104 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vi 



the Tuscan hills for twenty or thirty miles every way. It is 

 warm enough to sit with the window wide open and yet the air 

 is purer and more bracing than in any place we have visited. 

 Moreover, the hotel (Grande Albergo) is very comfortable. 



Then there is one of the most wonderful cathedrals to be 

 seen in all North Italy — free from all the gaudy finery and 

 atrocious bad taste which have afflicted me all over South Italy. 

 The town is the quaintest place imaginable — built of narrow- 

 streets on several steep hills to start with, and then apparently 

 stirred up with a poker to prevent monotony of effect. 



Moreover, there is Catherine of Siena, of whom I am read- 

 ing a delightful Catholic life by an Italian father of the Oratory. 

 She died 500 years ago, but she was one of twenty-five children, 

 and I think some of them must have settled in Kent and allied 

 themselves with the Heathorns. Otherwise, I don't see why her 

 method of writing to the Pope should have been so much like 

 the way my daughters (especially the youngest) write to their 

 holy father. 



I wish she had not had the stigmata — I am afraid there must 

 have been a leetle humbug about the business — otherwise she 

 was a very remarkable person, and you need not be ashamed 

 of the relationship. 



I suppose we shall get to Florence some time this week ; the 

 address was sent to you before we left Rome — Hotel Milano, 

 Via Cerretti. But I am loth to leave this lovely air in which, 

 I do believe, I am going to pick up at last. The misfortune is 

 that we did not intend to stay here more than three days, and so 

 had letters sent to Florence. Everybody told us it would be very 

 cold, and, as usual, everybody told taradiddles. 



M. unites in fondest love to you all. — Ever your loving 

 father, T. H. Huxley. 



To his Son 



Siena, Feb. 25, 1885. 

 ... If you had taken to physical science it would have been 

 delightful to me for us to have worked together, and I am half 

 inclined to take to history that I may earn that pleasure. I could 

 give you some capital wrinkles about the physical geography 

 and prehistoric history (excuse bull) of Italy for a Roman His- 

 tory primer ! Joking apart, I believe that history might be, and 

 ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning 

 of it as a process of evolution — intelligible to the young. The 

 Italians have been doing wonders in the last twenty years in 



