478 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxx 



To HIS Eldest Daughter 



Edinburgh, May i6, 1875. 



My dearest Jess — Your mother's letter received this morn- 

 ing reminds me that I have not written to "Cordelia" (I sup- 

 pose she means Goneril) by a message from that young person 

 — so here is reparation. 



I have 330 students, and my class is the biggest in the Uni- 

 versity — but I am quite cast down and discontented because it 

 is not 351, — being one more than the Botany Class last year — 

 which was never so big before or since. 



I am thinking of paying 21 street boys to come and take the 

 extra tickets so that I may crow over all my colleagues. 



Fanny Bruce is going to town next week to her grand- 

 mother's and I want you girls to make friends with her. It 

 seems to me that she is very nice — but that is only a fallible 

 man's judgment, and Heaven forbid that I should attempt to 

 forestall Miss Cudberry's decision on such a question. Anyhow 

 she has plenty of energy and, among other things, works very 

 hard at German. 



M says that the Rootle-Tootles have a bigger drawing- 

 room than ours. I should be sorry to believe these young be- 

 ginners guilty of so much presumption, and perhaps you will 

 tell them to have it made smaller before I visit them. 



A Scotch gentleman has just been telling me that May is the 

 worst month in the year, here ; so pleasant ! but the air is soft 

 and warm to-day, and I look out over the foliage to the castle 

 and don't care. 



Love to all, and specially M . Mind you don't tell her 



that I dine out to-day and to-morrow — positively for the first 

 and last times. — Ever your loving father, 



T. H. Huxley. 



However, the class grew without such adventitious aid, 

 and he writes to Mr. Herbert Spencer on June 15 : — 



... I have a class of 353, and instruct them in dry facts — 

 particularly warning them to keep free of the infidel specula- 

 tions which are current under the name of evolution. 



I expect an " examiner's call " from a Presbytery before the 

 course is over, but I am afraid that the pay is not enough to 

 induce me to forsake my " larger sphere of influence " in 

 London. 



