Few
Subjects Were Untouched By His Eloquence; He Spoke With Equal Ease On A
Difficult Point In Theology, And On The Conformation Of The Sun.
He
lectured on politics, astronomy, chemistry, and anatomy with great fluency
and equal incorrectness.
In describing the circulation of the blood, he
said, "It's a purely metaphysical subject;" and the answering remark, "It
is the most purely physical," made him vehemently angry. He spoke of the
sun by saying, "I've studied the sun; I know it as well as I do this
field; it's a dark body with a luminous atmosphere, and a climate more
agreeable than that of the earth" - thus announcing as a fact what has been
timidly put forward as a theory only by our greatest astronomers.
Politics soon came on the tapis, when he attacked British institutions
violently, with an equal amount of ignorance and presumption, making such
glaring misstatements that I felt bound to contradict them; when he, not
liking to be lowered in the estimation of his companions, contested the
points in a way which closely bordered upon rudeness.
He made likewise a very pedantic display of scientific knowledge, in
virtue of an occasional attendance at meetings of mechanics' institutes,
and asked the gentlemen for "We're all gentlemen here" - numerous
questions, to which they could not reply, when one of the party took
courage to ask him why fire burned. "Oh, because of the hydrogen in the
air, of course," was the complacent answer. "I beg your pardon, but there
is no hydrogen in atmospheric air." - "There is; I know the air well:
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