1884 LETTER TO FOSTER 



77 



send you MS. in a week's time, go ahead. I am perplexed about 

 the illustrations, but I see nothing for it but to have new ones 

 in all the cases which you have marked. Have you anybody in 

 Cambridge who can draw the things from preparations ? 



You are like Trochu with your " plan," and I am anxious to 

 learn it. But have you reflected, ist, that I am getting deafer 

 and deafer, and that I cannot hear what is said at the council 

 table and in the Society's rooms half the time people are speak- 

 ing? and 2nd, that so long as I am President, so long must I be 

 at the beck and call of everything that turns up in relation to 

 the interests of science. So long as I am in the chair, I cannot 

 be a faineant or refuse to do anything and everything incidental 

 to the position. 



My notion is to get away for six months, so as to break with 

 the " world, the flesh, and the devil " of London, for all which 

 I have conceived a perfect loathing. Six months is long enough 

 for anybody to be forgotten twice over by everybody but per- 

 sonal friends. 



I am contemplating a winter in Italy, but I shall keep on my 

 house for Harry's sake and as a pied a tcrre in London, and in 

 the summer come and look at you at Burlington House, as the 

 old soap-boiler used to visit the factory. I shall feel like the 

 man out of whom the legion of devils departed when he looked 

 at the gambades of the two thousand pigs going at express speed 

 for the waters of Tiberias. 



By the way, did you ever read that preposterous and im- 

 moral story carefully ? It is one of the best attested of the 

 miracles. . . . 



When I have retired from the chair (which I must not 

 scandalise) I shall write a lay sermon on the text. It will be 

 impressive. 



My wife sends her love, and says she has her eye on you. 

 She is all for retirement. — Ever yours. 



I am very sorry to hear of poor Mangles' death, but I sup- 

 pose there was no other chance. T. H. H. 



In September he hails with delight some intermission of 

 the constant depression under which he has been labouring, 

 and writes : — 



So long as I sit still and write or read I am all right, other- 

 wise not good for much, which is odd, considering that I eat, 

 drink, and sleep like a top. I suppose that everybody starts with 



