The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 2 | Page 7

be so good as to be my special ambassador with Haeckel and Gegenbauer, and tell them the same thing? It would give me and all of us particular pleasure to see them and to take care of them.
But I am afraid that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives to be on the baser side of a controversy, is at present on the German side. And my daughters announced to me yesterday that they had converted a young friend of theirs from the French to the German side, which is one gained for you. All look forward with great pleasure to seeing you in the autumn.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In addition to this address on September 14, he read his paper on "Penicillium," etc., in Section D on the 20th. Speaking on the 17th, after a lecture of Sir J. Lubbock's on the "Social and Religious Condition of the Lower Races of Mankind," he brought forward his own experiences as to the practical results of the beliefs held by the Australian savages, and from this passed to the increasing savagery of the lower classes in great towns such as Liverpool, which was the great political question of the future, and for which the only cure lay in a proper system of education.
The savagery underlying modern civilisation was all the more vividly before him, because one evening he, together with Sir J. Lubbock, Dr. Bastian, and Mr. Samuelson, were taken by the chief of the detective department round some of the worst slums in Liverpool. In thieves' dens, doss houses, dancing saloons, enough of suffering and criminality was seen to leave a very deep and painful impression. In one of these places, a thieves' lodging-house, a drunken man with a cut face accosted him and asked him whether he was a doctor. He said "yes," whereupon the man asked him to doctor his face. He had been fighting, and was terribly excited. Huxley tried to pacify him, but if it had not been for the intervention of the detective, the man would have assaulted him. Afterwards he asked the detective if he were not afraid to go alone in these places, and got the significant answer, "Lord bless you, sir, drink and disease take all the strength out of them."
On the 21st, after the general meeting of the Association, which wound up the proceedings, the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire presented a diploma of honorary membership and a gift of books to Huxley, Sir G. Stokes, and Sir J. Hooker, the last three Presidents of the British Association, and to Professors Tyndall and Rankine and Sir J. Lubbock, the lecturers at Liverpool. Then Huxley was presented with a mazer bowl lined with silver, made from part of one of the roof timbers of the cottage occupied as his headquarters by Prince Rupert during the siege of Liverpool. He was rather taken aback when he found the bowl was filled with champagne, after a moment, however, he drank] "success to the good old town of Liverpool," [and with a wave of his hand, threw the rest on the floor, saying,] "I pour this as a libation to the tutelary deities of the town."
[The same evening he was the guest of the Sphinx Club at dinner at the Royal Hotel, his friend Mr. P.H. Rathbone being in the chair, and in proposing the toast of the town and trade of Liverpool, declared that commerce was a greater civiliser than all the religion and all the science ever put together in the world, for it taught men to be truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of their engagements, and men who were truthful and punctual and precise in the execution of their engagements had put their feet upon the first rung of the ladder which led to moral and intellectual elevation.
There were the usual clerical attacks on the address, among the rest a particularly violent one from a Unitarian pulpit. Writing to Mr. Samuelson on October 5 he says:--]
Be not vexed on account of the godly. They will have their way. I found Mr. --'s sermon awaiting me on my return home. It is an able paper, but like the rest of his cloth he will not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the ideas of the man whom he opposes. At least that is the case if he imagines he brings me under the range of his