420 A Century of Science 



taunts or exposure, will ever rouse the energies of 

 a single champion." In other words, astronomers 

 do not waste their time in noticing Mr. Hampden's 

 taunts and threats. Why is this so ? His next 

 sentence reminds us that " cowardice always ac- 

 companies conscious guilt." He goes on to tell 

 us the true state of the case: "The earth, as it 

 came from the hands of its Almighty Creator, is a 

 motionless Plane, based and built upon foundations 

 which the Word of God expressly declares cannot 

 be searched out or discovered. . . . The stars are 

 hardly bigger than the gas jets which light our 

 streets, and, if they could be made to change places 

 with them, no astronomer could detect the differ- 

 ence." The North Pole is the centre of the flat 

 earth, and its extreme southern limit is not a 

 South Pole, but a circle 30,000 miles in circum- 

 ference. Night is caused by the sun passing be- 

 hind a layer of clouds 7000 miles thick. It is not 

 gravitation which makes a river run down hill, 

 but the impetus of the water behind pressing on 

 the water before. Is not this delicious ? As for 

 Newton, poor fellow, he " lived in a superstitious 

 age and district ; he was educated among an illit- 

 erate peasantry." This is like the way in which 

 the Baconizing cranks dispose of Shakespeare. So 

 zealous was Mr. Hampden that in 1876 he began 



