accordingly.

After you had assented I spoke to several of our friends who were at
the Athenaeum, and wrote to Lockyer. I believe a strong committee is
forming, and that we shall have a scientific jubilation on a large
scale; but I have purposely kept in the background, and confined
myself, like Bismarck, to the business of "honest broker."

But of course nothing (beyond preliminaries) can be done till you name
the day, and at this time of year it is needful to look well ahead if a
big room is to be secured. So if you can possibly settle that point,
pray do.

There seems to have been some oversight on my wife's part about the
invitation, but she is stating her own case. We go on a visit to Mrs.
Darwin to Cambridge on Saturday week, and the Saturday after that I am
bound to be at Eton.

Moreover, I have sacrificed to the public Moloch so far as to promise
to take the chair at a public meeting in favour of a Free Library for
Marylebone on the 7th. As Wednesday's work at the Geological Society
and the soiree knocked me up all yesterday, I shall be about finished I
expect on the 8th. If you are going to be at Hindhead after that, and
would have us for a day, it would be jolly; but I cannot be away long,
as I have some work to finish before I go abroad.

I never was so uncomfortable in my life, I think, as on Wednesday when
L-- was speaking, just in front of me, at the University. Of course I
was in entire sympathy with the tenor of his speech, but I was no less
certain of the impolicy of giving a chance to such a master of polished