habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement.

The fact that he received the name of the doubting apostle was by no
means one of those superhuman coincidences in which some naive people
see portents. In later years my father used to make humorous play
with its appropriateness, but in plain fact he was named after his
grandfather, Thomas Huxley. I have not traced the origin of the Henry.

Both parents were of dark complexion, and all the children were
dark-haired and dark-eyed. The father was tall, and, I believe, well
set-up: a miniature shows him with abundant, brown, curling hair
brushed high above a good forehead, giving the effect, so fashionable
in 1830, of a high-peaked head. The features are well cut and regular;
the nose rather long and inclined to be aquiline; the cheeks well
covered; the eyes, under somewhat arched brows, expressive and
interesting. Outwardly, there is a certain resemblance traceable
between the miniature and a daguerrotype of Huxley at nineteen;
but the debt, physical and mental, owed to either parent is thus
recorded:--

Physically, I am the son of my mother so completely--even
down to peculiar movements of the hands, which made their
appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticed
them--that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself,
except an inborn faculty for drawing, which, unfortunately
in my case, has never been cultivated; a hot temper, and
that amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers
sometimes call obstinacy.

My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and