disputed _magno honore_,[180] I
never had such a strain of thought in my life. For the inferior opponents
were made as sharp as their betters by their tutors, who kept lists of
queer objections, drawn from all quarters. The opponents used to meet the
day before to compare their arguments, that the same might not come twice
over. But, after I left Cambridge, it became the fashion to invite the
respondent to be present, who therefore learnt all that was to be brought
against him. This made the whole thing a farce: and the disputations were
abolished.

{87}

The Doctrine of the Moon's Rotation, considered in a letter to the
Astronomical Censor of the _Athenaeum_. By Jones L. MacElshender.[181]
Edinburgh, 1856, 8vo.

This is an appeal to those cultivated persons who will read it "to overrule
the _dicta_ of judges who would sacrifice truth and justice to professional
rule, or personal pique, pride, or prejudice"; meaning, the great mass of
those who have studied the subject. But how? Suppose the "cultivated
persons" were to side with the author, would those who have conclusions to
draw and applications to make consent to be wrong because the "general body
of intelligent men," who make no special study of the subject, are against
them? They would do no such thing: they would request the general body of
intelligent men to find their own astronomy, and welcome. But the truth is,
that this intelligent body knows better: and no persons know better that
they know better than the speculators themselves.

But suppose the general body were to combine, in opposition to those who
have studied. Of course all my list must be admitted to their trial; and
then arises the question whether both sides are to be heard. If so, the
general body of the intelligent must hear all the established side have to
say: that is, they must become just as much of students as the inculpated
orthodox themselves. And will they not then get into _professional rule_,
pique, pride, and prejudice, as the others did? But if, which I suspect,
they are intended to judge as they are, they will be in a rare difficulty.
All the paradoxers are of like pretensions: they cannot, as a class, be
right, for each one contradicts a great many of the rest. There will be the
puzzle which silenced the crew of the cutter in Marryat's novel of the Dog
Fiend.[182] "A tog is a tog," said Jansen.--"Yes," replied another, "we all
know a dog is a dog; but the question