is so difficult
to destroy as the errors and false facts propagated by illustrious men
whose words have authority. I deny it altogether. There are things much
more difficult to destroy: it is much more difficult to destroy the truths
and real facts supported by such men. And again, it is much more difficult
to prevent men of no authority from setting up false pretensions; and it is
much more difficult to destroy assertions of fancy speculation. Many an
error of thought and learning has fallen before a gradual growth of
thoughtful and learned opposition. But such things as the quadrature of the
circle, etc., are never put down. And why? Because thought can influence
thought, but thought cannot influence self-conceit: learning can annihilate
learning: but learning cannot annihilate ignorance. A sword may cut through
an iron bar; and the severed ends will not reunite: let it go through the
air, and the yielding substance is whole again in a moment.

Miracles _versus_ Nature: being an application of certain propositions
in the theory of chances to the Christian miracles. By
Protimalethes.[19] Cambridge, 1847, 8vo.

The theory, as may be supposed, is carried further than most students of
the subject would hold defensible.

{7}

An astronomical Lecture. By the Rev. R. Wilson.[20] Greenock, 1847,
12mo.

Against the moon's rotation on her axis.

[Handed about in the streets in 1847: I quote the whole:] Important
discovery in astronomy, communicated to the Astronomer Royal, December
21st, 1846. That the Sun revolve round the Planets in 25748-2/5 years,
in consequence of the combined attraction of the planets and their
satellites, and that the Earth revolve round the Moon in 18 years and
228 days. D. T. GLAZIER [altered with a pen into GLAZION.] Price one
penny.

1847. In the _United Service Magazine_ for September, 1847, Mrs.
Borron,[21] of Shrewsbury, published some remarks tending to impeach the
fact that Neptune, the planet found by Galle,[22] really was the planet
which Le Verrier and Adams[23] had a right to claim. This was followed
(September 14) by two pages, separately circulated, of "Further
Observations upon the Planets Neptune and Uranus, with a Theory of
Perturbations"; and (October 19, 1848) by three pages of "A Review of M.
Leverrier's Exposition." Several persons, when the remarkable discovery was
made, contended that the planet actually discovere