the most difficult possible.

A notable description of his public lecturing in the seventies and
early eighties is given by G. W. Smalley, correspondent of the _New
York Tribune_, in his "London Letters":--

[Illustration: From a Photograph by Maull and Polyblank, 1857; To face
p. 44]

I used always to admire the simple and businesslike way in
which Huxley made his entry on great occasions. He hated
anything like display, and would have none of it. At the Royal
Institution, more than almost anywhere else, the lecturer,
on whom the concentric circles of spectators in their steep
amphitheatre look down, focuses the gaze. Huxley never seemed
aware that anybody was looking at him. From self-consciousness
he was, here as elsewhere, singularly free, as from
self-assertion. He walked in through the door on the left as
if he were entering his own laboratory. In these days he bore
scarcely a mark of age. He was in the full vigour of manhood,
and looked the man he was.... With a firm step and easy
bearing he took his place, apparently without a thought of the
people who were cheering him. To him it was an anniversary. He
looked, and he probably was, the master. Surrounded as he
was by the celebrities of science and the ornaments of London
drawing-rooms, there was none who had quite the same kind
of intellectual ascendancy which belonged to him. The square
forehead, the square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the
deep, flashing dark eyes, the impression of something more
than strength he gave you, an impression of sincerity, of