ion is favorable to poesy, he dissipates with
masterly conclusiveness. The true realm of beauty is the realm of
reason. It is true that science deprives the poet of the use of sundry
unnatural conceptions, but while it more than compensates him by the
substitution of nobler ideas, it opens to him a new, affluent, and
little explored poetic world. "It can," he says, "not be charged as a
crime upon natural science, that it has destroyed materials hitherto
used by the poets. Such losses are of small consequence to the true
poet, but may, indeed, be painful to the many dabblers in the poetic
art, who think they have rendered the insignificant poetic by tricking
it out in gewgaws from the poetic armory of a vanished era." The fifth,
entitled, "The Existence of all things in the Domain of Reason," is the
profoundest and most significant of these essays, and more than the
others brings out in form as simple and popular as could be expected,
the fundamental idea of the author's system of thought. It asserts that
there is, throughout the universe, a radical unity between the laws of
beauty, and man's moral nature and intellectual powers, and that there
must therefore exist for the mind, a perfect community of nature and
analogy between different worlds, and a rational connection between all
thinking beings, not only of the earth, but of other planets and
systems. The final essay is on "The Culture of Science as the Exercise
of Religion," and is mainly an attempt to show that the very nature of
science requires its culture to be made a religion, and that _the good
which we ought to seek must be that which is imperishable in its truth_.

This work has been rapidly followed by two other publications of the
same author, intended to explain or defend the positions of their
predecessor. The first is called, "Natural Science in its Connection
with Poetic Art and Religion." It was written in reply to the criticism
of a learned and respected friend of the author, Bishop Mynster of
Seeland. The second has for its title, "Natural Science and the
Formation of the Intellect."

Oersted is now seventy-three years old. It is admirable to see a man of
such years and distinction in the world, putting forth the same grand
and elevated ideas that marked the generous enthusiasm of his youth. It
is only in the genial and unselfish pursuits of science that such
freshness of mind can be thus preserved.

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