IMPALEMENT BY REQUEST.

_Athenaeum_, August, 19, 1865. _Notice to Correspondents._

"R. W.--If you will consult the opening chapter of the Budget of Paradoxes, you will see that the author presents only works in his own library at a given date; and this for a purpose explained. For ourselves we have carefully avoided allowing any writers to present themselves in our columns on the ground that the Budget has pa.s.sed them over. We gather that Mr. De Morgan contemplates additions at a future time, perhaps in a separate and augmented work; if so, those who complain that others of no greater claims than themselves have been ridiculed may find themselves where they wish to be. We have done what we can for you by forwarding your letter to Mr. De Morgan."

The author of "An Essay on the Const.i.tution of the Earth," published in 1844, demanded of the _Athenaeum_, as an _act of fairness_, that a letter from him should be published, proving that he had as much right to be "impaled" as Capt. Drayson. He holds, on speculative grounds, what the other claims to have proved by measurement, namely, that the earth is growing; and he believes that in time--a good long time, not _our_ time--the earth and other planets may grow into suns, with systems of their own.

This gentleman sent me a copy of his work, after the commencement of my Budget; but I have no recollection of having received it, and I cannot find it on the (nursery? {134} quarantine?) shelves on which I keep my unestablished discoveries. Had I known of this work in time, (see the Introduction) I should of course, have impaled it (heraldically) with the other work; but the two are very different. Capt. Drayson professes to prove his point by results of observation; and I think he does not succeed.

The author before me only speculates; and a speculator can get any conclusion into his premises, if he will only build or hire them of shape and size to suit. It reminds me of a statement I heard years ago, that a score of persons, or near it, were to dine inside the skull of one of the aboriginal animals, dear little creatures! Whereat I wondered vastly, nothing doubting; facts being stubborn and not easy drove, as Mrs. Gamp said. But I soon learned that the skull was not a real one, but artificially constructed by the methods--methods which have had striking verifications, too--which enable zoologists to go the whole hog by help of a toe or a bit of tail. This took off the edge of the wonder: a hundred people can dine inside an inference, if you draw it large enough. The method might happen to fail for once: for instance, the toe-bone might have been abnormalized by therian or saurian malady; and the possibility of such failure, even when of small probability, is of great alleviation. The author before me is, apparently, the sole fabricator of his own premises.

With vital force in the earth and continual creation on the part of the original Creator, he expands our bit of a residence as desired. But, as the Newtoness of Cookery observed, First catch your hare. When this is done, when you _have_ a growing earth, you shall dress it with all manner of proximate causes, and serve it up with a growing Moon for sauce, a growing Sun, if it please you, at the other end, and growing planets for side-dishes. Hoping this amount of impalement will be satisfactory, I go on to something else. {135}

THE HAILESEAN SYSTEM OF ASTRONOMY.

_The Hailesean System of Astronomy._ By John Davey Hailes[237] (two pages duodecimo, 1860).

He offers to _take_ 100,000l. to 1,000l. that he shows the sun to be less than seven millions of miles from the earth. The earth in the center, revolving eastward, the sun revolving westward, so that they "meet at half the circle distance in the 24 hours." The diameter of the circle being 9839458303, the circ.u.mference is 30911569920.

The following written challenge was forwarded to the Council of the Astronomical Society: it will show the "general reader"--and help him towards earning his name--what sort of things come every now and then to our scientific bodies. I have added punctuation:

_Challenge._ 1,000 to 30,000.

"Leverrier's[238] name stand placed first. Do the worthy Frenchman justice.

By awarding him the medal in a trice.

Give Adams[239] an extra--of which neck and neck the race.

Now I challenge to meet them and the F.R.S.'s all, For good will and _one_ thousand pounds to their _thirty_ thousand withall, That I produce a system, which shall measure the time, When the Sun was vertical to Gibeon, afterward to Syene.

To meet any time in London--name your own period, To be decided by a majority of twelve persons--a President, _odd_.

That mean, if the twelve equally divide, the President decide, I should prefer the Bishop of London, over the meeting to preside.

JOHN DAVY HAILES."

Feb. 17, 1847."

Mr. Hailes still issues his flying sheets. The last I have met with (October 7, 1863) informs us that the lat.i.tude of {136} England is slowly increasing, which is the true cause of the alteration in the variation of the magnet.

[Mr. Hailes continues his researches. Witness his new Hailesean system of Astronomy, displaying Joshua's miracle-time, origin of time from science, with Bible and Egyptian history. Rewards offered for astronomical problems.

With magnetism, etc. etc. Astronomical challenge to all the world.

Published at Cambridge, in 1865. The author agrees with Newton in one marked point. _Errores quam minimi non sunt contemnendi_,[240] says Isaac: meaning in figures, not in orthography. Mr. Hailes enters into the spirit, both positive and negative, of this dictum, by giving the distance of _Sidius_ from the center of the earth at 163,162,008 miles 10 feet 8 inches 17-28ths of an inch. Of course, he is aware that the center of _figure_ of the earth is 17.1998 inches from the center of _gravity_. Which of the two is he speaking of?]

The Divine Mystery of Life. London [1861], 18mo. (pp.32).

