Ixv 



world in addresses or magazine articles. Philosophy indeed was the 

 occasion of his almost last appearance in public, when, at Oxford in 

 May, 1893, he delivered the second Romanes lecture on " Evolution 

 and Ethics." Not the very last. The last time a large audience gazed 

 upon him was at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 

 August, 1894, when, rising to second the vote of thanks to the Presi- 

 dent, the Marquis of Salisbury, for the Presidential address, he was 

 received with a burst of applause of such a kind as seldom falls to the 

 lot of any man of science or, indeed, to any man at all. A smaller 

 but no less sympathetic and admiring audience greeted him when the 

 Royal Society, at its Anniversary Meeting in November of the same 

 year, bestowed on him the only token of regard left for it to give, but 

 that a most fitting one, the recently established Darwin Medal. Two 

 men, and two men only, had received it before him, Joseph Dalton 

 Hooker and Alfred Russel Wallace ; and the Society, in adding the 

 name of Huxley to these, felt glad that it had been put in their power 

 to do honour in their lifetime to the three who, next to Darwin, had 

 had the greatest share in the eventful biological movement of the 

 present age. 



At the time he received the Medal his health seemed so good that 

 his friends looked forward to some yet considerable lease of life for 

 him, and, indeed, during the following winter he was cheerfully 

 active in his philosophic and theologic studies, and, besides, continued 

 to exert himself no little in the movement for a Teaching University 

 for London, a matter he had greatly at heart. But, in the early 

 spring, an attack of influenza, from which malady he had on former 

 occasions suffered greatly, prostrated him. His illness was further 

 aggravated by the attempts which he made to complete, in spite of it, 

 a review, of which a part had already appeared, of the Right Hon. A. 

 J. Balfour's work on ' The Foundations of Belief.' And, though he 

 seemed after a while to rally somewhat, disease of the kidney, which, 

 due primarily to his cardiac affection, had probably existed in a more 

 or less latent condition for some time, assumed characters of great 

 severity, pulmonary and pericardial complications followed, and after 

 days of great suffering he expired on June 29, 1895. He was buried 

 in the Marylebone cemetery at Finchley, to the north of London. 



Titular honours had no attractions for Huxley, and it is no secret 

 that he at a comparatively early date declined the off er of knighthood. 

 At one time serious efforts were made in the direction of his being 

 created a peer, but financial reasons, if none other, stopped them at 

 the very beginning. Not that he was insensible to the value of a 

 public recognition of his worth, for when, in 1892, Her Majesty was 

 graciously pleased that he should become a member of the Privy 

 Council, he accepted with pleasure so unwonted a signal of the recog- 

 nition of scientific worth. 



