e again.

CHAPTER IX

MEN OF SCIENCE

In England, in the fall of 1870, I missed an opportunity to see the
great scientific men of the time. Faraday was still active, and in the
full ripeness of his fame. Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Sir Joseph Hooker,
Joule, Lyell, Murchison were in the midst of their best work, and
probably all or most of them were present at the meeting of the
British Association, which took place that year somewhere in the west
of England. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, with whom I had for some time
maintained a correspondence, growing out of the interest I felt in her
_Intuitive Morals_, and other writings, invited me to accompany
her to the meeting, at which, introduced by her, I might have had
interesting interviews. I let the chance go by, and feel to-day that
my memory stands impoverished in that it holds no first-hand knowledge
of the lights, who in their century were the glory of their country
and the world.

In Germany I was more fortunate. Arriving at Heidelberg at a time
before its high prestige had suffered much diminution, I found in all
the four Faculties men of great distinction. One hears that in the
stern centralising to which since 1870 Germany has been subjected the
outer universities have suffered, their strength, their able teachers,
namely, being drawn away for a brilliant concentration at Berlin.
In the little university town of those days students and professors
rubbed closely and great men were sometimes found in odd environments.
Expressing once a desire to see a certain venerable theologian of wide
fame, I was told he was sure to be found on such and such evenings
in a well-known _bier locale_, and there I had opportunity to
observe him, an aged and withered figure, with a proper stein of
the amber fluid frothing at his side, and a halo from an active pipe
enwreathing his grey hair, as he joked and gossiped familiarly with
his fellow-loiterers about the heavy oak table. At another time I was
among surroundings less rough, the guest-room of a club of the finer
world, curtained and carpeted, and made attractive with pictures,
flowers, and music. A company of ladies and gentlemen sat sipping
_Maiwein_ and _Mark graefler_, while a conjurer entertained
them with his tricks. During one of these, desiring a confederate from
the lookers-on, he approached a slender and refined-looking man, who
was following the necromancer's proceedings with as much interest as
anybody. The wiza