Heaven forbid that I should restrain anybody from expressing any opinion in the world.  But it is so obvious to me that not one of our friends has the smallest notion of what administration in fishery questions means, or of the danger of creating a scientific Frankenstein in that which he is clamouring for, that I suppose I have been over-anxious to prevent mischief, and seemed domineering.

Well, I shall mend my ways.  I must be getting to be an old savage if you think it risky to write anything to me.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[But he did not stay long in London.  By April 20 he was off to Ilkley, where he expected to stay] “for a week or two, perhaps longer.” [on the 24th he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

I was beginning to get wrong before we left Bournemouth, and went steadily down after our return to London, so that I had to call in a very shrewd fellow who attends my daughter M—.  Last Monday he told me that more physicking was no good, and that I had better be off here, and see what exercise and the fresh air of the moors would do for me.  So here I came, and mean to give the place a fair trial.

I do a minimum of ten miles per diem without fatigue, and as I eat, drink, and sleep well, there ought to be nothing the matter with me.  Why, under these circumstances, I should never feel honestly cheerful, or know any other desire than that of running away and hiding myself, I don’t know.  No explanation is to be found even in Foster’s “Physiology!” the only thing my demon can’t stand is sharp walking, and I will give him a dose of that remedy when once I get into trim.

[Indeed he was so much better even after a single day at Ilkley, that he writes home:—­]

It really seems to me that I am an imposter for running away, and I can hardly believe that I felt so ill and miserable four-and-twenty hours ago.

[And on the 28th he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

I have been improving wonderfully in the last few days.  Yesterday I walked to Bolton Abbey, the Strid, etc., and back, which is a matter of sixteen miles, without being particularly tired, though the afternoon sun was as hot as midsummer.

It is the old story—­a case of candle-snuff—­some infernal compound that won’t get burnt up without more oxygenation than is to be had under ordinary conditions...

I want to be back and doing something, and yet have a notion that I should be wiser if I stopped here a few weeks and burnt up my rubbish effectually.  A good deal will depend upon whether I can get my wife to join me or not.  She has had a world of worry lately.

[As to his fortunate choice of an hotel,] “I made up my mind,” [he writes,] “to come to this hotel merely because Bradshaw said it was on the edge of the moor—­but for once acting on an advertisement turned out well.” [The moor ran up six or seven hundred feet just outside the garden, and the hotel itself was well outside and above the town and the crowd of visitors.  Here, with the exception of a day or two in May, and a fortnight at the beginning of June, he stayed till July, living as far as possible an outdoor life, and getting through a fair amount of correspondence.