6 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my 

 pinafore wrong side forwards in order to represent a 

 surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the 

 kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one 

 Sunday morning when the rest of the family were at 

 church. That is the earliest indication of the strong 

 clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spence'r 

 has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for 

 the most part remained in a latent state. 



There remains no record of his having been a 

 very precocious child. Indeed, it is usually the eldest 

 child whose necessary companionship with his elders 

 wins him this reputation. The youngest remains a 

 child among children longer than any other of his 

 brothers and sisters. 



One talent, however, displayed itself early. The 

 faculty of drawing he inherited from his father. 

 But on the queer principle that training is either un- 

 necessary to natural capacity or even ruins it, he 

 never received regular instruction in drawing; and 

 his draughtsmanship, vigorous as it was, and a 

 genuine medium of artistic expression as well as an 

 admirable instrument in his own especial work, 

 never reached the technical perfection of which it 

 was naturally capable. 



The amount of instruction, indeed, of any kind 

 which he received was scanty in the extreme. For a 

 couple of years, from the age of eight to ten, he was 

 given a taste of the unreformed public school life, 

 where, apart from the rough and ready mode of 

 instruction in vogue and the necessary obedience 



