y of which were
published in the volume called Controverted Questions. The main value of
these essays lies in the fact that Huxley calls upon men to give clear
reasons for the faith which they claim as theirs, and makes, as a friend
wrote of him, hazy thinking and slovenly, half-formed conclusions seem
the base thing they really are.

The last years of Huxley's life were indeed the longed-for Indian
summer. Away from the noise of London at Eastbourne by the sea, he spent
many happy hours with old-time friends and in his garden, which was
a great joy to him. His large family of sons and daughters and
grandchildren brought much cheer to his last days. Almost to the end he
was working and writing for publication. Three days before his death
he wrote to his old friend, Hooker, that he didn't feel at all like
"sending in his checks" and hoped to recover. He died very quietly on
June 29, 1895. That he met death with the same calm faith and strength
with which he had met life is indicated by the lines which his wife
wrote and which he requested to be his epitaph:--

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep; For still He giveth His
beloved sleep, And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.

To attempt an analysis of Huxley's character, unique and bafflingly
complex as it is, is beyond the scope of this sketch; but to give
only the mere facts of his life is to do an injustice to the vivid
personality of the man as it is revealed in his letters. All his human
interest in people and things--pets, and flowers, and family--brightens
many pages of the two ponderous volumes. Now one reads of his grief over
some backward-going plant, or over some garden tragedy, as "A lovely
clematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in nailing up, has just
died suddenly. I am more inconsolable than Jonah!" Now one is amused
with a nonsense letter to one of his children, and again with an
account of a pet. "I wish you would write seriously to M----. She is
not behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few more
lively, and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away at
something M---- says cost 13s. 6d. a yard and reduced more or less of it
to combings. M---- therefore excludes him from the dining-room and
all those opportunities of higher education which he would have in MY
house." Frequently one finds a description of some event, so vividly
done that the mere reading of it seems like a real experience. An
accoun