SPEECHES AT THE RECENT TYNDALL BANQUET. 661 



One word more. On the Continent of Europe, kings had been the 

 nursing fathers and queens the nursing mothers of science ; while 

 republican governments were not a whit behind in the liberality of 

 their subventions to scientific education. In England we had nothing 

 of this kind, and to establish an equivalent state of things we had to 

 appeal, not to the Government, but to the people. They have been 

 roused by making the most recpndite discoveries of science the prop- 

 erty of the community at large. And as a result of this stirring of 

 the national pulse this development of self-reliance we see schools, 

 colleges, and universities now rising in our midst, which promise by- 

 and-by to rival those of Germany in number and importance. 



It is time that I should cease ; but, before doing so, I would ask 

 as they do in the House of Commons permission to say a word in 

 personal explanation. I have climbed some difficult mountains in my 

 time, and after strenuous effort for a dozen hours or more upon ice, 

 rock, and snow, I have not unfrequently reached the top. I question 

 whether there is a joy on earth more exhilarating than that of the 

 mountaineer, who, having achieved his object, is able to afford him- 

 self, upon the summit, a foaming bumper of champagne. But, my 

 lords and gentlemen, the hardest climb, by far, that I have ever ac- 

 complished, was that from the banks of the Barrow to the banks of 

 the Thames from the modest Irish roof under which I was born to 

 Willis's Rooms. Here I have reached my mountain-top, and you 

 God bless you ! have given me a bumper which no scientific climber 

 ever before enjoyed. 



AFTER-SPEECHES. 



Sir Frederick Pollock, in proposing the toast of " Literature and 

 Art," said that on most occasions similar to the present one this toast 

 was a triple one, and included the three sisters Science, Literature, 

 and Art. But this evening they were assembled together to do hom- 

 age to science, in the person of one of its most distinguished votaries, 

 and for the time the room in which they had met became a temple of 

 science. In such a temple the principal figure, standing upon the 

 pedestal appropriated to the presiding goddess, must be that of Sci- 

 ence, and to her due rites had been already rendered. But for the 

 sisters, Literature and Art, room must be found also in the sacred edi- 

 fice ; they too must have their altars and their shrines. He pointed 

 out that the highest powers of the imagination were required by the 

 man of science, as well as by the poet and the painter, and instanced 

 the prediction by Fresnel of the bright spot in the center of the shadow 

 of a disk ; and the suggestion made to Goethe of his theory of the de- 

 velopment of the vertebrate skeleton, by his accidental observation of 

 the scattered fragments of the deer's skull lying in his path. He ad- 

 duced the names of Aristotle, Bacon, and other great men who had 

 connected literature with science ; and instanced Leonardo da Vinci 

 and Sir Christopher Wren, one of the founders of the Royal Society, 



