262 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xiv 



fulfilled in the pages of the Natural History Review 

 for 1861. 



Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the 

 champion of the most debatable thesis of evolution, 

 that, two days later, the Bishop addressed his 

 sarcasms,. only to meet with a withering retort. For 

 on the Friday there was peace ; but on the Saturday 

 came a yet fiercer battle over the "Origin," which 

 loomed all the larger in the public eye, because it 

 was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist 

 by another, but the open clash between Science and 

 the Church. It was, moreover, not a contest of bare 

 fact or abstract assertion, but a combat of wit between 

 two individuals, spiced with the personal element 

 which appeals to one of the strongest instincts of 

 every large audience. 



It was the merest chance, as I have already said, 

 that Huxley attended the meeting of the section 

 that morning. Dr. Draper of New York was to 

 read a paper on the "Intellectual Development of 

 Europe considered with reference to the views of 

 Mr. Darwin." "I can still hear," writes one who 

 was present, " the American accents of Dr. Draper's 

 opening address when he asked ' Air we a fortuitous 

 concourse of atoms 1 ' " However, it was not to hear 

 him, but the eloquence of the Bishop, that the 

 members of the Association crowded in such numbers 

 into the Lecture Room of the Museum, that this, the 

 appointed meeting-place of the section, had to be 

 abandoned for the long west room, since cut in two 



