dreamer himself; and added to
all these there assembled a distinguished company of ladies and
gentlemen who looked upon the lecture as a "function" which their social
positions made it necessary for them to patronise. The reader's personal
friends and acquaintances, including Prince Oscarovitch and Phadrig,
were naturally among the most anxiously interested of the Professor's
audience.

It is almost needless to say that Hoskins van Huysman had donned all his
panoply of scientific war, and had armed himself with what he believed
his keenest weapons; and that Professor Hartley looked with amused
confidence to a veritable battle royal of wits when the lecture was over
and the discussion began. The Prince and Phadrig were keenly
anticipative, and the latter not a little nervous.

A verbatim report of that famous lecture would, of course, be out of
place in these pages. If Professor Marmion's words of wonder are not
already written in the archives of the Royal Society, no doubt they will
be in the fullness of time when the minds of men shall have become
prepared to receive them. Here we are mainly concerned with the results
which they produced upon his audience. Certain portions may, however, be
properly reproduced here.

When the decorous murmur of applause which greeted the President's
closing sentences had died away, and Franklin Marmion went to the
reading-desk and unfolded his notes, there was a tense silence of
anticipation, and hundreds of pairs of eyes, which had some of the
keenest brains in Europe behind them, were converged upon his spare,
erect figure and his refined, clear-cut, somewhat sternly-moulded face.

"Mr President, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began, in his quiet,
but far-reaching tones. "The somewhat peculiar title which I have chosen
for my lecture was not, I hope I need scarcely say, selected with a view
of arousing any but that intelligent curiosity which is always
characteristic of such a distinguished audience as that which I have the
honour of addressing to-night. I chose it after somewhat anxious
consideration, because I am aware that the bulk of opinion in the world
of science strongly insists upon the finality of the axioms of
mathematics, and therefore it was with no little hesitancy that I
approached such a subject as this. I am well aware that, in the
estimation of most of my learned _confreres_ and fellow-seekers after
scientific truth, to suggest those axioms may not embody fi