1 882.] 
Literature v. Science . 
703 
One passage, however, we must still quote. Says Mr. 
Arnold : — “ I have in my mind’s eye a Member of Parlia- 
ment who goes to America, who relates his travels, and who 
shows a really masterly knowledge of the geology of the 
country and of its mining capabilities, but who ends by 
gravely suggesting that the United States should borrow a 
prince from our royal family, and should make him their 
king, and should create a House of Lords of great landed 
proprietors after the pattern of ours ; and then America, he 
thinks, would have her future happily secured. Surely, in 
this case, the President of the Se(5tion for Mechanical 
Science would himself hardly say that our Member of Par- 
liament, by concentrating himself upon geology and mining, 
and so on, and not attending to literature and history, had 
‘ chosen the more useful alternative.’ ” 
To this facetious apologue we reply by reminding Mr. 
Arnold of a certain English official, well versed in literature 
and history, who sent out a supply of Thames water for the 
use of a flotilla which we had upon Lake Erie, some seventy 
years ago, and who, further, when the war was over, ordered 
the said flotilla to sail home — down the Falls of Niagara — 
to be paid off at Portsmouth. The error of this official — a 
serious and embarrassing one — springs directly from his lack 
of natural knowledge. On the other hand, the error of the 
Member of Parliament, in itself a harmless blunder, of no 
consequence, would not necessarily have been obviated by 
classical and historical studies. 
Mr. Arnold may believe that he has made a satisfactory 
reply to Prof. Huxley. We can merely regard him as an 
able advocate doing his best for a thoroughly bad cause. If 
he is pleading with the friends of physical science the verdict 
cannot be in his favour. 
