The British Association broke up last Wednesday, after a session
which, though it had some of the interest taken out of it by the war, was full of interest. The lucid address of the President, Professor Harley, of which we gave a brief notice last week, and his skill and address, as President,—Professor Huxley has that genial humour and that peremptory dislike of vagrancy of mind which are the two great requisites of a successful chairman, —would alone have made the meeting a successful one. He sup- premed the grievance-mongers, iuterested the general public,--. not one in twenty of the audience really knew anything accurate of science,—and fascinated Liverpool. The awe the Professor expressed in his closing speech of the magnificence of the entertainment afforded him by the Mayor, and of the splendour of the coach in which he had been driven, was thoroughly characteristic of him. If he stopped in Liverpool much longer, he said, he should expect the Mayor to present him and his wife with various changes of gorgeous robes and a purse of sequins, in the old "Arabian Nights" style, a situation to which he hardly felt equal. But if Professor Huxley would have been embarrassed by the six changes of raiment, each borne by an Ethiopian slave, and a purse of sequins for each,—that was, we think, the orthodox thing,—how much more would the Eastern Caliph have been embarrassed by Professor Huxley ! The fancy of the "Arabian Nights," rich as it was in impossibilities, never stumbled on any marvel which would have surprised the East so much as that cross between a great biologist and a possible naval officer which is realized in Professor Huxley.
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