I really cannot hold myself to be responsible for the translators of the Revised Version of the Old Testament. If I had given a translation of the passage to which you refer on my own authority, any mistake would be mine, and I should be bound to acknowledge it. As I did not, I have nothing to admit. I have every respect for your and Mr. --'s authority as Hebraists, but I have noticed that Hebrew scholars are apt to hold very divergent views, and before admitting either your or Mr. --'s interpretation, I should like to see the question fully discussed. If, when the discussion is concluded, the balance of authority is against the revised version, I will carefully consider how far the needful alterations may affect the substance of the one passage in my reply to Mr. Gladstone which is affected by it. At present I am by no means clear that it will make much difference, and in no case will the main lines of my argument as to the antagonism between modern science and the Pentateuch be affected. The statements I have made are public property. If you think they are in any way erroneous I must ask you to take upon yourself the same amount of responsibility as I have done, and submit your objections to the same ordeal. There is nothing like this test for reducing things to their true proportions, and if you try it, you will probably discover, not without some discomfort, that you really had no reason to ascribe wilful blindness to those who do not agree with you. [He was now preparing to complete his campaign of the spring on technical education by delivering an address to the Technical Education Association at Manchester on November 29, and looked forward to attending the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society on his way home next day, and seeing the Copley medal conferred upon his old friend, Sir J. Hooker. However, unexpected trouble befell him. First he was much alarmed about his wife, who had been ill more or less ever since leaving Arolla. Happily it turned out that there was nothing worse than could be set right by a slight operation. But nothing had been done when news came of the sudden death of his second daughter on November 19.] "I have no heart for anything just now," [he writes; nevertheless, he forced himself to fulfil this important engagement at Manchester, and in the end the necessity of bracing himself for the undertaking acted on him as a tonic. It is a trifle, perhaps, but a trifle significant of the disturbance of mind that could override so firmly fixed a habit, that the two first letters he wrote after receiving the news are undated; almost the only omission of the sort I have found in all his letters of the last twenty-five years of his life.