“Geographical Science, I am prepared to show, is that which modern learning alone has neglected, to the point of leaving its discoveries stationary.  It is not so with the more assiduously cultivated branches.  What change, what advance, in every other department of culture!  In geology, the ammonite of to-day was for Chalmers a parody facetiously made by Nature in imitation of her living conchology, and for Voltaire a pilgrim’s cockle dropped in the passes of the Alps.  In medicine, what progress has been made since ague was compared to the flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton, who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient’s neck “in a nutshell lapped in silk”!  In chemistry, what strides!  In astronomy, what perturbations and changes!  In history, what do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.!  In genealogy, what thanks must we pay to Darwin!  Geographical Science alone, stolid in its insolent fixity, has not moved:  the location of Thebes and Memphis is what it was in the days of Cheops and Rameses.  And so poor in intellect are our professors of geodesic lore that London continues to be, just as it always was, in latitude 51 deg. 30’ 48” N., longitude 0 deg. 5’ 38” W., while the observatory of Paris contentedly sits in latitude 48 deg. 50’ 12” N. and longitude 2 deg. 20’ 22-1/2” E. from the observatory of Greenwich!  This disgracefully stationary condition of the science cannot much longer be permitted.”

“And how,” said the baron, “will it be changed?” and he poked the fire to conceal a yawn.  Excellent man! his time latterly had been more given to the investigation of opera than of the exact sciences.

“Through my theory of Progression and Proportion in geographical statistics, by which the sources of the Nile can be easily determined from the volume and speed of that current, while the height of the mountains on the far side of the moon will be but a pleasing sum in Ratio for a scholar’s vacations.  Nor will anything content me, my dear Hohenfels, till this somewhat theoretical method of traveling is displaced by bodily progression; till these easy excursions of the mind are supplemented by material extensions; till the foot is pressed where the brain has leaped; and till I, then for the first time a traveler, stand behind the lunar rim, among the ’silent silver lights and darks undreamed of!’”

“I am unable to appreciate your divagations,” humbly observed Hohenfels, “though I always thought your language beautiful.  Meantime, my hat is spoiled in coming hither, and you have the effrontery to write bucolics to me during the most frightful weather of the year.  Once for all, do you refuse me an um—­”

He did not finish his sentence.  A world of sunshine burst like a bomb into the chamber, and our eyes were dazzled with the splendor:  a sturdy beam shot directly into the fireplace, and the embers turned haggard and gray, and quickly retired from the unequal contest.  I opened the window.  A warm air, faint with the scent of earth and turf, invaded the apartment, and the map-like patches of dampness on the asphaltum pavement were rapidly and visibly drying away.