LETTER FROM OXFORD 525 
A great commotion followed. Excitement rose high on 
either side. A lady fainted and had to be carried out. The 
hostile part of the audience was staggered and confused, not 
subjected. With doubt still hot and opinion shaken, this was 
the moment to strike anew with scientific argument, and 
Hooker, though he hated pubKc speaking, nerved himself to 
come forward, and took his share in giving the Bishop * such 
a trouncing as he never got before.' 
Botanic Gardens, Oxford : July 2, 1860. 
Dear Darwin, — I have just come from my last moon- 
light saunter at Oxford and been soliloquizing over the 
Radcliffe and our old rooms at the corner, and cannot go 
to bed without inditing a few lines to you, my dear old 
Darwin. I came here on Thursday afternoon and im- 
mediately fell into a lengthened reverie : — without you 
and my wife I am as dull as ditchwater, and crept about 
the once familiar streets feeling like a fish out of water. I 
swore I would not go near a Section and did not for two 
days, but amused myself with the College buildings and 
attempted sleeps in the sleepy gardens and rejoiced in my 
indolence. Huxley and Owen had had a furious battle 
over Darwin's absent body, at Section D, before my arrival, 
of which more anon. H. was triumphant ; you and your 
book forthwith became the topics of the day, and I d — d 
the days and double d — d the topics too, and like a craven 
felt bored out of my life by being woke out of my reveries 
to become referee on Natural Selection, &c., &c., &c. On 
Saturday I walked with my old friend of the Erebus, Capt. 
Dayman, to the Sections and swore as usual I would not 
go in ; but getting equally bored of doing nothing I did. 
-A paper of a Yankee donkey called Draper on ' Civihsation 
according to the Darwinian Hypothesis,' or some such title, 
was being read, and it did not mend my temper, for of all 
the flatulent stuff and all the self-sufficient stuffers, these 
outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the end of the sentence) " to 
discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to 
make." f^j^'^y%\ lAW " -• ■ ife^J- fr-H 
' No doubt your Father's words were better than these, and they gained 
effect from his clear deliberate utterance, but in outline and in scale this 
represents truly what was said.' 
