168 LIFE OP PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, vill 



should take the London Institution if it is offered you. 

 He says that lecturing there and lecturing at other 

 Institutions, and writing, you could with certainty make 

 more than you at present receive, and that you would 

 have the command of a capital laboratory and plentyof time. 



Then as to position of which I was doubtful it 

 appears that Grove l has made it a good one. 



It is of great importance to look to this point in 

 London to be unshackled by anything that may prevent 

 you taking the highest places, and it was only my fear 

 on this head that made me advise you to hesitate about 

 the London Institution. More consideration leads me to 

 say, take that, if it will bring you up to London at once, 

 so that you may hammer your reputation while it is hot. 



However, consider all these things well, and don't be 

 hasty. I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you 

 accordingly. Write to me if there is anything you want 

 done, supposing always there is nobody who will do it 

 better which is improbable. Ever yours, 



T. H. HOXLEY. 



But this year of victory was not to pass away 

 without one last blow from fate. On November 18, 

 Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had found 

 a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals 

 of truth and sincerity as himself, died suddenly at 

 Edinburgh. The strong but delicate ties that united 

 them were based not merely upon intellectual affinity, 

 but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong 

 characters, where each subordinated interest to ideal, 

 and treated others by the measure of his own self- 

 respect. As early as March 1851 he had written : 



1 Sir William Robert Grove, 1811-1896, the physicist and 

 lawyer, a judge 1871-87, who established the correlation of 

 physical forces, 1846. 



