Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

Dublin. In this chapter may be placed one or two epigrams which, though upon subjects of transitory interest, may amuse those who are acquainted with the attending circumstances. It will be remembered that great discussion arose about the conflicting claims of Adams and Le Verrier to the {370} discovery of the planet Neptune. A great controversy resulted, which was at last summed up in the following couplet:— “When Airy was told, he wouldn’t believe it; When Challis saw, he couldn’t perceive it.” 〈WINKING STATUES.〉 The clever and eccentric member for East Surrey, the late Henry Drummond, who founded a professorship of Political Economy at Oxford, made in the House of Commons a most amusing, though rather strong speech against the modern miracles of the Roman Catholic Church, in which he spoke of “their bleeding pictures, their winking statues, and the Virgin’s milk.” On this some profane wag wrote the following couplet:— “Sagacious Drummond, explain, with your divinity: Why reject the milk, yet swallow the virginity?” Probably some clever fellow of that faith was at the bottom of this mischief; for I have observed that the cleverest fellows seem to think that the merit of adhering to a cause entitles them to the right of quizzing it. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly struck with this idea when I saw, for the first time, at Cologne, the celebrated picture of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. The artist has quietly made every one of them more or less matronly.