Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[And again on December 13:—­]

My dear Spencer,

I am very glad to have news of you which on the whole is not unsatisfactory.  Your conclusion as to the doctors is one I don’t mind telling you in confidence I arrived at some time ago...

I am glad you liked my treatment of Mr. Lilly...I quite agree with you that the thing was worth doing for the sake of the public.

I have in hand another bottle of the same vintage about Modern Realism and the abuse of the word Law, suggested by a report I read the other day of one of Liddon’s sermons. ["Pseudo-Scientific Realism” “Collected Essays” 4 59.]

The nonsense these great divines talk when they venture to meddle with science is really appalling.

Don’t be alarmed about the history of Victorian science. [See above.] I am happily limited to the length of a review article or thereabouts, and it is (I am happy to say it is nearly done) more of an essay on the history of science, bringing out the broad features of the contrast between past and present, than the history itself.  It seemed to me that this was the only way of dealing with such a subject in a book intended for the general public.

[The article “Science and Morals” was not only a satisfaction to himself, but a success with the readers of the “Fortnightly.”  To his wife he writes:—­]

December 2.

Have you had the “Fortnightly”?  How does my painting of the Lilly look?

December 8.

Harris...says that my article “simply made the December number,” which pretty piece of gratitude means a lively sense of favours to come.

December 13.

I had a letter from Spencer yesterday chuckling over the success of his setting me on Lilly.

[Ilkley had a wonderful effect upon him.] “It is quite absurd,” [he writes after 24 hours there,] “but I am wonderfully better already.” [His regimen was of the simplest, save perhaps on one point.] “Clark told me,” [he says with the utmost gravity,] “always to drink tea and eat hot cake at 4.30.  I have persevered, however against my will, and last night had no dreams, but slept like a top.” [Two hours’ writing in the morning were followed by two hours’ sharp walking; in the afternoon he first took two hours’ walking or strolling if the weather were decent;] “then Clark’s prescription diligently taken” [(i.e. tea and a pipe) and a couple of hours more writing; after dinner reading and to bed before eleven.]

I am working away (he writes) in a leisurely comfortable manner at my chapter for Ward’s Jubilee book, and have got the first few pages done, which is always my greatest trouble.

December 8.

...Canon Milman wrote to me to come to the opening of the New Buildings for Sion College, which the Prince is going to preside over on the 15th.  I had half a mind to accept, if only for the drollery of finding myself among a solemn convocation of the city clergy.  However, I thought it would be opening the floodgates, and I prudently declined.