As to Toronto, I confess I am not very anxious about it. Sydney would have been far more to my taste, and I confess I envy you what, as I hear, is the very good chance you have of going there. It used to be our headquarters in the "Rattlesnake" and my home for three months in the year. Should you go, I should be very happy, if you like, to give you letters to some of my friends. Greatly as I wish we had been destined to do our work together, I cannot but offer you the most hearty wishes for your success in Sydney. Ever yours very faithfully, Thomas H. Huxley. John Tyndall, Esq. 41 North Bank, Regent's Park, May 7, 1852. My dear Tyndall, Allow me to be one of the first to have the pleasure of congratulating you on your new honours. I had the satisfaction last night to hear your name read out as one of the selected of the Council of the Royal Society for election to the Fellowship this year, and you are therefore as good as elected. I always made sure of your success, but I am not the less pleased that it is now a fait accompli. I am, my dear Tyndall, faithfully yours, T.H. Huxley. P.S.--I have heard nothing of Toronto, and I begin to think that the whole affair, University and all, is a myth. [His hopes of the Colonies failing, he tried each of the divisions of the United Kingdom in turn, with uniform ill-success; in 1852-53 at Aberdeen and at Cork; in 1853 at King's College, London. He had great hopes of Aberdeen at first; the appointment lay with the Home Secretary, a personal friend of Sir J. Clark, who was interested in Huxley though not personally acquainted with him. But no sooner had he written to urge the latter's claims than a change of ministry took place, and other influences commanded the field. It was cold comfort that Clark told him only to wait--something must turn up. There was still a great probability of the Toronto chair falling to a Cork professor; so with this in view, he gave up a trip to Chamounix with his brother, and attended the meeting of the British Association at Belfast in August 1852, in order to make himself known to the Irish men of science, for, as his friends told him, personal influence went for so much, and while most men's reputations were better than themselves, he might flatter himself that he was better than his reputation. But this, too, came to nothing, and the King's College appointment also went to the candidate who was backed by the most powerful influence. A fatality seemed to dog his efforts; nevertheless he writes at the end of 1851:--] Among my scientific friends the monition I get on all sides is that of Dante's great ancestor to him-- A te sequi la tua stella.