io2 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. iv. 



hardly believe my own eyes ; but here he is in 

 flesh and blood. 



' Yours ever faithfully, 



' C. Kingsley.' 



Although Owen was constantly the recipient 

 of similar curiosities, ' I have never permitted 

 myself,' he writes to his sister Maria, ' to begin 

 a private collection, and, of the thousands of 

 objects that have been sent to me, I have always 

 presented them in the name of the senders to 

 the British Museum, or that of the College of 

 Surgeons. . . . 



1 Yesterday evening I played (and won) a 

 game of chess with Mr. Liddell, and his wife 

 played some charming music of Beethoven ; but 

 my greatest treat yesterday was an admission to 

 a private view of Holman Hunt's painting of 

 Christ in the Temple with the Doctors. . . . You 

 may remember that Hunt went to Jerusalem five 

 years ago to make the requisite studies on the spot, 

 and he has devoted all those years, at which his 

 powers were greatest, to this marvellous work. The 

 painter's devotion to his subject is most exemplary.' 



July 20, i860, was Professor and Mrs. Owen's 

 silver wedding day. ' We spent this happy day,' 

 Mrs. Owen writes, ' quietly and gratefully. Silver 

 dishes, cruets, spoons and forks, &c, arrived to 

 celebrate our " Silberhochzeit," and my dear hus- 

 band's fifty-sixth birthday.' 



