12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



England in the latter end of the year 1850, when I found 

 that it was printed and published, and that a huge packet 

 of separate copies awaited me. When I hear some of my 

 young friends complain of want of sympathy and encour- 

 agement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was 

 not the least valuable part of my education. 



Three years after my return were occupied by a bat- 

 tle between my scientific friends on the one hand and 

 the Admiralty on the other, as to whether the latter 

 ought, or ought not, to act up to the spirit of a pledge 

 they had given to encourage officers who had done scien- 

 tific work by contributing to the expense of publishing 

 mine. At last the Admiralty, getting tired, I suppose, 

 cut short the discussion by ordering me to join a ship, 

 which thing I declined to do, and as Rastignac, in the 

 Pere Goriot, says to Paris, I said to London "a nous 

 deux" 10 I desired to obtain a Professorship of either 

 Physiology or Comparative Anatomy, and as vacancies 

 occurred I applied, but in vain. My friend, Professor 

 Tyndall, 11 and I were candidates at the same time, he 

 for the Chair of Physics and I for that of Natural History 

 in the University of Toronto, which, fortunately, as it 

 turned out, would not look at either of us. I say for- 

 tunately, not from any lack of respect for Toronto, 

 but because I soon made up my mind that London was 



10 "(It's) between us two." 



11 John Tyndall (1820-1893) was a distinguished scientist and 

 natural philosopher. Besides making important scientific dis- 

 coveries, Tyndall, like Huxley, helped to disseminate the im- 

 portant scientific ideas of his day and to render them intelligible 

 to laymen. Huxley regarded Tyndall as more successful than he 

 was in conciliating his audiences, and wrote him on the occasion 

 of a lecture "On the Scientific Uses of the Imagination": "Those 

 confounded parsons seem to me to let you say anything while 

 they bully me for a word or a phrase. It's the old story, 'one 

 man may steal a horse while the other may 'not look over the 

 wall."' Life and Letters; 1:331. 



