exposition, with which his printed books have made all readers in America and England familiar. Yet it had more than that. You could not listen to him without thinking more of the speaker than of his science, more of the solid, beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, more of his manly simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge and his long services. His Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institution rivaled those of Tyndall in their interest and brilliance, and were always keenly and justly popular. Yet, he has told us that at first he had almost every fault a speaker could have. After his first Royal Institution lecture he received an anonymous letter recommending him never to try again, as whatever else he might be fit for, it was certainly not for giving lectures. It is also said that after one of his first lectures, 'On the Relations of Animals and Plants/ at a suburban Athenæum, a general desire was expressed to the Council that they would never invite that young man to lecture again. Quite late in life he told me, and John Bright said the same thing, that he was always nervous when he rose to speak, though it soon wore off when he warmed up to his subject.
No doubt easy listening on the part of the audience means hard working and thinking on the part of the lecturer, and, whether for the cultivated audience at the Royal Institution or for one to workingmen, he spared himself no pains to make his lectures interesting and instructive. There used to be an impression that Science was something up in the clouds, too remote from ordinary life, too abstruse and too difficult to be interesting; or else, as Dickens ridiculed it in 'Pickwick/ too trivial to be worthy of the time of an intellectual being.
Huxley was one of the foremost of those who brought our people to realize that science is of vital importance in our life, that it is more fascinating "than a fairy tale, more thrilling than a novel, and that any one who neglects to follow the triumphant march of discovery, so startling in its marvelous and unexpected surprises, so inspiring in its moral influence and its revelations of the beauties and wonders of the world in which we live and the universe of which we form an infinitesimal, but to ourselves at any rate, an all-important part, is deliberately rejecting one of the greatest comforts and interests of life, one of the greatest gifts with which we have been endowed by Providence.
But there is a time for all things under the sun, and we cannot fully realize the profound interest and serious responsibilities of life unless we refresh the mind and allow the bow to unbend. Huxley was full of humor, which burst out on most unexpected occasions. I remember one instance during a paper on the habits of spiders. The female spider appears to be one of the most unsociable, truculent and bloodthirsty of her sex. Even under the influence of love she does but temporarily suspend her general hatred of all living beings. The courtship varies in
