without seeing civilised beings; where his junior companions were as indifferent as the Australian aborigines to his scientific pursuits.[1] He made friends of them not the less, and declares that the life on board ship, under sharp discipline, with a 'soft plank' to sleep upon, and weevilly biscuit for breakfast, was well worth living. It taught him to work for the sake of work, even if he and his work were to go to the bottom of the sea. He returned to England to find that some of his work had been appreciated, and to gain some warm friends. Still, it looked also as though a 'life of science' would mean not a 'life of poverty,' but a 'life of nothing,' and the art of living upon nothing, especially with a family, had not yet been discovered. Yet the desirability of living somehow had been enforced by the greatest blessing of his life, the engagement in Australia to the lady to whom he writes this account. He still feels, however, and he counts with complete confidence
- ↑ A naval officer wrote to rebuke me for a sentence which I have slightly modified. Huxley speaks very highly of his commander, Captain Stanley, and the remarks (see Life, vol. i. p. 49) apply to some of the junior officers, whom he nevertheless found to be 'as good fellows as sailors ought to be and generally are' (Ibid. p. 30). My correspondent thinks that they were equal to Huxley in scientific attainments. If so, Huxley did not find it out, and apparently took them for Peter Simples.
