426 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxv 



AxENSTEiN, Luzerne, Aug. 24, 1873. 



My dear Tyndall — The copies of your'booklet * intende 

 for Hooker and me reached me just as I left Baden last Tuesda; 

 Hooker had left me for home a fortnight before, and I hardl 

 know whether to send his to Kew or keep them for him till 

 return. I have read mine twice, and I think that nothing coul 

 be better than the tone you have adopted. I did not suspec 

 that you had such a shot in your locker as the answer to Forbe 

 about the direction of the " crevasses " referred to by Rendi 

 It is a deadly thrust; and I shall be curious to see what sort 

 parry the other side will attempt. For of course they wil 

 attempt something. Scotland is, I believe, the only country i; 

 the world in which you can bring an action for " putting t 

 silence " an adversary who will go on with an obviously hope 

 less suit. The lawgivers knew the genius of the people; an 

 it is to be regretted that they could not establish a process 

 the same sort in scientific matters. 



I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had beei 

 getting on in France. Hooker and I were very jolly, notwith 

 standing the heat, and I think that the Vivarrais is the mos 

 instructive country in the world for seeing what water can di 

 in cutting down the hardest rocks. Scrope's book is very gooi 

 on the whole, though the pictures are a little overdone. 



My wife and Leonard met me at Cologne on the nth. Thei 

 we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, when w 

 journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that hot and un 

 savoury hole as fast as we could, came here last Thursday. 



We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched up i8( 

 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the wes 

 and of the Urner See on the south. On the north we have thi 

 Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is ver 

 good and fresh. There are plenty of long walks to be ha( 

 without much fatigue, which suits the wife. Leonard promise 

 to have very good legs of his own with plenty of staying power 

 I have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he ha 

 plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not thirteen yet an( 

 I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on 1 

 visit to a glacier. I began to tell him something about thi 

 glaciers the other day, but I was promptly shut up with, " Oh 

 yes ! I know all about that. It's in Dr. Tyndall's book "— 

 which said book he seems to me to have got by heart. He i 



* "Principal Forbes and his Biographers." 



