102 
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, 1 have always 
presented them in the name of the senders to 
the British Museum, or that of the College of 
Surgeons. . . . 
‘ Y esterday 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.’ 
