ll things; and yet so trustful of itself, that
it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without
trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and
good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks
of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its
conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its
delights are too penetrating,--too living,--for any whitewashed object
or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it
loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.

3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit
ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is
ignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble;
and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing
lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron;
astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven, than in
teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in
expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than
in setting limbs.--Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement,
every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something
also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of
nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us
partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him
in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences
and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all
inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire
as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong
torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow
thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden
charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to
which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for
us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our
incitement, I say, not our reward,--for knowledge is its own
reward,--herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and
stars their times.

4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty[1] that the highest pleasures
of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to
arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces,
tower over tower, and pile artificial mounta