326 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI 



Eventually Tyndall and his friend Hirst established 

 themselves there. 



This spring Professor Henslow, Mrs. Hooker's 

 father, a botanist of the first rank, and a man extra- 

 ordinarily beloved by all who came in contact with 

 him, was seized with a mortal illness, and lingered on 

 without hope of recovery through almost the whole of 

 April. Huxley writes : 



JEKMYN STREET, April 4, 1861. 



MY DEAR HOOKER I am very much grieved and 

 shocked by your letter. The evening before last I heard 

 from Busk that your father-in-law had been ill, and that 

 you had been to see him, and I meant to have written 

 to you yesterday to inquire, but it was driven out of my 

 head by people coming here. And then I had a sort of 

 unreasonable notion that I should see you at the Linneean 

 Council to-day and bear that all was rigbt again. God 

 knows, I feel for you and your poor wife. Knowing 

 what a great rift the loss of a mere undeveloped child 

 will leave in one's life, I can faintly picture to myself 

 tbe great and irreparable vacuity in a family circle caused 

 by the vanishing out of it of such a man as Henslow, 

 witb great acquirements, and tbat great calm catbolic 

 judgment and sense which always seemed to me more 

 prominent in him than in any man I ever knew. 



He bad intellect to comprehend his highest duty dis- 

 tinctly, and force of character to do it ; which of us dare 

 ask for a higber summary of his life than tbat ? For 

 such a man there can be no fear in facing the great 

 unknown, his life has been one long experience of the 

 substantial justice of the laws by which this world is 

 governed, and he will calmly trust to them still as. he 

 lays his head down for his long sleep. 



