iS77 HONORARY DEGREE FOR DARWIN 5,3 



But I'm no the waur, and the late dinners have not been visited 

 by fits of morning blue devils. So I am in hopes that I am 

 getting back to the normal state that Clark prophesied for me. 



4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., 

 Afril 29, 1877. 



My dear Skelton — Best thanks for your second edition. 

 You paint the system * in such favourable colours, that I am 

 thinking of taking advantage of it for my horde of " young 

 barbarians." I am sure Scotch air would be of service to them 

 — and in after-life they might have the inestimable advantage of 

 a quasi-Scotch nationality — that greatest of all practical ad- 

 vantages in Britain. 



We are to sit again in the end of July when Mrs. Skelton 

 and you if you are wise, will be making holiday. 



Your invitation is most tempting, and if I had no work to do 

 I should jump at it. 



But alas ! I shall have a deal of work, and I must go to my 

 Patmos in George Street. Ingrained laziness is the bane of my 

 existence ; and you don't suppose that with the sun shining down 

 into your bosky dell, and Mrs. Skelton radiant, and Froude and 

 yourself nicotiant, I am such a Philistine as to do a stroke of 

 work? — Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



From Edinburgh he went to St. Andrews to make ar- 

 rangements for his elder son to go to the University there 

 as a student the following winter. Then he paid a visit to 

 Sir W. Armstrong in Northumberland, afterwards spending 

 a month at Whitby. His holiday work consisted in a great 

 part of the article on " Evolution " for the Encyclopcedia 

 Britannica, which is noted as finished on October 24, though 

 not published till the next year. 



In November the honorary degree of LL.D. was con- 

 ferred upon Charles Darwin at Cambridge, " a great step 

 for Cambridge, though it may not seem much in itself," he 

 writes to Dohrn, November 21. In the evening after the 

 public ceremony there was a dinner of the Philosophical 

 Club, at which he spoke in praise of Darwin's services to 

 science. Darwin himself was unable to be present, but re- 



* i.e. of Scotch education. 



