[The controversy with Mr. Gladstone indicates the nature of the subject that Huxley took up for the employment of his newly obtained leisure.  Chequered as this leisure was all through the year by constant illness, which drove him again and again to the warmth of Bournemouth or the brisk airs of the Yorkshire moors in default of the sovereign medicine of the Alps, he managed to write two more controversial articles this year, besides a long account of the “Progress of Science,” for Mr. T. Humphry Ward’s book on “The Reign of Queen Victoria,” which was to celebrate the Jubilee year 1887.  Examinations—­for the last time, however—­the meetings of the Eton Governing Body, the business of the Science Schools, the Senate of the London University, the Marine Biological Association, the Council of the Royal Society, and a round dozen of subsidiary committees, all claimed his attention.  Even when driven out of town by his bad health, he would come up for a few days at a time to attend necessary meetings.

One of the few references of this period to biological research is contained in a letter to Professor Pelseneer of Ghent, a student of the Mollusca, who afterwards completed for Huxley the long unfinished monograph on “Spirula” for the “Challenger” Report.]

4 Marlborough Place, January 8, 1886.

Dear Sir,

Accept my best thanks for the present of your publications.  As you may imagine, I find that on the cretaceous crustaceans very interesting.  It was a rare chance to find the branchiae preserved.

I am glad to be able to send you a copy of my memoir on the morphology of the Mollusca.  It shows signs of age outside, but I beg you to remember that it is 33 years old.

I am rejoiced to think you find it still worth consulting.  It has always been my intention to return to the subject some day, and to try to justify my old conclusions—­as I think they may be justified.

But it is very doubtful whether my intention will now ever be carried into effect.

I am yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Mr. Gladstone’s second article appeared in the January number of the “Nineteenth Century,” to this the following letter refers:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 21, 1886.

My dear Skelton,

Thanks for your capital bit of chaff.  I took a thought and began to mend (as Burns’ friend and my prototype (G.O.M.) is not yet recorded to have done) about a couple of months ago, and then Gladstone’s first article caused such a flow of bile that I have been the better for it ever since.

I need not tell you I am entirely crushed by his reply—­still the worm will turn and there is a faint squeak (as of a rat in the mouth of a terrier) about to be heard in the next “Nineteenth.”

But seriously, it is to me a grave thing that the destinies of this country should at present be seriously influenced by a man, who, whatever he may be in the affairs of which I am no judge—­is nothing but a copious shuffler, in those which I do understand.