Walter FrauTi Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 21 
At a general meeting of the Association held on December 21, 1892, the report of 
the Executive Committee was received, and after a strong speech from Huxley, 
adopted. It was then moved by Pearson, and seconded by Unwin : " That the 
Association trusts that its Executive Committee will persevere in its efforts to 
establish as far as possibly may be a professorial as distinguished from a federal 
university." This was carried. At the meeting of the Executive Committee on 
January 24, 1893, the President presented his own scheme for a teaching University 
for London; a vague motion to prepare a scheme to be submitted to the Associa- 
tion was, at the instance of Pearson, seconded by Lankester, amended as follows : 
" That the Committee prepare a scheme to be submitted to the Association in 
general accordance with the proposals adopted by the Association." This was 
carried. On January 25, 1893, Huxley wrote withdrawing his scheme on the 
ground that the amendment moved by Pearson and seconded by Lankester was 
"incompatible with any progress towards attainable ends." At the following 
meeting of the Committee in February, Professors Carey-Foster, Riicker, and 
Pearson were asked to prepare a scheme embodying the principles of the " pro- 
posals " of the Association as a basis for the charter of the proposed university. 
Mr Dickens and Professor Weldon were added to this committee. The scheme was 
actually prepared and Weldon aided with yeoman service in the drafting of it*. 
But the influence of the Association was dead; it never recovered from the divisions 
thus manifested in its executive. The spirit of compromise and the fatal easiness 
of federation dominated the situation and the present University emerged out of 
the chaos. No one felt more bitterly than Weldon the contrast between the 
original ideal and the result achieved. In fact, it is not too much to say that the 
greatest hopes for the University, and its most progressive steps since its incorpora- 
tion, lie in the endeavours made to carry out in part the ideal of a homogeneous 
professorial university, as it was originally developed one Sunday evening in the 
house in Wimpole Street, and later substantially reproduced in the proposals of 
the Association. 
This account of one movement, however, with which Weldon was closely 
concerned would not be justified here, did it not illustrate strongly a marked 
characteristic of the man. He found his great leader attacked, as he and some 
others believed, unwarrantably. He wrote one very strong private letter on the 
point, and never referred to the matter again ; not the slightest breach was caused 
in his friendship, and the biometric talks, the common work and plans for work 
were resumed a day or two afterwards as if no source of friction had for a moment 
arisen. Yet Weldon always felt deeply, and felt this attack on Huxley more than 
many men would feel a direct personal attack on themselves. 
With the death of Huxley in 1895, the Association practically came to an end. 
Weldon succeeded his hero in 1896 as Crown nominee on the Senate of the 
University ; here, as on the Board of Zoological Studies of the later reconstituted 
* The scheme was printed and adopted by the Association, March 23, 1893. 
