age for the Professor of Mathematics there. He will find in it geometry
more deep and subtle, and at the same time more simple and elegant, than it
was ever contemplated human genius could invent."

He then proceeds to set forth that a certain "tomfoolery lemma," with its
"tomfoolery" superstructure, "never had existence outside the shallow
brains of its inventor," Euclid. He then proceeds thus:

"The same spirit that animated those philosophers who sent Galileo to the
Inquisition animates all the philosophers of the present day without
exception. If anything can free them from the yoke of error, it is the
[Walsh] problem of double tangence. But free them it will, how deeply
soever they may be sunk into mental slavery--and God knows that is deeply
enough; and they bear it with an admirable grace; for none bear slavery
with a better grace than tyrants. The lads must adopt my theory.... It will
be a sad reverse for all our great professors to be compelled to become
schoolboys in their gray years. But the sore scratch is to be compelled, as
they had before been compelled one thousand years ago, to have recourse to
Ireland for instruction." {264}

The following "Impromptu" is no doubt by Walsh himself: he was more of a
poet than of an astronomer:

"Through ages unfriended,
With sophistry blended,
Deep science in Chaos had slept;
Its limits were fettered,
Its voters unlettered,
Its students in movements but crept.
Till, despite of great foes,
Great WALSH first arose,
And with logical might did unravel
Those mazes of knowledge,
Ne'er known in a college,
Though sought for with unceasing travail.
With cheers we now hail him,
May success never fail him,
In Polar Geometrical mining;
Till his foes be as tamed
As his works are far-famed
For true philosophic refining."

Walsh's system is, that all mathematics and physics are wrong: there is
hardly one proposition in Euclid which is demonstrated. His example ought
to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was
not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than
many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during
the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections,
like Brahma on the lotus-leaf.[594]

{265}

GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.

The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of my _Athenaeum_ list: that is,
so fa