were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber reading Phædon Platonis in Greek, and this with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccaccio. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her why she would lose such pastime in the park?" smiling she answered me, 'I wisse all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.' And how came you, madam,' quoth I, 'to this deep knowledge of pleasure and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men have attended thereunto? "I will tell you,' quoth she, and tell you a truth,'" &c.

(See Sir T. Brown's observations, ante 187, "The Student.")

Against the inconveniences and vexations of long life may be set the pleasures of discovering truth, one of the greatest pleasures that age affords. -DR. JOHNSON.

Middleton beautifully says, “I persuade myself that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge: and especially of that sort which relates to our duty, and conduces to our happiness. In these inquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmering of truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavor to trace it to its source, without any reserve or caution of pushing the discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the public. I look upon the discovery of anything which is true as a valuable acquisition of society, which cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coincide with each other; and like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current."

Gibbon says, "La lecture est la nourriture de l'esprit : c'est par elle que nous connoissons notre Créateur, ses ouvrages, et surtout, nous mêmes et nos semblables."

So Boyle says, "The things for which I hold life valuable, are the satisfaction that accrues from the improvement of knowledge and the exercise of piety."

(See page 139, "On the Pleasures of Study and Contemplation," by Bishop Hall.)

The following are observations by Lord Bacon: As the eye rejoices to receive the light, the ear to hear sweet music; so the mind, which is the man, rejoices to discover the secret works, the varieties and beauties of nature. The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of our nature. The unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, or the pleasure of that "suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem." The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavor and extremely covet that it may not be pensile; but that it may light upon something fixed and immovable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support itself in its

swift motions and disquisitions. Aristotle endeavors to prove that in all motions of bodies there is some point quiescent; and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bore up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the understanding, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven.

The discovery of the different properties of creatures, and the imposition of names was the occupation of Adam in Paradise.

Knowledge is "pabulum animi," says Bacon; and the nature of man's appetites is as the Israelites in the desert, who were weary of manna, and would fain have turned "ad ollas carnium."

See from the two following anecdotes the difference between the statesman who is so unwise as to neglect intellectual improvement and the philosopher. The biographer of Sir Robert Walpole tells us that "though he had not forgotten his classical attainments, he had little taste for literary occupation." Sir Robert once expressed his regret on this subject to Mr. Fox in his library at Houghton. "I wish," he said, "I took as much delight in reading as you do, it would be the means of alleviating many tedious hours in my present retirement; but to my misfortune, I derive no pleasure from such pursuits."

One day, Lord Bacon was dictating to Dr. Rawley some of the experiments in his Sylva. The same day, he had sent a friend to court, to receive for him a final answer touching the effect of a grant which had been made him by King James. He had hitherto only hope of it, and hope deferred; and he was desirous to know the event of the matter, and to be freed, one way or other, from the suspense of his thoughts. His friend returning, told him plainly, that he must thenceforth despair of that grant, how much soever his fortunes needed it. "Be it so," said his Lordship; and then he dismissed his friend very cheerfully, with thankful acknowledgment of his service. His friend being gone, he came straightway to Dr. Rawley, and said thus to him, "Well, sir, yon business won't go on, let us go on with this, for this is in our power." And then he dictated to him afresh, for some hours, without the least hesitansie of speech, or discernible interruption of thought.

NOTE II.-TEXT 90.

IDLE CURIOSITY.

THIS note contains a few observations upon

1. Useful Knowledge.

2. Connection between Error and Truth.

3. Different Sorts of Knowledge.

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4. All Knowledge is valuable.

5. Excessive Attachment to Particular Studies.

USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

The utility of two species of knowledge is indisputable.

First-The knowledge by each member of Society, of that subject or science by which he is to gain his subsistence, as by a lawyer, of law, or by a physician, of medicine-and

Secondly-The knowledge of ourselves. In the importance of knowledge of man, all authors, ancient and modern, concur. Among the precepts or aphorisms admitted by general consent, and inculcated by frequent repetition, there is none more famous, among the masters of ancient wisdom, than that compendious lesson, "Be acquainted with thyself:"-ascribed by some to an oracle, and by others to Chilo of Lacedemon. Lord Bacon, in his entrance upon human philosophy, says :-"Now let us come to that knowledge whereunto the ancient oracle directeth us, which is the knowledge of ourselves; which deserves the more accurate handling by how much it toucheth us more nearly. This knowledge is to man the end and term of knowledge; but of nature herself, a portion only."

CONNECTION BETWEEN ERROR AND TRUTH.

This is noticed by many philosophers and divines, by whom we are admonished, that Truth and Error, Good and Ill, are constantly intermingled and confounded.

See ante 201.

"Good and evil," says Bishop Taylor, "in the field of this world grow up together, almost inseparably, and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche, as an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed."

The connection between truth and error, or rather how error leads to truth, may be seen in tracing the progress of any invention, as the steamengine; or of any science; of astronomy for instance, of which there is, to any person desirous of seeing how light arises out of darkness, a very interesting delineation in the posthumous papers of Adam Smith.

CONNECTION BETWEEN DIFFERENT SORTS OF KNOWLEDGE.

"The

Upon this subject the works of Bacon abound with observations. partition of science is not," he says, "like several lines that meet in one angle; but rather like branches of trees that meet in one stem, which stem for some dimension and space is entire and continued before it break, and parts itself into arms and boughs."

