what I am doing. He would probably add that I was very ambitious and
desirous of occupying a high place in the world's estimation. Therein,
however, he would be mistaken. An income sufficient to place me above
care and anxiety, and free scope to work, are the only things I have
ever wished for or striven for. But one is obliged to toil long and hard
for these, and it is only now that they are coming within my grasp. I
gave up the idea of going to Edinburgh because I doubted whether leaving
London was wise. Recently I have been tempted to put up for a good
physiological chair which is to be established at Oxford; but the
Government propose to improve my position at the School of Mines, and
there is every probability that I shall now permanently remain in
London. Indeed, it is high time that I should settle down to one line of
work. Hitherto, as you see by the somewhat varied list of my duties,
etc., above, I have been ranging over different parts of a very wide
field. But this apparent desultoriness has been necessary, for I knew
not for what branch of science I should eventually have to declare
myself. There are very few appointments open to men of science in this
country, and one must take what one can get and be thankful.

My health was very bad some years ago, and I had great fear of becoming
a confirmed dyspeptic, but thanks to the pedestrian tours in the Alps I
have taken for the past two years, I am wonderfully better this session,
and feel capable of any amount of work. It was in the course of one of
these trips that I went, as you have rightly heard, half way up Mont
Blanc. But I was not in training and stuck at the Grands Mulets, while
my three companions went on. I spent seventeen hours alone on that grand
pinnacle, the latter part of the time in great anxiety, for I feared my
friends were lost; and as I had no guide my own neck would have been in
considerable jeopardy in endeavouring to return amidst the maze of
crevasses of the Glacier des Bois. But it was glorious weather and the