[In a letter to me the same writer remarks--

I gathered from Mr. Huxley's look when I spoke to him at Dr. Daubeny's
that he was not quite satisfied to have been forced to take so personal
a tone--it a little jarred upon his fine taste. But it was the Bishop
who first struck the insolent note of personal attack.

Again, with reference to the state of feeling at the meeting:--

I never saw such a display of fierce party spirit, the looks of bitter
hatred which the audience bestowed--(I mean the majority) on us who were
on your father's side--as we passed through the crowd we felt that we
were expected to say "how abominably the Bishop was treated"--or to be
considered outcasts and detestable.

It was very different, however, at Dr. Daubeny's, "where," says the
writer of the account in "Darwin's Life," "the almost sole topic was the
battle of the 'Origin,' and I was much struck with the fair and
unprejudiced way in which the black coats and white cravats of Oxford
discussed the question, and the frankness with which they offered their
congratulations to the winners in the combat."

The result of this encounter, though a check to the other side, cannot,
of course, be represented as an immediate and complete triumph for
evolutionary doctrine. This was precluded by the character and temper of
the audience, most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the
arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort, although, being
gentlefolk, as Professor Farrar remarks, they were disposed to admit on
reflection that the Bishop had erred on the score of taste and good