Mr Johnston's Reply to Professor Muncke. 279 



is not written in a critical or censorious spirit. I went to that 

 meeting with the hope of being gratified, — I was gratified, — and 

 I have expressed my gratification. And yet, Sir, were I to sit 

 down to find fault and to pick out blemishes in my own paper, 

 I could produce a much more formidable list than Dr Muncke 

 has done ; for where so many topics are touched upon, while 

 all is true and correct, on the whole, it is hardly possible to 

 avoid some slight mistakes. Let us see how many of these Dr 

 Muncke has detected. 



First, then, I have translated Naturforscher erroneously. It 

 is a " false descriptive denomination,'" it seems, to call German 

 philosophers Cultivators of Science. Cultivators, says the 

 Doctor, and they know English well at Heidelberg, are mere 

 stationary plodders, — and your Germans are no plodders ! Dr 

 Muncke is a Professor of Physics, and it does not become me 

 to argue with him on the doctrines of mechanics ; but it would 

 be interesting to learn, in what part of his Compendium der 

 Naturlehre he treats of stationary plodding. It must be inti- 

 mately connected, I should think, with that interesting species of 

 progression known by the name of the Stand-still motion.* 



After this serious exordium, Sir, it was a great relief to find 

 in the second paragraph, that the Doctor did not " really mean 

 to be harsh with me," and I am quite as grateful as need be 

 for his forbearance. One of the main objects of his communica- 

 tion is to defend the Hamburghers from my assertion that they 

 are a luxurious people. But how will his wrath be excited 

 and his forbearance regretted by him, when I add further, that of 

 all the cities I have visited, Hamburgh is the one in which the tone 

 of morality is the lowest, — in which the means of licentiousness 

 are the most abundant, most accessible, and most luxuriously 

 and publicly provided, — and in which the practice of immora- 

 lity is least regarded. And does the learned Professor really 

 think he can persuade his readers, that the Hamburghers either 

 know or care any thing about bcience. It cannot be that in a 

 city which nightly confines within its walls 1^(),()()0 souls, there 

 should not be some scattered gleams of genius at times bursting 



* " How many kinds of motion .nt- there," said a Glaswegian profeaaor 

 of physics to one of his very bright pupils. " Three, Sir," was the reply. 

 '• Three ! name them."—" The Retrograde, the Progressive, and the 



Sl a n //• si HI m nt iii n . ' ' 



