will have added a perfect knowledge of physical astronomy, and a good portion of mathematics; that his mind and eye may be exact in the calculation, and able in the estimate. Nor will these help him without a lively power of general ization: not rapid, superficial, or in love with itself; but with a firm foothold, and a perfect readiness to change and shape itself anew, with the advance of observation. He must be able to carry whole regions of the earth's surface in his mind at once: and, by his knowledge of the substances which compose the terrestrial crust, to predict easily, from a distant view, the structure of an island or a mountain. Nor will he neglect the study of plants and animals, but be rather a proficient in them. Taking a fossil in his hand, he will see at once the animal to which it belonged; and will be able to identify the rock in which it was discovered with a brother rock in the antipodes. He is, of course, a voyager by land and sea, and marked with every quality of endurance. His labors will so far exceed the reward and the fame, that nothing but a philosophical indifference will sustain him through their neglect.

It would be easy to bring many more such examples; but these perfectly suffice to show, that one man cannot practically master all sciences; and, indeed, that none will desire or attempt it.

It becomes evident, from this point of view, that not only the masses of mankind must be contented with a knowledge of the generalities of science, but that the savan himself is under the same necessity; and that, by this necessity, he is compelled to respect the labors of his brothers and predecessors. From such a necessary division of labor, and the compulsory respect attending it, it happens, that all the learned, and all the scientific, are knit among themselves, and with the multitude, in a bond of humanity more powerful even than community of belief. The savans of all sorts make common cause against ignorance and prejudice. If the world is ever to be harmonized, it must be through a community of knowledge, for there is no other universal or non-exclusive principle in the nature of

man.

Rising from such considerations, the arguments of this chapter suggest others, no less important. As universal history, when it succeeds in exposing the true connection of events, solves many enigmas in the fate of nations, and ex

plains their progress, how it was impeded, how accelerated; so must a physical history of creation, happily conceived, and executed with a due knowledge of the state of discovery, remove a part of the contradictions which the warring forces of nature present, in their aggregate operations. General views raise our conceptions of the dignity and grandeur of nature, and have a peculiarly enlightening and composing effect upon the spirit." They accustom us to regard each part of nature as a portion of the whole. The individual is made to feel that he is connected, by the very nature and substance of his body, with every part of the universe. He perceives that the universe is itself, and in its total, a body to him, of which his organic body is only the nucleus, or point of reunion. His eye associates him with the remotest stars; his muscular sense places him in union with the gravity of the world. In tides, he observes the mutual affection of the sun, earth, and moon; in falling meteors he beholds messengers from the planetary spheres. Knowing the nature of electricity and magnetism, he finds himself in a state of equilibrium, living by the antagonism of the great powersthe opposition of air, earth and sea. Thus, by intellect, he is in a manner blended and reconciled with all existence. He is no longer agitated with the divorce of spirit and matter, but feels their intimate reconciliation in every point and instant of existence: he is cured of both diseases of the soul-the distrust of matter, and the distrust of spirit; perceiving that neither is truly inimical to the other. But these considerations, while they operate profoundly and silently, do not in the least diminish the ardor of investigation. The inferior powers of his mind are only sharpened to a keener activity. He delights the more in practice and detail. If, to the merely meditative, on the other hand, the Cosmos, or "picture of the world, cannot be presented with an outline equally sharp and clear in every part, it will at least enrich the mind with ideas, and arouse and fructify the imagination." No injury, but rather a great good, will result even from the slightest and most superficial knowledge of nature.

The author next turns to the savans of his own country, with the reproach perpetually cast upon them, that they make science inaccessible;" and, to any one who is familiar with their methods

retard and incumber science? It is very evident, that for all these hinderances the cure must be sought, if anywhere, in science itself, or rather in its advancement to a higher stage. Having exhausted the physical, and the physiological, its next step, if it takes another, must be upon the psychological. Having separated and described the powers and relations of substances and forms, it may turn next upon the energies which rule them; and marking these energies, as species of the invisible world, it may define them, by their proper actions and functions. If this should ever happen, there can then be no longer any war between false philosophy and true science; for the former must by that time have withdrawn into the region of fiction, leaving Science to assert her ancient empire over Powers and Ideas.

