4 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



exception to the rule. We read in his Autobiography as 

 follows : — 



" As I grew older my great desire was to be a mechanical 

 engineer, but the fates were against this, and, while very young, 

 I commenced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in- 

 law. ... I am not sure that I have not all along been a sort of 

 mechanical engineer in partibus tnfidelium. . . . The only part 

 of my professional course which really and deeply interested me 

 was physiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living 

 machines . . . what I cared for was the architectural and 

 engineering part of the business, i.e., natural history, the working 

 out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands 

 of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar 

 apparatuses to serve diverse ends " (Coll. Essays, i, pp. 6-7). 



In January, 1 841, he went to Rotherhithe, and com- 

 menced his medical studies by becoming assistant to Dr. 

 Chandler. He now for the first time came into contact 

 with the very poor, and to this period we may refer the 

 beginning of that marked interest in the working-classes, 

 which afterwards bore fruit in his contributions to 

 schemes for the improvement of elementary education, 

 and in his numerous lectures to working men. 



Somewhat later on, the young student of medicine 

 was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, J. G. Scott, a 

 doctor in North London, the husband of his eldest and 

 favourite sister Lizzie, and took his first step towards 

 graduation by beginning to prepare for the matriculation 

 examination of London University, attending lectures at 

 Sydenham College. His class successes were consider- 

 able, and included a silver medal for botany, ^ven by 

 the Apothecaries' Society, the winning of which, he 

 afterwards declared, gave him more pleasure than the 

 award of the Royal Society's Medal years later. We 

 learn from an old diary kept during these years that in 

 addition to examination studies and the pursuit of Ger- 



