1881 WORK AS FISHERY INSPECTOR 299 



by his quaint remark to me, " We have begun very well, 

 we have sat upon a duke." l 



If, however, a love of argument and controversy 

 occasionally led him into hot water, I do not think that 

 his polemical tendencies ever cost him a friend. His 

 antagonists must have recognised the fairness of his 

 methods, and must have been susceptible to the charm of 

 the man. The high example which he set in controversy, 

 moreover, was equally visible in his ordinary life. Of all 

 the men I have ever known, his ideas and his standard 

 were on the whole the highest. He recognised that the 

 fact of his religious views imposed on him the duty of 

 living the most upright of lives, and I am very much of 

 the opinion of a little child, now grown into an accom- 

 plished woman, who, when she was told that Professor 

 Huxley had no hope of future rewards, and no fear of 

 future punishments, emphatically declared : " Then I 

 think Professor Huxley is the best man I have ever known." 



Extracts from his letters home give some further 

 idea of the kind of work entailed. Thus in March 

 and again in May he was in Wales, and writes : 



CEOMFFYRATELLIONPTKROCH, 

 May 24. 



Mr. Barrington's very pretty place about five miles 

 from Abergavenny, wherein I write, may or may not 

 have the name which I have written on at the top of the 



1 Of tliis he wrote home on March 15, 1881 : "Somebody pro- 

 duced the Punch yesterday and showed it to me, to the great 



satisfaction of the Duke of , who has attended our two 



meetings. I nearly had a shindy with him at starting, but sweet- 

 ness and light (in my person) carried the day." This Punch 

 contained the cartoon of Huxley in nautical costume riding on a 

 salmon ; contrary to the custom of Punch, it made an unfair hit 

 in appending to his name the letters s. d. Never was any one 

 who deserved the imputation less. 



