1864 THE X CLUB 375 



the poet l so willingly paid the ferryman, silent but 

 not unregarded, took the vacated places." The peculiar 

 constitution of the club scarcely seemed to admit of 

 new members; not, at all events, without altering 

 the unique relation of friendship joined to common 

 experience of struggle and success which had lasted 

 so long. After the death of Spottiswoode and Busk, 

 and the ill-health of other members, the election of 

 new members was indeed mooted, but the proposal 

 was ultimately negatived. Huxley's opinion on this 

 point appears from letters to Sir K Frankland in 

 1886 and to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1888. 



As for the filling up the vacancies in the x, I am dis- 

 posed to take Tyndall's view of the matter. Our little 

 club had no very definite object beyond preventing a few 

 men who were united by strong personal sympathies from 

 drifting apart by the pressure of busy lives. 



Nobody could have foreseen or expected twenty odd 

 years ago when we first met, that we were destined to 

 play the parts we have since played, and it is in tbe nature 

 of things impossible that any of the new members proposed 

 (much as we may like and respect them all), can carry on 

 the work wbich has so strangely fallen to us. 



An axe with a new head and a new handle may be the 

 same axe in one sense, but it is not the familiar friend 

 with which one has cut one's way through wood and brier. 



And in the other letter 



What with the lame dog condition of Tyndall and 



1 Nimm dann Fiihrmann, 

 Nimm die Miethe 

 Die Ich gerne dreifach biete ; 

 Zwei, die eben iiberfuhren 

 Waren geistige Naturen. 



