A notable feature in Hooker’s character was his extreme modesty. Of his apprenticeship in surgery—no mean feat, accomplished as it was in a few months—he was wont to talk as if it had been no more than a boyish lark. Of his great journey in India,—pregnant with important scientific results,—he spoke as if it had been the mere holiday trip of a restless Englishman, whereas it produced not only what was admittedly one of the best books of travel that ever were written, but also gave evidence of undaunted courage and of the most astute diplomatic talent in dealing with critical and unexpected conditions. Simple he was, and self-effacing, yet when Kew was attacked and a powerful Minister, Mr. Ayrton, whom Dizzy once called the cleverest member of the House of Commons, attempted to reduce the noble scientific institution of which he was the head to the level of the nurserymaid and her perambulator, he could show fight to the death, and he won. In order that Kew should be beautiful, he was willing to work with all his might. But it must be something else besides: it must be a school of botany for the whole world. Its first duty was to science. The correspondence with myself upon the subject of bamboos, to which I have alluded above, bore witness to that quality of modesty which is the hall-mark of the greatest men, at any rate, it is only the greatest that possess it. Writing to me once upon a technical point, he told me that he thought I was wrong. Very timidly, and very respectfully, I stuck to my guns, and gave my reasons. His answer was characteristic. He admitted the truth of what I had urged upon him, saying, “Never hesitate to correct me if I am wrong.” That, coming from so great a man, was magnificent. Hooker’s life was ideally beautiful. Following in the footsteps of his distinguished father, who was his first master and whom he adored with all that strength of veneration and love which he showed in all his friendships, for instance in that with Darwin, he lived to be recognized both at home and abroad as the greatest of living botanists. In middle life he passed through a period of delicate health which certainly gave no promise of the ripe old age which he attained. In 1865, as Sir William Thiselton Dyer tells us, he was so ill that he had to be carried in blankets by four men to see his dead father’s body leave the house.