I send you a report of my lecture, that you may see how orthodox I was. Sellar[90] was at the lecture, and told me that I reminded him of some professor at St. Andrews, who had told him as a fact that he (the St. Andrews professor) always made a point of alluding to Providence in an introductory lecture, and afterwards 'threw him aside!' The sonnet alluded to in one of the letters (p. 265) is so beautiful that it is inserted here. It shows better than any words could do the attitude of George Romanes' mind. Profoundly sincere, anxious, almost unduly anxious, to give no indulgence to his own longings, to state to himself and to others unsparingly, unflinchingly, what appeared to him the as yet irrefutable arguments against the Faith, when he was alone he relaxed and poured out his inmost heart. 'I ask not for Thy love, O Lord: the days Can never come when anguish shall atone. Enough for me were but Thy pity shown, To me as to the stricken sheep that strays, With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways-- O lead me back to pastures I have known, Or find me in the wilderness alone, And slay me, as the hand of mercy slays. I ask not for Thy love; nor e'en so much As for a hope on Thy dear breast to lie; But be Thou still my shepherd--still with such Compassion as may melt to such a cry; That so I hear Thy feet, and feel Thy touch, And dimly see Thy face ere yet I die.' In November Mr. Romanes came formally into residence, and at first nothing could have been happier than his Oxford life. He simply revelled in the facilities for work which the splendidly equipped laboratories afforded, and he once said, 'that the laboratory alone had made the move from London to Oxford worth while!' He set to work on his book, 'Darwin, and after Darwin,' and on many experiments bearing on Professor Weismann's theories and on some other points. He much wished to see established in Oxford what M. Giard has called an _Institut transformiste_, and wrote to many leading men of science on the subject. As yet the idea has come to nothing, but possibly it may be revived. January 22, 1891.