"
A more general meeting was held in the Mansion House on the 5th of
January, to consider the propriety of presenting a testimonial to Dr.
Livingstone. It was addressed by the Bishop of London, Mr. Raikes
Currie, and others.
Meanwhile, a sensible impulse was given to the _scientific_ enthusiasm
for Livingstone by the arrival of the report of a great meeting held in
Africa itself in honor of the missionary explorer. At Cape Town, on 12th
November, 1856, His Excellency the Governor, Sir George Grey, the
Colonial Secretary, the Astronomer-Royal, the Attorney-General, Mr.
Rutherfoord, the Bishop, the Rev. Mr. Thompson, and others, vied with
each other in expressing their sense of Livingstone's character and
work. The testimony of the Astronomer-Royal to Livingstone's eminence as
an astronomical observer was even more emphatic than Murchison's and
Owen's to his attainments in geography and natural history. Going over
his whole career, Mr. Maclear showed his unexampled achievements in
accurate lunar observation. "I never knew a man," he said, "who, knowing
scarcely anything of the method of making geographical observations, or
laying down positions, became so soon an adept, that he could take the
complete lunar observation, and altitudes for time, within fifteen
minutes.
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