172 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VIII 



Edinburgh at a moment's notice. It is a very valuable 

 appointment, and he was obliged to fill it at once. Of 

 course he left a number of vacancies behind, among them 

 one at the Government School of Mines in Jerrnyn Street, 

 where he lectured on Natural History. I was called upon 

 to take up his lectures where he left off, in the same 

 sudden way, and the upshot of it all was that I became 

 permanently attached with 200 a year pay. In other 

 ways I can make a couple of hundred a year more even 

 now, and I hope by and by to do better. In fact, a 

 married man, as I hope soon to be, cannot live at all in 

 the position which I ought to occupy under less than six 

 hundred a year. If I keep my health, however, I have 

 every hope of being able to do this but, as the jockeys 

 say, the pace is severe. Nettie is coming over in the 

 spring, and if I have any luck at all, I mean to have 

 paid off my debts and to be married by this time next 

 year. 1 



In the meanwhile, strangely enough and very pain- 

 fully for me new possibilities have sprung up. My 

 poor friend Forbes died only a week ago, just as he was 

 beginning his course and entering upon as brilliant a 

 career as ever was opened to any scientific man in this 

 country. 



I cannot tell you how deeply this has shocked me. I 

 owe him so much, I loved him so well, and I have so 



1 He writes on July 21, 1851: "I commenced life upon 

 nothing at all, and I had to borrow in the ordinary way from an 

 agent for the necessary expenses of my outfit. I sent home a great 

 deal of money, but notwithstanding, from the beautiful way they 

 have of accumulating interest and charges of one description and 

 another, I found myself 100 in debt when I returned besides 

 something to my brother, about which, however, I do not suppose 

 I need trouble myself just at present. As you may imagine, living 

 in London, my pay now hardly keeps me, to say nothing of paying 

 off my old scores. I could get no account of how things were 

 going on with my agent while I was away, and therefore I never 

 could tell exactly how I stood." 



