170 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xii 



This is the account any third person would give you of what 

 I am and of what I am doing. He would probably add that I 

 was very ambitious and desirous of occupying a high place in 

 the world's estimation. Therein, however, he would be mis- 

 taken. An income sufficient to place me above care and anxiety, 

 and free scope to work, are the only things I have ever wished 

 for or striven for. But one is obliged to toil long and hard for 

 these, and it is only now that they are coming within my grasp. 

 I gave up the idea of going to Edinburgh because I doubted 

 whether leaving London was wise. Recently I have been 

 tempted to put up for a good physiological chair which is to 

 be established at Oxford; but the Government propose to im- 

 prove my position at the School of Mines, and there is every 

 probability that I shall now permanently remain in London. 

 Indeed, it is high time that I should settle down to one line of 

 work. Hitherto, as you see by the somewhat varied list of my 

 duties, etc., above, I have been ranging over different parts of a 

 very wide field. But this apparent desultoriness has been neces- 

 sary, for I knew not for what branch of science I should eventu- 

 ally have to declare myself. There are very few appointments 

 open to men of science in this country, and one must take what 

 one can get and be thankful. 



My health was very bad some years ago, and I had great 

 fear of becoming a confirmed dyspeptic, but -thanks to the pedes- 

 trian tours in the Alps I have taken for the past two years, I am 

 wonderfully better this session, and feel capable of any amount 

 of work. It was in the course of one of these trips that I went, 

 as you have rightly heard, half way up Mont Blanc. But I was 

 not in training and stuck at the Grands Mulets, while my three 

 companions went on. I spent seventeen hours alone on that 

 grand pinnacle, the latter part of the time in great anxiety, for 

 I feared my friends were lost; and as I had no guide my own 

 neck would have been in considerable jeopardy in endeavour- 

 ing to return amidst the maze of crevasses of the Glacier des 

 Bois. But it was glorious weather and the grandest scenery 

 in the world. In the previous year I saw much of the Bernese 

 and Monte Rosa country, journeying with a great friend of mine 

 well known as a natural philosopher, Tyndall, and partly seeking 

 health and partly exploring the glaciers. You will find an arti- 

 cle of mine on that subject in the Westminster Review for 1857. 



I used at one time to write a good deal for that Review, prin- 

 cipally the Quarterly notice of scientific books. But I never 

 write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to 



