j 22 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vii 



In your paper about scientific freedom, which I read some 

 time ago with much interest, you alluded to a book or arti- 

 cle by Father Roberts on the Galileo business. Will you 

 kindly send me a postcard to say where and when it was pub- 

 lished ? 



I looked into the matter when I was in Italy, and I arrived 

 at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had 

 rather the best of it. It would complete the paradox if Father 

 Roberts should help me to see the error of my ways. — Ever 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



August and September, as said above, were spent in 

 England, though with little good effect. Filey was not a 

 success for either himself or his wife. Bournemouth, where 

 they joined their eldest daughter and her family, offered a 

 " temperature much more to the taste of both of us," and 

 at least undid the mischief done by the wet and cold of 

 the north. 



The mean line of health was gradually rising ; it was a 

 great relief to be free at length from administrative distrac- 

 tions, while the retiring pensions removed the necessity of 

 daily toil. By nature he was like the friend whom he 

 described as " the man to become hipped to death without 

 incessant activity of some sort or other. I am sure that the 

 habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as bad in 

 its way as dram-drinking. In time you cannot be comfort- 

 able without the stimulus." But the variety of interests 

 which filled his mind prevented him from feeling the void 

 of inaction after a busy life. And just as he was at the 

 turning-point in health, he received a fillip which started 

 him again into vigorous activity — the mental tonic bracing 

 up his body and clearing away the depression and languor 

 which had so long beset him. 



The lively fillip came in the shape of an article in the 

 November Nineteenth Century, by Mr. Gladstone, in which 

 he attacked the position taken up by Dr. Reville in his 

 Prolegomena to the History of Religions, and in particular, 

 attempted to show that the order of creation given in 

 Genesis i., is supported by the evidence of science. This 

 article, Huxley used humorously to say, so stirred his 



