letters pressed the matter on the Dean, who was un- 

 willing to stir without a very strong and general 

 expression of opinion. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 who had urged him to join in memorialising the 

 Dean, Huxley replied as follows : 



4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, 

 Dec. 27, 1880. 



MY DEAR SPENCER Your telegram which reached 

 me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inas- 

 much as I had just been talking with Morley, and agree- 

 ing with him that the proposal for a funeral in West- 

 minster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who 

 desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should 

 attend George Eliot to her grave. 



It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be 

 bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with 

 less provocation) with the raking up of past histories, 



