Seriously you must not mind a check of this kind. [This incident, one may suspect, was in his mind when he wrote in his "Autobiography" of the rapidity of thought characteristic of his mother:--] That characteristic has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often stood me in good stead, it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger. [At the Norwich meeting of the Association he also delivered his well-known lecture to working men "On a Piece of Chalk," a perfect example of the handling of a common and trivial subject, so as to make it] "a window into the Infinite." [He was particularly interested in the success of the meeting, as his friend Hooker was President, and writes to Darwin, September 12:--] We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker came out in great force as he always does in emergencies. The only fault was the terrible "Darwinismus" which spread over the section and crept out when you least expected it, even in Fergusson's lecture on "Buddhist Temples." You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas triumphant during your lifetime. P.S.--I am preparing to go into opposition; I can't stand it. [This lecture "On a Piece of Chalk," together with two others delivered this year, seem to me to mark the maturing of his style into that mastery of clear expression for which he deliberately laboured, the saying exactly what he meant, neither too much nor too little, without confusion and without obscurity. Have something to say, and say it, was the Duke of Wellington's theory of style; Huxley's was to say that which has to be said in such language that you can stand cross-examination on each word. Be clear, though you may be convicted of error. If you are clearly wrong, you will run up against a fact some time and get set right. If you shuffle with your subject, and study chiefly to use language which will give a loophole of escape either way, there is no hope for you. This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's aphorism on style find a better illustration, "Le style c'est l'homme meme." In him science and literature, too often divorced, were closely united; and literature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an authority than Spedding, in a letter upon the influence of Bacon on his own style in the matter of exactitude, the pruning of fine epithets and sweeping statements, the reduction of numberless superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as a young man he had fallen in with Huxley's writings before Bacon's, they would have produced the same effect upon him.