12 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



ington. ... I suppose you remember Mr. Joseph Russell, 

 who used to live at Avon Dassett. He is now married 

 and gone to live at Grove Fields, so that it is still occupied 

 by a person of the same name as when you knew it. But 

 it is very much altered in appearance since the time when 

 such merry and joyous parties of aunts and cousins used 

 to assemble there. I assure you we have often talked of 

 " Tom Huxley " (who was sometimes one of the party), 

 looking so thin and ill, and pretending to make hay with 

 one hand, while in the other he held a German book ! 

 Do you remember it ? And the picnic at Scar Bank 1 

 And how often too your patience was put to the test in 

 looking for your German books which had been hidden 

 by some of those playful companions who were rather less 

 inclined for learning than yourself? 



It is interesting to see from this letter and from a 

 journal, to be quoted hereafter, that he had thus 

 early begun to teach himself German, an under- 

 taking more momentous in its consequences than the 

 boy dreamed of. The knowledge of German thus 

 early acquired was soon of the utmost service in 

 making him acquainted with the advance of biological 

 investigation on the Continent at a time when few 

 indeed among English men of science were able to 

 follow it at first hand, and turn the light of the 

 newest theories upon their own researches. 



It is therefore peculiarly interesting to note the 

 cause which determined the young Huxley to take 

 up the study of so little read a language. I have 

 more than once heard him say that this was one half 

 of the debt he owed to Carlyle, the other half being 

 an intense hatred of shams of every sort and kind. 