The author has added one cla.s.s to zoology, which is printed in capitals, as derived from _zoe_, life, not from _zoon_, animal. That cla.s.s is of _Incorporealia_, order I., _Infinitum_, of one genus without plurality, _Deus_: order II., _Finita_, angels good and evil. The rest is all about a triune system, with a diagram. The author is not aware that [Greek: zoon]

is not _animal_, but _living being_. Aristotle had cla.s.sed G.o.ds under [Greek: zoa], and has been called to account for it by moderns who have taken the word to mean _animal_.

A CHANCE FOR INVENTORS.

Explication du Zodiaque de Denderah, des Pyramides, et de Genese. Par le Capitaine au longcours Justin Roblin.[241] Caen, 1861. 8vo.

{137}

Capt. Roblin, having discovered the sites of gold and diamond mines by help of the zodiac of Denderah, offered half to the shareholders of a company which he proposed to form. One of our journals, by help of the zodiac of Esne, offered, at five francs a head, to tell the shareholders the exact amount of gold and diamonds which each would get, and to make up the amount predicted to those who got less. There are moods of the market in England in which this company could have been formed: so we must not laugh at our neighbors.

JOHANNES VON GUMPACH.

A million's worth of property, and five hundred lives annually lost at sea by the Theory of Gravitation. A letter on the true figure of the earth, addressed to the Astronomer Royal, by Johannes von Gumpach.[242]

London, 1861, 8vo. (pp. 54).

The true figure and dimensions of the earth, in a letter addressed to the Astronomer Royal. By Joh. von Gumpach. 2nd ed. entirely recast.

London, 1862, 8vo. (pp. 266).

Two issues of a letter published with two different t.i.tle-pages, one addressed to the Secretary of the Royal Society, the other to the Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. It would seem that the same letter is also issued with two other t.i.tles, addressed to the British a.s.sociation and the Royal Geographical Society. By Joh. von Gumpach. London, 1862, 8vo.

Baby-Worlds. An essay on the nascent members of our solar household. By Joh. von Gumpach. London, 1863, 8vo.

The earth, it appears, instead of being flattened, is elongated at the poles: by ignorance of which the loss above mentioned occurs yearly. There is, or is to be, a subst.i.tute for attraction and an "application hitherto neglected, of a {138} recognized law of optics to the astronomical theory, showing the true orbits of the heavenly bodies to be perfectly circular, and their orbital motions to be perfectly uniform." all irregularities being, I suppose, optical delusions. Mr. Von Gumpach is a learned man; what else, time must show.

SLANDER PARADOXES.

Perpetuum Mobile: or Search for self-motive Power. By Henry Dircks.[243] London, 1861, 8vo.

A useful collection on the history of the attempts at perpetual motion, that is, at obtaining the consequences of power without any power to produce them. September 7, 1863, a correspondent of the _Times_ gave an anecdote of George Stephenson,[244] which he obtained from Robert Stephenson.[245] A perpetual motionist wanted to explain his method; to which George replied--"Sir! I shall believe it when I see you take yourself up by the waistband, and carry yourself about the room." Never was the problem better stated.

There is a paradox of which I ought to give a specimen, I mean the _slander-paradox_; the case of a person who takes it into his head, upon evidence furnished entirely by the workings of his own thoughts, that some other person has committed a foul act of which the world at large would no more suppose him guilty than they would suppose that the earth is a flat bordered by ice. If I were to determine on giving cases in which the self-deluded person imagines {139} a conspiracy against _himself_, there would be no end of choices. Many of the grosser cases are found at last to be accompanied by mental disorder, and it is difficult to avoid referring the whole cla.s.s to something different from simple misuse of the reasoning power. The first instance is one which puts in a strong light the state of things in which we live, brought about by our glorious freedom of thought, speech, and writing. The Government treated it with neglect, the press with silent contempt, and I will answer for it many of my readers now hear of it for the first time, when it comes to be enrolled among circle-squarers and earth-stoppers, where, as the old philosopher said, it will not gravitate, being _in proprio loco_.[246]

1862. On new year's day, 1862, when the nation was in the full tide of sympathy with the Queen, and regret for its own loss, a paper called the _Free Press_ published a number devoted to the consideration of the causes of the death of the Prince Consort. It is so rambling and inconsecutive that it takes more than one reading to understand it. It is against the _Times_ newspaper. First, the following insinuation:

"To the legal mind, the part of [the part taken by] the _Times_ will present a _prima facie_ case of the gravest nature, in the evident fore-knowledge of the event, and the preparation to turn it to account when it should have occurred. The article printed on Sat.u.r.day must have been written on Friday. That article could not have appeared had the Prince been intended to live."

Next, it is affirmed that the _Times_ intended to convey the idea that the Prince had been poisoned.

"Up to this point we are merely dealing with words which the _Times_ publishes, and these can leave not a shadow of doubt that there is an intention to promulgate the idea that Prince Albert had been poisoned."

The article then goes on with a strange olio of {140} insinuations to the effect that the Prince was the obstacle to Russian intrigue, and that if he should have been poisoned,--which the writer strongly hints may have been the case,--some Minister under the influence of Russia must have done it.

Enough for this record. _Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire_:[247] who can he be in this case?

THE NEPTUNE CONTROVERSY.

1846. At the end of this year arose the celebrated controversy relative to the discovery of Neptune. Those who know it are well aware that Mr.

Adams's[248] now undoubted right to rank with Le Verrier[249] was made sure at the very outset by the manner in which Mr. Airy,[250] the Astronomer Royal, came forward to state what had taken place between himself and Mr.