The prisoner declined answering that question at present. He said he thought the police might as well reckon it out whether he had or not.
M. Arago said he didn't much differ from that opinion.—He then addressed both prosecutor and prisoner; and told them that if they couldn't settle their differences without quarreling in the streets, he should certainly commit them both next time. In the meantime, he called upon both to enter into their own recognizances; and directed the police to have an eye upon both,—observing that the prisoner would be likely to want it a long time, and the prosecutor would be not a hair the worse for it."
This quib was written by a person who was among the astronomers: and it illustrates the fact that Le Verrier had sole possession of the field until Mr. Challis's letter appeared. Sir John Herschel's previous communication should have paved the way: but the wonder of the discovery drove it out of many heads. There is an excellent account of the whole matter in Professor Grant's[[805]] History of Physical Astronomy. The squib scandalized some grave people, who wrote severe admonitions to the editor. There are formalists who spend much time in writing propriety to journals, to which they serve as foolometers. In a letter to the Athenæum, speaking of the way in which people hawk fine terms for common things, I said that these people ought to have a new translation of the Bible, which should contain the verse "gentleman and lady, created He them." The editor was handsomely fired and brimstoned!
A NEW THEORY OF TIDES.
A new theory of the tides: in which the errors of the usual theory are demonstrated; and proof shewn that the full moon is not the cause of a concomitant spring tide, but actually the cause of the neaps.... By Commr. Debenham,[[806]] R.N. London, 1846, 8vo.
The author replied to a criticism in the Athenæum, and I remember how, in a very few words, he showed that he had read nothing on the subject. The reviewer spoke of the forces of the planets (i.e., the Sun and Moon) on the ocean, on which the author remarks, "But N.B. the Sun is no planet, Mr. Critic." Had he read any of the actual investigations on the usual theory, he would have known that to this day the sun and moon continue to be called planets—though the phrase is disappearing—in speaking of the tides; the sense, of course, being the old one, wandering bodies.
A large class of the paradoxers, when they meet with something which taken in their sense is absurd, do not take the trouble to find out the intended meaning, but walk off with the words laden with their own first construction. Such men are hardly fit to walk the streets without an interpreter. I was startled for a moment, at the time when a recent happy—and more recently happier—marriage occupied the public thoughts, by seeing in a haberdasher's window, in staring large letters, an unpunctuated sentence which read itself to me as "Princess Alexandra! collar and cuff!" It immediately occurred to me that had I been any one of some scores of my paradoxers, I should, no doubt, have proceeded to raise the mob against the unscrupulous person who dared to hint to a young bride such maleficent—or at least immellificent—conduct towards her new lord. But, as it was, certain material contexts in the shop window suggested a less
savage explanation. A paradoxer should not stop at reading the advertisements of Newton or Laplace; he should learn to look at the stock of goods.
I think I must have an eye for double readings, when presented: though I never guess riddles. On the day on which I first walked into the Panizzi reading room[[807]]—as it ought to be called—at the Museum, I began my circuit of the wall-shelves at the ladies' end: and perfectly coincided in the propriety of the Bibles and theological works being placed there. But the very first book I looked on the back of had, in flaming gold letters, the following inscription—"Blast the Antinomians!"[[808]] If a line had been drawn below the first word, Dr. Blast's history of the Antinomians would not have been so fearfully misinterpreted. It seems that neither the binder nor the arranger of the room had caught my reading. The book was removed before the catalogue of books of reference was printed.