English verse, (borrowed indeed from classical sources,) the whole of our case:

"Content, if here the unlearn'd their wants may view,

The learn'd reflect on what before they knew."

And narrow and humble, as such a scheme may seem to those, whose leisure can command the range of science, or whose ambition would soar to the boundaries of literature, there are some local considerations, which render this not undesirable or unimportant in the circle of our families and friends. We live, indeed, in the midst of academical scenes, where learning has for ages secured the public reverence. We are encompassed with the means and the instruments of science on every side. A noble library, the gift of the munificence of the living, as well as of the dead, looks down upon us with its ponderous and speaking volumes. A philosophical apparatus, which at once lifts our thoughts to the heavens, and busies us with the motions and the changes, the powers and the laws, of the material universe, is within our apparent grasp. We need not call upon the earth to open upon us her minerals and geological treasures; for our cabinets are enriched with many of her most valuable, as well as most attractive specimens. We seem as if within the very purlieus of the laboratory, where chemistry, no longer dealing with occult arts and preternatural sorceries, contents herself with solving and resolving bodies, with combining and separating the elements and the gases, and unfolding the phenomena of light and heat, and, as it were, giving a local habitation and a name to her endless wonders. The very bell, which so often rouses us in our morning slumbers, seems for ever vocal with annunciations, inviting our presence to the rooms, where learned professors pour forth their stores upon the interesting topics of divinity, and physics, and metaphysics, and rhetoric, and oratory, and botany, and anatomy, and the philosophy of nature, and the mysteries of art. And yet, in the midst of all this profusion, our families seem in some danger of starving for want of intellectual food. If they cannot count themselves among the matriculated; if their age, their sex, their pursuits, or even their retiring modesty, forbid them from entering upon these scenes; they are compelled to forego all that curiosity and taste would covet, to nourish their home resources; and they are left to consume their time in the monotonous round of common duties. In a larger society, their very wants would soon work out a remedy, to relieve them from such embarrassments.

The evil felt in the family circle would extend to the head; and thus, as in large cities, public lectures would be multiplied, at once to stimulate and to satisfy the desire for knowledge. But here, if I may so say, the very evil has its origin in the ample employments, and devotion to science, of the heads of our families. They, who labor abroad with so much success and ability, require all their domestic leisure to recruit their exhausted spirits, or to prepare themselves for ever recurring labors. I speak, therefore, to the sober sense of those, whom I address, when I say, that there seems a peculiar duty on us to give those of our families and friends, who are necessarily precluded from the general cultivation of science, some chance of understanding its elements, and relishing its truths, by the only adequate methods, the demonstrations of the laboratory, and the living examples of the lecture room. Truth from the lips is often felt with double sway; but truth, confirmed by experiment, is not only irresistible in its conviction, but in its permanent impression on the memory.

With reference, therefore, to our domestic circles, it is of no small importance for us to enlarge the sphere of innocent pleasure; to instruct the inquisitive mind; and to furnish new sources of thought and conversation, by observations drawn from the processes of nature, and the elegant demonstrations of art.

But I am far from considering this as the sole, though it may well be deemed a sufficient motive to warm our hearts and kindle our zeal. There are, to those professedly engaged in a particular science, many motives for seeking some acquaintance with other sciences, even if they should not seem, at first, of a kindred character. I do not here allude to those motives, which may be drawn from the abstract value of learning, or the practical benefits of its cultivation. I do not address myself to the pride of scholars, as such; or to the ambition of those minds, which deem nothing attained, while there yet remains any thing unattained; which, forgetting the past, press onward and upward for the prize of glory. I do not attempt to shadow forth, even in outline, the praises of knowledge, as they have been vindicated in ancient or in modern times. There are some places and some circumstances, in which such topics, if not matters of impertinent detail, are, at least, matters of supererogation. The genius of the place, the literary atmosphere, which we breathe, the very habits of our lives presuppose, that learning, in its widest sense, human and divine, is at once our pride and our guide; the companion of our morning walks, and of our evening

meditations; the instructive friend of our youth; the support and glory of our old age; the light, that beams cheerfully upon us in the noonday of hope and joy; and the polestar, that sets not, and changes not, and deceives not, in the midnight hours of adversity, or in the heavier darkness, whose shadows brood over the valley of death. If I were called upon, indeed, to intermingle in the argument of such topics, I might well distrust my own resources, and I should repose myself upon the sententious wisdom of the greatest of modern philosophers. "Studies," says my Lord Bacon, "serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. 'Abeunt studia in mores."" To which he might have added, jurisprudence enlarges, invigorates, and chastens the judgment; and theology fills the soul with thoughts of time and eternity, and,

Letting down the golden chain from high,
Draws every mortal upward to the sky."

