The loss of your assistant seems to have been the only deduction to be made from your success.  I am afraid you must have felt it much in all ways.

“My Lord” received your telegram only after the business of “securing Hirst” was done.  That is one of the bright spots in a bad year for me.  Goschen consulted Spottiswood and me independently about the headship of the new Naval College, and was naturally considerably surprised by the fact that we coincided in recommending Hirst...The upshot was that Goschen asked me to communicate with Hirst and see if he would be disposed to accept the offer.  So I did, and found to my great satisfaction that Hirst took to the notion very kindly.  I am sure he is the very best man for the post to be met with in the three kingdoms, having that rare combination of qualities by which he gets on with all manner of men, and singularly attracts young fellows.  He will not only do his duty, but be beloved for doing it, which is what few people can compass.

I have little news to give you.  The tail of the X.-Hooker storm is drifting over the scientific sky in the shape of fresh attacks by Owen on Hooker.  Hooker answered the last angelically, and I hope they are at an end.

The wife has just come in and sends her love (but is careful to add “second-best").  The chicks grow visibly and audibly, and Jess looks quite a woman.  All are well except myself, and I am getting better from a fresh breakdown of dyspepsia.  I find that if I am to exist at all it must be on strictly ascetic principles, so there is hope of my dying in the odour of sanctity yet.  If you recollect, Lancelot did not know that he should “die a holy man” till rather late in life.  I have forgotten to tell you about the Rectorship of Aberdeen.  I refused to stand at first, on the score of health, and only consented on condition that I should not be called upon to do any public work until after the long vacation.  It was a very hard fight, and although I had an absolute majority of over fifty, the mode of election is such that one vote, in one of the four nations, would have turned the scale by giving my opponent the majority in that nation.  We should then have been ties, and as the chancellor, who has under such circumstances a casting vote, would have (I believe) given it against me, I should have been beaten.

As it is, the fact of any one, who stinketh in the nostrils of orthodoxy, beating a Scotch peer at his own gates in the most orthodox of Scotch cities, is a curious sign of the times.  The reason why they made such a tremendous fight for me, is I believe, that I may carry on the reforms commenced by Grant Duff, my predecessor.  Unlike other Lord Rectors, he of Aberdeen is a power and can practically govern the action of the University during his tenure of office.

I saw Pollock yesterday, and he says that they want you back again.  Curiously the same desire is epidemically prevalent among your friends, not least here.