Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 3 | Page 4

the very day of the
Jubilee, prevented him from coming to speak at a meeting upon
Technical Education. In the autumn, however, he spoke on the subject
at Manchester, and had the satisfaction of seeing the city "go solid," as
he expressed it, for technical education. The circumstances of this visit
are given later.]
4 Marlborough Place, May 1, 1887.
My dear Roscoe,
I met Lord Hartington at the Academy Dinner last night and took the
opportunity of urging upon him the importance of following up his

technical education speech. He told me he had been in communication
with you about the matter, and he seemed to me to be very well
disposed to your plans.
I may go on crying in the wilderness until I am hoarse, with no result,
but if he and you and Mundella will take it up, something may be done.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, June 28, 1887.
My dear Roscoe,
Donnelly was here on Sunday and was quite right up to date. I felt I
ought to be better, and could not make out why the deuce I was not.
Yesterday the mischief came out. There is a touch of pleurisy--which
has been covered by the muscular rheumatism.
So I am relegated to bed and told to stop there--with the company of
cataplasms to keep me lively.
I do not think the attack in any way serious--but M. Pl. is a gentleman
not to be trifled with, when you are over sixty, and there is nothing for
it but to obey my doctor's orders.
Pray do not suppose I would be stopped by a trifle, if my coming to the
meeting [Of July 1, on Technical Education.] would really have been of
use. I hope you will say how grieved I am to be absent.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, June 29, 1887.
My dear Roscoe,
I have scrawled a variety of comments on the paper you sent me. Deal
with them as you think fit.
Ever since I was on the London School Board I have seen that the key
of the position is in the Sectarian Training Colleges and that wretched
imposture, the pupil teacher system. As to the former Delendae sunt no
truce or pact to be made with them, either Church or Dissenting. Half
the time of their students is occupied with grinding into their minds
their tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee theological idiocies, and the other
half in cramming them with boluses of other things to be duly spat out
on examination day. Whatever is done do not let us be deluded by any
promises of theirs to hook on science or technical teaching to their
present work.

I am greatly disgusted that I cannot come to Tyndall's dinner
to-night--but my brother-in-law's death would have stopped me (the
funeral to-day)--even if my doctor had not forbidden me to leave my
bed. He says I have some pleuritic effusion on one side and must mind
my P's and Q's.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A good deal of correspondence at this time with Sir M. Foster relates
to the examinations of the Science and Art Department. He was still
Dean, it will be remembered, of the Royal College of Science, and
further kept up his connection with the Department by acting in an
honorary capacity as Examiner, setting questions, but less and less
looking over papers, acting as the channel for official communications,
as when he writes (April 24),] "I send you some Department
documents--nothing alarming, only more worry for the Assistant
Examiners, and that WE do not mind"; and finally signing the Report.
But to do this after taking so small a share in the actual work of
examining, grew more and more repugnant to him, till on October 12
he writes:--]
I will read the Report and sign it if need be--though there really must be
some fresh arrangement.
Of course I have entire confidence in your judgment about the
examination, but I have a mortal horror of putting my name to things I
do not know of my own knowledge.
[In addition to these occupations, he wrote a short paper upon a fossil,
Ceratochelys, which was read at the Royal Society on March 31; while
on April 7 he read at the Linnean ("Botany" volume 24 pages 101-124),
his paper, "The Gentians: Notes and Queries," which had sprung from
his holiday amusement at Arolla.
Philosophy, however, claimed most of his energies. The campaign
begun in answer to the incursion of Mr. Lilly was continued in the
article "Science and Pseudo-Scientific Realism" ("Collected Essays" 5
59-89) which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for February 1887.
The text for this discourse was the report of a sermon by Canon Liddon,
in which that