You will become an emigre, and John Burns will have to content himself with the heads of the likes of me. As the Jacobins said of Lavoisier, the Republic has no need of men of science. But this prospect need not interfere with sending our hearty congratulations to Lady Farrer and yourself. As for your criticisms, don't you know that I am become a reactionary and secret friend of the clerics? My lecture is really an effort to put the Christian doctrine that Satan is the Prince of this world upon a scientific foundation. Just consider it in this light, and you will understand why I was so warmly welcomed in Oxford. (N.B.--The only time I spoke before was in 1860, when the great row with Samuel came off!!) Ever yours very faithfully, T.H. Huxley. Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 15, 1893. My dear Skelton, I fear I must admit that even a Gladstonian paper occasionally tells the truth. They never mean to, but we all have our lapses from the rule of life we have laid down for ourselves, and must be charitable. The fact is, I got influenza in the spring, and have never managed to shake right again, any tendency that way being well counteracted by the Romanes lecture and its accompaniments. So we are off to the Maloja to-morrow. It mended up the shaky old heart-pump five years ago, and I hope will again. I have been in Orkney, and believe in the air, but I cannot say quite so much for the scenery. I thought it just a wee little bit, shall I say, bare? But then I have a passion for mountains. I shall be right glad to know what your H.O.M. [The "Old Man of Hoy," a pseudonym under which Sir J. Skelton wrote.] has to say about Ethics and Evolution. You must remember that my lecture was a kind of egg-dance. Good manners bound me over to say nothing offensive to the Christians in the amphitheatre (I was in the arena), and truthfulness, on the other hand, bound me to say nothing that I did not fully mean. Under these circumstances one has to leave a great many i's undotted and t's uncrossed. Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Skelton, and believe me, Yours ever, T.H. Huxley. [And again on October 17:--] Ask your Old Man of Hoy to be so good as to suspend judgment until the Lecture appears again with an appendix in that collection of volumes the bulk of which appals me. Didn't I see somewhere that you had been made Poor Law pope, or something of the sort? I congratulate the poor more than I do you, for it must be a weary business trying to mend the irremediable. (No, I am NOT glancing at the whitewashing of Mary.) [Here may be added two later letters bearing in part upon the same subject:--] Hodeslea, Eastbourne, March 23, 1894. Dear Sir, I ought to have thanked you before now for your letter about Nietzsche's works, but I have not much working time, and I find letter-writing a burden, which I am always trying to shirk.