of scientific organization.

The first meeting took place on November 3, 1864; nearly nineteen
years passed before the circle was broken by the death of
Spottiswoode. Proposals were made to fill the gap with a new friend,
but, as the _raison d'etre_ of the club had been simply the personal
attachment of the original nine, the project fell through. Finally,
after Hirst's death in 1892, when five out of the remaining six were
living away from London and for the most part in uncertain health,
it became more and more difficult to arrange a meeting, and the club
quietly lapsed after nearly twenty-eight years of existence.

Guests were often entertained at the _x_ dinners, men of science or
letters of almost every nationality--a delightful and quite informal
mode of personal intercourse. In the summer, also, the _x_ often made
a week-end expedition into the country or up the river, in which the
wives of the married members took part, the formula for the invitation
being _x's + yv's_.

XV

CHARLES DARWIN

To this focus of close friendships Charles Darwin would assuredly have
been invited to belong had he been other than an invalid living
away from London; for he was the warm and revered friend not only of
Huxley, but still more of Hooker, who in age stood midway between the
two--eight years younger than the one and eight years older than the
other--and who, for some fifteen years before the publication of the
_Origin of Species_, had been Darwin's most intimate friend and aid in
his work.

Huxley had made Darwin's acquaintance early in the fifties, and soon
fell under the spell of his deep thought, his utter sincerity and
generous warmth of heart. Darwin, for his part, was strongly attracted
by his new friend's penetrating knowledge, incisive criticism, and
brilliant conversation. When, in 1858, he began to write out the
_Origin_, Huxley was one of the three men he fixed upon by whose
judgment of the book he meant to abide. Lyell, who had read the book
before it came out, was the first; Hooker, his long-time aid and
critic and finally convert, the second. On the eve of publication,
secure of these, he adds: "If I can convert Huxley I shall be
content."

On all three the effect of the completed book, with its array of
detailed argument and evidence, was far greater than that of
previous discussions. With one or two reservations as to the logical
completeness of the theory, Huxley accepted it as a well-founded