^4 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vm 



was sure to be checked by the sanity, or at any rate the jealousy 

 of the other. At the last election I should have voted for the 

 Conservatives (for the first time in my life) had it not been for 

 Lord Randolph Churchill; but I thought that by thus jumping 

 out of the Gladstonian frying-pan into the Churchillian fire I 

 should not mend matters, so I abstained altogether. 



Mr. Parnell has great qualities. For the first time the Irish 

 malcontents have a leader who is not eloquent, but who is 

 honest; who knows what he wants and faces the risks involved 

 in getting it. Our poor Right Honourable Rhetoricians are 

 no match for this man who understands realities. I believe 

 also that Mr. Parnell's success will destroy the English poli- 

 ticians who permit themselves to be his instruments, as soon 

 as bitter experience of the consequences has brought English- 

 men and Scotchmen (and I will add Irishmen) to their 

 senses. 



I suppose one ought not to be sorry for that result, but there 

 are men among them over whose fall all will lament. — I am, 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



Some of the newspapers took these concluding para- 

 graphs to imply support of Parnell, so that at the end of 

 June he writes : — 



The Tribune man seems to have less intelligence than might 

 be expected. I spoke approvingly of the way in which Parnell 

 had carried out his policy, which is rather different from ap- 

 proving the policy itself. 



But these newspaper scribes don't take the trouble to under- 

 stand what they read. 



While at Bournemouth he also finished and sent off to 

 the Youth's Companion, an American paper, an article on 

 the evolution of certain' types of the house, called " From 

 the Hut to the Pantheon." Beginning with a description 

 of the Pantheon, that characteristically Roman work with 

 its vast dome, so strongly built that it is the only great 

 dome remaining without a flaw : — 



For a long time (he says) I was perplexed to know what it 

 was about the proportions of the interior of the Pantheon which 

 gave me such a different feeling from that made by any other 

 domed space I had ever entered. 



