i873 IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTH 433 



Somebody has sent me the two numbers of Scribner with 

 Blauvelt's articles on " Modern Skepticism." They seem to be 

 very well done, and he has a better appreciation of the toughness 

 of the job before him than any of the writers of his school with 

 whom I have met. But it is rather cool of you to talk of his 

 pitching into Spencer when you are chief target yourself. I 

 come in only par parenthbse, and 1 am glad to see that people 

 are beginning to understand my real position, and to separate 

 me from such raging infidels as you and Spencer. — Ever thine, 



T. H. Huxley. 



He was unable to attend the opening of Owens College 

 this autumn, and having received but a scanty account of 

 the proceedings, wrote as follows : — 



4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., 

 Oct. 16, 1873. 



My dear Roscoe — I consider myself badly used. Nobody 

 has sent me a Manchester paper with the proceedings of the 

 day of inauguration when, I hear, great speeches were made. 



I did get two papers containing your opening lecture, and the 

 " Fragment of a Morality," for which I am duly grateful, but 

 two copies of one day's proceedings are not the same thing as 

 one copy of two days' proceedings, and I consider it is very 

 disrespectful to a Governor (large G) not to let him know what 

 went on. 



By all accounts which have reached me it was a great suc- 

 cess, and I congratulate you heartily. I only wish that I could 

 have been there to see. — Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



The autumn brought a slow improvement in health — 



I am travelling (he writes) between the two stations of- 

 dyspepsia and health thus (illustrated by a zigzag with " mean 

 Tine ascending "). 



The sympathy of the convalescent appears in various 

 letters to friends who were ill. Thus, in reply to Mr. Hyde 

 Clarke, the philologist and, like himself, a member of the 

 Ethnological Society, he writes : — 



(Nov. 18, 1873) — I am glad to learn two things from your 

 note — first, that you are getting better ; second, that there is 



