I2 8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vn 



4 Marlborough Place, Dec. 26, 1885. 



My dear Foster — Please read the enclosed letter from 

 Jowett (confidentially). I had suggested the possibility of 

 diminishing the Greek and Latin for the science and medical 

 people, but that, you see, he won't have. But he is prepared to 

 load the classical people with science by way of making things 

 fair. 



It may be worth our while to go in for this, and trust to time 

 for the other. What say you ? 



Merry Christmas to you. The G.O.M. is going to reply, so 

 I am likely to have a happy New Year ! I expect some fun, and 

 I mean to make it an occasion for some good earnest. — Ever 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



So ends 1885, and with it closes another definite period 

 of Huxley's life. Free from official burdens and official 

 restraints, he was at liberty to speak out on any subject ; his 

 strength for work was less indeed, but his time was his own ; 

 there was hope that he might still recover his health for a 

 few more years. And though the ranks of his friends were 

 beginning to thin, though he writes (May 20, to Professor 

 Bartholomew Price) : — 



The " gaps " are terrible accompaniments of advancing life. 

 It is only with age that one realises the full truth of Goethe's 

 quatrain : — 



Eine Bruche ist ein jeder Tag, etc. 

 And again : — 



The x Club is going to smithereens, as if a charge of dyna- 

 mite had been exploded in the midst of it. Busk is slowly fading 

 away. Tyndall is, I fear, in a bad way, and I am very anxious 

 about Hooker. 



Still the club hung together for many years, and outside 

 it were other devoted friends, who would have echoed Dr. 

 Foster's good wishes on the last day of the year : — 



A Happy New Year ! and many of them, and may you more 

 and more demonstrate the folly of strangling men at sixty. 



