i8 9 3 DEATH OF TYNDALL $gi 



HODESLEA, Sept. 28, 1893. 



My dear Romanes — We are very much grieved to hear such 

 a bad account of your health. Would that we could achieve 

 something more to the purpose than assuring you and Mrs. 

 Romanes of our hearty sympathy with you both in your troubles. 

 I assure you, you are much in our thoughts, which are sad 

 enough with the news of Jowett's, I fear, fatal attack. 



I am almost ashamed to be well and tolerably active when 

 young and old friends are being thus prostrated. 



However, you have youth on your side, so do not give up, 

 and wearisome as doing nothing may be, persist in it as the 

 best of medicines. 



At my time of life one should be always ready to stand at 

 attention when the order to march comes; but for the rest I 

 think it well to go on doing what I can, as if F. M. General 

 Death had forgotten me. That must account for my seeming 

 presumption in thinking I may some day " take up the threads " 

 of late evolutionary speculation. — Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



My wife joins with me in love and kind wishes to you both. 



At the request of his friends, Huxley wrote for the 

 Nineteenth Century a brief appreciation of his old comrade 

 Tyndall — the tribute of a friend to a friend — and, difficult 

 task though it was, touched on the closing scene, if only 

 from a chivalrous desire to do justice to the long devotion 

 which accident had so cruelly wronged : — 



I am comforted (he writes to Sir J. Hooker on January 3) 

 by your liking the Tyndall article. You are quite right, I shiv- 

 ered over the episode of the " last words," but it struck me as 

 the best way of getting justice done to her, so I took a header. 

 I am glad to see by the newspaper comments that it does not 

 seem to have shocked other people's sense of decency. 



The funeral took place on Saturday, December 9. There 

 was no storm nor fog to make the graveside perilous for 

 the survivors. In the Haslemere churchyard the winter sun 

 shone its brightest, and the moorland air was crisp with an 

 almost Alpine freshness as this lover of the mountains was 

 carried to his last resting-place. But though he took no 

 outward harm from that bright still morning, Huxley was 



