456 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap. 



A well-known popular preacher of the Scotch Presbyterian 

 Church, who had made himself famous by predictions of the 

 speedy coming of the end of the world, was up for election. I 

 was standing by Huxley when the Dean, coming straight from 

 the ballot boxes, turned towards us. "Well," said Huxley, 

 " have you been voting for C. ? " " Yes, indeed I have," replied 

 the Dean. " Oh, I thought the priests were always opposed to 

 the prophets," said Huxley. "Ah!" replied the Dean, with 

 that well-known twinkle in his eye, and the sweetest of smiles, 

 " but you see, I do not believe in his prophecies, and some 

 people say I am not much of a priest." 



A few words as to his home life may perhaps be fitly 

 introduced here. Towards his children he had the same 

 union of underlying tenderness veiled beneath inflexible de- 

 termination for what was right, which marked his inter- 

 course with those outside his family. 



As children we were fully conscious of this side of his 

 character. We felt our little hypocrisies shrivel up before 

 him; we felt a confidence in the infallible rectitude of his 

 moral judgments which inspired a kind of awe. His arbit- 

 rament was instant and final, though rarely invoked, and 

 was perhaps the more tremendous in proportion to its 

 rarity. This aspect, as if of an oracle without appeal, was 

 heightened in our minds by the fact that we saw but little 

 of him. This was one of the penalties of his hard-driven 

 existence. In the struggle to keep his head above water 

 for the first fifteen or twenty years of his married life, he 

 had scarcely any time to devote to his children. The 

 " lodger," as he used to call himself at one time, who went 

 out early and came back late, could sometimes spare half 

 an hour just before or after dinner to draw wonderful pic- 

 tures for the little ones, and these were memorable occasions. 

 I remember that he used to profess a horror of being too 

 closely watched, or of receiving suggestions, while he drew. 

 " Take care, take care," he would exclaim, " or I don't 

 know what it will turn into." 



When I was seven years old I had the misfortune to be 

 laid up with scarlet fever, and then his gift of drawing was 

 a great solace to me. The solitary days — for I was the first 



