xxiv AS A LECTURER 4,7 



a fog as of anything I have ever seen before." Fortunately 

 the nationality of the student enabled him to fully appreciate the 

 humour. 



The same note is sounded in Professor Mivart's descrip- 

 tion of these lectures in his Reminiscences : — 



The great value of Huxley's anatomical ideas, and the ad- 

 mirable clearness with which he explained them, led me in the 

 autumn of 1861 to seek admission as a student to his course of 

 lectures at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. When I 

 entered his small room there to make this request, he was giving 

 the finishing touches to a dissection of part of the nervous sys- 

 tem of a skate, worked out for the benefit of his students. He 

 welcomed my application with the greatest cordiality, save that 

 he insisted I should be only an honorary student, or rather, 

 should assist at his lectures as a friend. I availed myself of 

 his permission on the very next day, and subsequently attended 

 almost all his lectures there and elsewhere, so that he one day 

 said to me, " I shall call you my ' constant reader.' " To be such 

 a reader was to me an inestimable privilege, and so I shall ever 

 consider it. I have heard many men lecture, but I never heard 

 anyone lecture as did Professor Huxley. He was my very 

 ideal of a lecturer. Distinct in utterance, with an agreeable 

 voice, lucid as it was possible to be in exposition, with admirably 

 chosen language, sufficiently rapid, yet never hurried, often im- 

 pressive in manner, yet never otherwise than completely natural, 

 and sometimes allowing his audience a glimpse of that rich fund 

 of humour ever ready to well forth when occasion permitted, 

 sometimes accompanied with an extra gleam in his bright dark 

 eyes, sometimes expressed with a dryness and gravity of look 

 which gave it a double zest. 



I shall never forget the first time I saw him enter his lecture- 

 room. He came in rapidly, yet without bustle, and as the clock 

 struck, a brief glance at his audience and then at once to work. 

 He had the excellent habit of beginning each lecture (save, of 

 course, the first) with a recapitulation of the main points of the 

 preceding one. The course was amply illustrated by excellent 

 coloured diagrams, which, I believe, he had made; but still more 

 valuable were the chalk sketches he would draw on the black- 

 board with admirable facility, while he was talking, his rapid, 

 dexterous strokes quickly building up an organism in our minds, 

 simultaneously through ear and eye. The lecture over, he was 

 ever ready to answer questions, and I often admired his patience 



