292 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV 



such criticisms as that of the Athenaeum, that " Lyell's 

 object is to make man old, Huxley's to degrade him." 

 By the middle of February it reached its second 

 thousand ; in July it is heard of as republished in 

 America ; at the same time L. Buchner writes that he 

 wished to translate it into German, but finds himself 

 forestalled by Victor Carus. From another aspect, 

 Lord Enniskillen, thanking him for the book, says 

 (March 3), " I believe you are already excommunicated 

 by book, bell, and candle," while in an undated note, 

 Bollaert writes, "The Bishop of Oxford the other 

 day spoke about ' the church having been in dangei 

 of late, by such books as Colenso's, but that it (the 

 church) was now restored.' And this at a time, he 

 might have added, when the works of Darwin, Lyell, 

 and Huxley are torn from the hands of Mudie's shop- 

 men, as if they were novels (see Daily Telegraph, 

 April 10)." 



At the same time, the impression left by his work 

 upon the minds of the leading men of science may be 

 judged from a few words of Sir Charles Lyell, who 

 writes to a friend on March 15, 1863 (Life and Letters, 

 ii. 366) : 



Huxley's second thousand is going off well. If he had 

 leisure like you and me, and the vigour aud logic of the 

 lectures, and his address to the Geological Society, and 

 half a dozen other recent works (letters to the Times on 

 Darwin, etc.), had been all in one book, what a position 

 he would occupy ! I entreated him not to undertake the 

 Natural History Review before it began. The responsi- 

 bility all falls on the man of chief energy and talent ; it 



