380 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



political career. To one of those who urged him to stand 

 for Parliament, he replied thus: — 



Nov. 18, 1871. 



Dear Sir — It has often been suggested to me that I should 

 seek for a seat in the House of Commons ; indeed I have reason 

 to think that many persons suppose that I entered the London 

 School Board simply as a road to Parliament. 



But I assure you that this supposition is entirely without 

 foundation, and that I have never seriously entertained any 

 notion of the kind. 



The work of the School Board involves me in no small 

 sacrifices of various kinds, but I went into it with my eyes open, 

 and with the clear conviction that it was worth while to make 

 those sacrifices for the sake of helping the Education Act into 

 practical operation. A year's experience has not altered that 

 conviction; but now that the most difficult, if not the most im- 

 portant, part of our work is done, I begin to look forward with 

 some anxiety to the time when I shall be relieved of duties 

 which so seriously interfere with what I regard as my proper 

 occupation. 



No one can say what the future has in store for him, but at 

 present I know of no inducement, not even the offer of a seat 

 in the House of Commons, which would lead me, even tem- 

 porarily and partially, to forsake that work again. — I am, dear 

 sir, yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



I give here a letter to me from Sir Mountstuart Grant 

 Duff, who also at one period was anxious to induce him to 

 enter Parliament : — 



Lexden Park, Colchester, 

 4M November 1S98. 



Dear Mr. Huxley — I have met men who seemed to me to 

 possess powers of mind even greater than those of your father 

 — his friend Henry Smith for example ; but I never met any 

 one who gave me the impression so much as he did, that he 

 would have gone to the front in any pursuit in which he had 

 seen fit to engage. Henry Smith had, in addition to his astonish- 

 ing mathematical genius, and his great talents as a scholar, a 

 rare faculty of persuasiveness. Your father used to speak with 

 much admiration and some amusement of the way in which 

 he managed to get people to take his view by appearing to take 

 theirs ; but he never could have been a power in a popular as- 

 sembly, nor have carried with him by the force of his eloquence, 



