1838 EARLY PURSUITS 11 



attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion my 

 curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two 

 or three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, 

 and none of the ordinary symptoms of dissection-poison 

 supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember 

 sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a last 

 chance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, 

 friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the 

 heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my 

 bed to the window on the bright spring morning after 

 my arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed 

 to come back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day 

 the faint odour of wood-smoke, like that which floated 

 across the farmyard in the early morning, is as good 

 to me as the "sweet south upon a bed of violets." I 

 soon recovered, but for years I suffered from occasional 

 paroxysms of internal pain, and from that time my 

 constant friend, hypochondriacal dyspepsia, commenced 

 his half-century of co-tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle. 



Some little time after his return from the voyage 

 of the Rattlesnake, Huxley succeeded in tracing his 

 good Warwickshire friends again. A letter of May 

 11, 1852, from one of them, Miss K. Jaggard, tells 

 how they had lost sight of the Huxleys after their 

 departure from Coventry ; how they were themselves 

 dispersed by death, marriage, or retirement; and 

 then proceeds to draw a lively sketch of the long 

 delicate -looking lad, which clearly refers to this 

 period or a little later. 



My brother and sister who were living at Grove Fields 

 when you visited there, have now retired from the cares 

 of business, and are living very comfortably at Learn- 



