RENDU AND HIS EDITORS. 459 



make a portion of liis volume. Forty years ago, Mr. Ruskin first saw 

 the Alps from Schaffhausen. 



" Only one great step," be says, " in the knowledge of glaciers has been made 

 in all that period ; and it seems the principal object of Prof. Tyndall's book to 

 conceal its having been taken, that he and his friends may get the credit, some 

 day, of having taken it themselves. ... At the end of the last book of his he " 

 (Prof. Tyndall) " denies, as far as he dares, the essential points of Forbes's discov- 

 ery. . . . The readers of 'Fors' may imagine they have nothing to do with per- 

 sonal questions of this kind, but they have no conception of the degree in which 

 general science is corrupted and retarded by those jealousies of the schools; nor 

 how important it is to the cause of all true education that the criminal indulgence 

 of them should be chastised. Criminal is a strong word, but an entirely just one. 

 I am not likely to overrate the abilities of Prof. Tyndall ; but he had at least in- 

 telligence enough to know that his dispute of the statements of Forbes by quib- 

 bling on the word viscous was as uncandid as it was unscholarly ; and it retarded 

 the advance of glacier science for at least ten years. . . . And the absurdity, as well 

 as the iniquity, of the professor's willful avoidance of this gist of the whole debate 

 is consummated in this last book, in which, though its title is the 'Forms of Wa- 

 ter,' he actually never traces the transformation of snow into glacier-ice at all." 



If these " terrible " words be true words, why was it left to an ama- 

 teur to utter them ? Why were they not uttered years ago by Prof. 

 Tait himself ? To these and other observations of Mr. Ruskin I offer 

 no reply ; nor should I have ever given them the slightest regard or 

 attention were it not for the use which a scientific man has stooped to 

 make of them. 



" Fors Clavigera " has but a scanty circulation — how, then, were the 

 " myriad intelligent readers " of Prof. Tait obtained ? Simply by cir- 

 culating ".Fors " in Scotland, and republishing Mr. Ruskin's article in 

 the Scotch newspapers. Prof. Tait, moreover, was for some years at- 

 tached to Queen's College, Belfast, and I am to have the honor of pre- 

 siding at the meeting of the British Association to be held next August 

 in that city. Accordingly, the article in " Fors " has been republished 

 in the Belfast journals also. The Northern Whig and the Belfast 

 Newsletter have duly reached me with Mr. Ruskin's article conspicu- 

 ously marked. These are some of the amenities of Prof. Tait : others 

 are at hand, but I refuse to notice them. The spirit which prompts 

 them may, after all, be but a local distortion of that noble force of heart 

 which answ^ered the " Cameron's gathering " at Waterloo ; carried the 

 Black Watch to Coomassie ; and which has furnished Scotland with 

 the materials of an immortal history. Still, rudeness is not indepen- 

 dence, bluster is not strength, nor is coarseness courage. We have 

 won the human understanding from the barbarism of the past ; but we 

 have won along with it the dignity, courtesy, and truth of civilized 

 life. And the man who on the platform or in the press does violence 

 to this ethical side of human nature discharges but an imperfect duty 

 to the public, whatever the qualities of his understanding may be. — 

 Contemjgorary Reiiieic. 



