THE BISHOP'S SPEECH 523 
to be present, knowing what an unscientific atmosphere they 
might expect. Hooker, as his letter tells, came at the last 
moment, faute de mieux ; Huxley, who had meant to leave 
Oxford that morning, was only ralhed into coming by Robert 
Chambers' appeal that he would not desert them. 
In the chair was Henslow, wise and judicious, a man 
as universally beloved as respected. On his right were the 
Bishop and Dr. Draper ; near the extreme left Hooker, beside 
Sir J. Lubbock ; and nearer the centre, Huxley, beside Sir 
Benjamin Brodie.^ 
For an hour or more ' Dr. Draper droned out his paper ' ; 
then discussion began. The first three speakers embarked on 
theological and other denunciations ; but were shouted down 
as irrelevant, and Henslow then demanded that the discussion 
should rest on scientific grounds only. 
When the Bishop's turn came, he rehearsed various 
arguments from hostile reviews ; but all his science was 
science at second-hand, its source and bias self-betrayed to 
those who knew, but applauded by the mass of the audience 
who had not the knowledge nor perhaps even the temper 
to discriminate. It was an audience that at the moment, 
Huxley felt, would hardly Hsten as a whole to cold scientific 
arguments or weigh them. He was astonished to find that the 
Bishop was so ignorant that he did not know how to manage 
his own case, and his spirits rose proportionately ; but he 
saw no chance at first of dehvering a telling counterstroke ; 
they were carried away by the eloquence, the personality of 
the speaker. ' It was all in such dulcet tones,' says the eye- 
witness, i.e. Hooker, * so persuasive a manner, and in such 
well-turned periods, that I, who had been inclined to blame the 
President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific 
purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart.' 
He spoke thus * for full half an hour with inimitable spirit, 
emptiness, and mifairness. ... In a hght, scoffing tone, florid 
and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of 
1 Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783-1862), sergeant-surgeon to William IV. 
and Queen Victoria, and President of the Royal Society, 1858-61. For physio- 
logical researches he was elected F.R.S. in 1810, and received the Copley Medal 
in 1811, at the age of twenty-eight only. 