The epoch of this happy consummation seems far removed, when it is consid. ered that the mind itself, notwithstanding the example of Plato and the advice of Bacon, has not yet been admitted among objects of science. Life is confessed to have its laws, notwithstanding the efforts of the chemists to reduce it under those of the atoms; it is to be hoped that the same concession will be made to the powers of the soul. But here, as in physical science and in physiology, the progress must most evidently be from parts to laws, from laws to species and principles. If it is now obvious, (and who will deny it?) that the universal history of man discovers no accident, or chance, ruling over the destiny of nations; but a certain orderly course of events, marked by the qualities of the people which compose them; can we any longer refuse to recognize the existence of principles in the soul itself principles as fixed and recognizable as the laws of gravity and life? Can we fail to see an order and scale in the operation of these laws, leading to the idea of permanent energies, as distinct as they are universal, forming by their aggregate and harmony, the system of the intellectual nature? But these cannot be found by ratiocination, or by the tossing to and fro of dogmas, though with never so admirable a skill. In this region, as in those of life and matter, "nothing can be derived or built up from à priori conceptions." "The natural history of the earth," continues Humboldt, whose words

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may justly be employed to enforce this argument, "stands on the same grade of the empirical ladder with the history of human actions at large, of the struggles of man with the elements, or of one nation against another. But a luminous treatment of either, a rational arrangement of natural phenomena, and of historical events, impresses us with a belief in an old inherent necessity, which rules all the operations, both of spiritual and material forces." "This necessity (i. e., ceaselessness, or permanency, of causes,) is, indeed, the very essence of nature. It is nature herself; and it leads to clearness and simplicity of view; to the discovery of laws (principles) which present themselves as the ultimate term of human inquiries."

After some observations upon the progress of science, and the simplification that is fast reducing it to a whole, and so making it accessible, the author concludes his introduction with remarking upon the beneficial effects of a scientific study of nature, as well to the individual as to communities. By ideas in other words, by insight into the spirit of nature-the aims of the student are elevated, and his labors rendered fruitful. But ideas are not to be extracted out of nothing-nor out of words; there must be an actual contact and experience; and the breadth of the wisdom will be as the breadth of the knowledge. "Let him, therefore, whose circumstances permit him to escape, from time to time, from the circle of common occupations," learn a little of the delights of knowledge, and feed his hungry understanding with the fruits of science. It will awaken new faculties, and inspire new hopes. The dead world will be revived again, and he will find himself suddenly placed in intimate connection and sympathy with the best and wisest of men.

Having, by general contemplations of the grandeur of the world, divested himself of those prejudices against science which are excited by false philosophy and confirmed by a natural hatred of pedantry, the observer will not any longer entertain the opinion, "that every department of knowledge is not equally important in the culture and welfare of mankind." None would have guessed, that from the contortions of a frog's limbs, observed by Galvani, an instrument

words, "external nature and human thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible with the largest possible sum of pleasure in the whole;" his explanation of the sensuous element of poetry, as the "union, harmonious melting down and fusion of the sensual in the spiritual "all are replete with knowledge and suggestive thought. When Coleridge speaks of the poetical powers, we are constantly reminded by his very language that he transcribes his own consciousness, and speaks from authority, not as the reviewers; as when he refers to the "Violences of excitement"-"the laws of association of feeling with thought"-" the starts and strange farflights of the assimilative power on the slightest and least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words and objects" "the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it, the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops." Also, in speaking of the language of the highest poetry, he calls it intermediate between arbitrary language, mere "modes of recalling an object," seen or felt, and the language of nature-a subordinate Logos-that was in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the thing it represented. It is the blending arbitrary language with that of nature, not merely recalling the cold notion of a thing, but expressing the reality of it-language which is itself a part of that which it manifests." In reading this, and also Wordsworth's definition of language, as the "Incarnation of thought," not its dress, we feel that it is not observation but consciousness that speaks.

To Coleridge belongs the honor of emancipating Shaksperian criticism in England from its old bonds. He showed that the error of the classical critics consisted in "mistaking for the essentials of the Greek stage, certain rules which the wise poets imposed on themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts of the drama consistent with those which had been forced upon them by circumstances independent of their will; out of which circumstances the drama itself rose. The circumstances in Shakspeare's time were different, which it was equally out of his power to alter, and such as, in

my opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more human interest. Critics are too apt to forget that rules are but means to an end; consequently, where the ends are different, the rules must be likewise so. We must have ascertained what the end is, before we can determine what the rules ought to be. Judging under this impression," he adds, "I did not hesitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate judgment of Shakspeare, not only in the general construction, but in all the detail of his dramas, impressed me with greater wonder than even the might of his genius, or the depth of his philosophy." In his criticisms on Shakspeare, he insists, with much felicity, on the unity of a work of art as its characteristic excellence. It must be a concrete whole, all its parts in just subordination to its leading idea or principle of life. Thus the imagination, in its tranquil and purely pleasure operation, "acts chiefly by creating out of many things as they would have appeared in the description of an ordinary mind detailed in unimpassioned succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon us when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect." And again: the imagination, by combining many circumstances into one moment of consciousness, "tends to produce the ultimate end of all human thought and feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its principles and fountain, who is always truly one." At the end of his notes on Shakspeare, he has a passage, full of power and meaning, incidentally referring to the same thought: "There are three powers:Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; Subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent sameness; and Profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference. Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the three-fold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound, and you have the poet. But combine all, wit, subtlety and fancy, with profundity, imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable, and let the object of action be man universal, and we shall have— O rash prophecy! say, rather, we have— a Shakspeare!"