In showing this connection in another part of the work, he says, “The quavering upon a stop in music, gives the same delight to the ear, that the

playing of light upon the water, or the sparkling of a diamond, gives to the eye."

'Splendet tremulo sub lumine Pontus."

So the Persian magic, so much celebrated, consists chiefly in this: to observe the respondency and the architectures, and fabrics of things natural, and of things civil. Neither are all these whereof we have spoken, and others of like nature, mere similitudes only, as men of narrow observation may perchance conceive, but one and the very same footsteps, and seals of nature printed upon several subjects or matters.

Acting upon this opinion, Bacon predicts that the mode of discovering the law of the celestial bodies, will, from the uniformity of all the laws of nature, be by observing the laws of bodies terrestrial. His words are :—

"Whoever shall reject the feigned divorces of superlunary and sublunary bodies, and shall intentively observe the appetences of matter, and the most universal passions, which in either globe are exceeding potent, and transverberate the universal nature of things, he shall receive clear information concerning celestial matters from the things seen here with us: and contrariwise, from those motions which are practised in heaven, he shall learn many observations which are now latent, touching the motion of bodies here below, not only so far as their inferior motions are moderated by superior, but in regard they have a mutual intercourse by passions common to them both."

"We must openly profess," Bacon says, "that our hopes of discovering the truth with regard to celestial bodies, depend upon the observation of the common properties, or the passions and appetites, of the matter of both states; for as to the separation that is supposed betwixt the ethereal and sublunary bodies, it seems to me no more than a fiction, and a degree of superstition mixed with rashness, &c. Our chiefest hope and dependence in the consideration of the celestial bodies is, therefore, placed in physical reasons, though not such as are commonly so called: but those laws which no diversity of place or region can abolish, break through, disturb or alter." So, too, Diderot says: "Et je dis, Heureux le Géomêtre en qui une étude consommée des sciences abstraites n'aura point affoibli le goût des beauxarts, à qui Horace et Tacite soient aussi familières que Newton; qui saura découvrir les propriétés d'une courbe, et sentir les beautés d'un poëte; dont l'esprit et les ouvrages seront de tous les temps, et qui aura le mérite de toutes les académies."

It is rather an interesting fact, that what Bacon theorized Newton is said to have practised. The story is ;-" Newton retired from the university to avoid the plague which raged with great violence. Sitting under a tree in an orchard, an apple fell upon his head. As there is motion, there must be a force which produces it. Is this force of gravity confined to the surface of the earth, or does it extend to the heavenly bodies?"

"Let this be a rule therefore," Bacon says, "that all divisions of knowledge be so accepted and applied, as may rather design forth and distinguish sciences into parts; than cut and pull them asunder into pieces; that so the

continuance and entireness of knowledge may ever be preserved. For the contrary practice hath made particular sciences to become barren, shallow and erroneous; while they have not been nourished, maintained, and rectified, from the common fountain and nursery. So we see Cicero the orator complained of Socrates, and his school; that he was the first that separated philosophy and rhetoric: whereupon rhetoric became a verbal and an empty art. And it is also evident, that the opinion of Copernicus touching the rotation of the earth (which now is maintained) because it is not repugnant to the phenomena, cannot be reversed by astronomical principles: yet by the principles of natural philosophy, truly applied, it may. So we see also that the science of medicine, if it be destitute and forsaken of natural philosophy, it is not much better than empirical practice.

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS VALUABLE.

As error may thus lead to truth, and as there is this union between different sciences, it seems to follow that all knowledge is valuable, and that a well ordered mind may out of every evil extract some good, with no other chemistry than wisdom and serenity.

There is an interesting illustration of this position in a sermon published by Dr. Ramsden, assistant professor of divinity at Cambridge, who, in showing the tendency of all knowledge, to form the heart of a nation, says:

"We will venture to say how in the mercy of God to man, this heart comes to a nation, and how its exercise or affection appears. It comes by priests, by lawgivers, by philosophers, by schools, by education, by the nurse's care, the mother's anxiety, the father's severe brow. It comes by letters, by science, by every art, by sculpture, painting, and poetry; by the song on war, on peace, on domestic virtue, on a beloved and magnanimous king; by the Iliad, by the Odyssey, by tragedy, by comedy. It comes by sympathy, by love, by the marriage union, by friendship, generosity, meekness, temperance, by virtue, and example of virtue. It comes by sentiments of chivalry, by romance, by music, by decorations and magnificence of building, by the culture of the body, by comfortable clothing, by fashions in dress, by luxury and commerce. It comes by the severity, the melancholy, the benignity of the countenance; by rules of politeness, ceremonies, formalities, solemnities. It comes by rites attendant on law, by religion; by the oath of office, by the venerable assembly, by the judge's procession and trumpets, by the disgrace and punishment of crimes; by public fasts, pub. lic prayer, by meditation, by the Bible, by the consecration of churches, by the sacred festival, by the cathedral's gloom and choir. Whence the heart of a nation comes, we have, perhaps, sufficiently explained. And it must appear to what most awful obligation and duty we hold all those from whom this heart takes its nature and shape, our king, our princes, our nobles, all who wear the badge of office or honor; all priests, judges, senators, pleaders, interpreters of law, all instructors of youth, all seminaries of education, all parents, all learned men, all professors of science and art, all teachers of manners. Upon them depends the fashion of the nation's