But one motive, upon which I would venture to insist, is drawn from the very nature of academical studies, and the exclusive zeal, which they are calculated to nourish. No one can fail to remark, that the subdivision of intellectual, as well as of manual labor, though it tends greatly to the perfection of the workmanship, has, in quite as striking a degree, a tendency, if not to narrow the mind, at least, to close its vision to the value of surrounding objects. In proportion as our attainments rise in a favorite pursuit, it grows in importance, in intensity of attraction, and in variety of interest. We feel our own minds expanding under its influence, and our own curiosity enlivened and warmed by its developments. We have the gratifying consciousness of difficulties overcome, of intellectual wealth accumulated, and of honorable ambition rewarded. A spirit of exclusiveness is thus awakened and cherished; until, at last, the appetite increasing with what it feeds on, our imaginations exaggerate the value of our peculiar labors to an alarming extent; and, in the extravagance of our attachment, we look down with utter indifference upon every other department of learning, and deem all but our own, weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. This dangerous delusion besets the scholar and the devotee of science in every walk of life. But it especially besets him in those academ

t

ical scenes, where he becomes at once the teacher and the taught; where he is perpetually pouring into other minds the streams of his own knowledge, and, at the same time, is as perpetually compelled to widen and deepen the channels of his own thoughts, to meet the constant demands of such an exhausting flow.

This error is not of a mere by speculative nature, but is often attended with practical mischiefs. The mere scholar, intent upon the glorious products of classical literature, dwells with a fond and overweening delight upon the wisdom, and the beauty, and the sublimity of the ancients, until modern learning seems to him but the pastework of imitative jewelry, compared with the pure sparkling of the diamond, or the pellucid crystallizations of the emerald. He is content, if I may so say, to dream with antiquity, and to live with past ages; forgetful of the sober realities of his own life, and that he yet walks this nether sphere. The devotee of physical science, absorbed in its splendid discoveries, and in its new and ever varying details, compelling nature, as it were, to expound her hidden contrivances to him, and to answer his untiring interrogatories, delights in the consciousness of this exercise of power, and looks with amazement on him, who, with equal enthusiasm, traces out the laws of the mind, and gathers up its finer filaments and associations, and touches its secret springs, and unfolds its admirable faculties. The mathematician, dealing with facts of another kind, which rest on demonstrative evidence, and ascending by strict analysis to the most extraordinary results, lying apparently beyond the reach of human genius, acquires a preternatural love for certainties of this sort, and feels, at times, almost as if matter were made only to exercise his ingenuity in searching out the laws of gravitation, and in subjecting the motions of the earth and the heavens to his sublime calculus. On the other hand, the votary of jurisprudence, absorbed in the actual business of human life, and the administration of human laws, in which probabilities and presumptions are the principal instruments to arrive at his conclusions, is apt to place all other sciences at an immeasurable distance below his own, which deals with moral evidence, and to boast of his common sense, which, though no science, is, in his estimate, fairly worth the seven.

Thus each, in his turn, from the common fascination of his own peculiar profession or study, is but too apt to become generally insensible or indifferent to all others. Instead of gathering new strength from their invigorating truths, or storing his mind with their

treasures for use or illustration, each is but too apt to walk in his own round of close and solitary pleasure. If, therefore, no other motive could be found for these lectures of mutual instruction, but the desire to draw the sciences, as it were, in open contact and contrast with each other, that alone, it seems to me, ought to furnish a sufficient inducement, and should stimulate us to a sincere encouragement of the design.

And this leads me to remark, in the next place, that the sciences are of a social nature, and flourish best in the neighbourhood of each other. They furnish literature with some of its most engaging imagery, as well as with some of its most effective instruction. In return, they receive an infinite variety of aids from literature, not merely by way of ornament, but by profound reflection, and close and vigorous reasoning. There is not, within the compass of human learning, a single department, which does not connect itself with every other; which does not derive illustrations of its own truths, and mingle its own results with every other. One of the admirable dispensations of Providence is, thus to make every human attainment pour in its tribute to the common stream of knowledge, so as to widen the common means of social intercourse and social happiness. Whatever be the science, it becomes cold and cheerless, when it casts around a sepulchral light, in its own solitary and noiseless cell. It is when it becomes connected with other sciences, reflecting its own radiance on other objects, and receiving again from them their own 'brilliant lights, that it warms, and elevates, and enlarges the human soul. A truth is but half felt, when it stands alone. It is only when it belongs to a cluster, that it incites the intellectual appetite, and gives a keener relish to other food, by the richness, as well as the delicacy of its flavor.

One of the most popular journals of our day has lately declared, in a bold and peremptory tone, that it had not "any hesitation in adding, that, within the last fifteen years, not a single discovery or invention of prominent interest has been made in our colleges, and that there is not one man in all the eight universities of Great Britain, who is at present known to be engaged in any train of original research."* Without yielding to the truth of this unqualified remark, it may be justly stated, that, if there be any color for it, it arises from the dissociation of science and literature, which is too apt to be nourished in those universities, by the single pursuits