ing inventions of an exquisite literary genius. A half-worn pewter
spoon, stamped on the back with the word _London_, which was found in a
miserable hut on the banks of the Awatska by some British sailors, at
once excited in their minds a thousand tender remembrances of their
country. And it would, I suspect, be rather a poor criticism, and
scarcely suited to grapple with the true phenomena of the case, that,
wholly overlooking the magical influences of the associative faculty,
would concentrate itself simply on either the-workmanship or the
materials of the spoon. Nor is the Dwarfie Stone to be correctly
estimated, independently of the suggestive principle, on the rules of
the mere quarrier who sells stones by the cubic foot, or of the mere
contractor for hewn work who dresses them by the square one.

The pillow I found lettered over with the names of visitors; but the
stone,--an exceedingly compact red sandstone,--had resisted the
imperfect tools at the command of the traveller,--usually a nail or
knife; and so there were but two of the names decipherable,--that of an
"H. Ross, 1735," and that of a "P. FOLSTER, 1830." The rain still
pattered heavily overhead; and with my geological chisel and hammer I
did, to beguile the time, what I very rarely do,--added my name to the
others, in characters which, if both they and the Dwarfie Stone get but
fair play, will be distinctly legible two centuries hence. In what state
will the world then exist, or what sort of ideas will fill the head of
the man who, when the rock has well-nigh yielded up its charge, will
decipher the name for the last time, and inquire, mayhap, regarding the
individual whom it now designates, as I did this morning, when I asked,
"Who was this H. Ross, and who this P. Folster?" I remember when it
would have saddened me to think that there would in all probability be
as little response in the one case as in the other; but as men rise in
years they become more indifferent than in early youth to "that life
which wits inherit after death," and are content to labor on and be
obscure. They learn, too, if I may judge from experience, to pursue
science more exclusively for its own sake, with less, mayhap, of
enthusiasm to carry them on, but with what is at least as strong to take
its place as a moving force, that wind and bottom of formed habit
through which what were at first acts of the will pass into easy
half-instinctive promptings of the disposition. In order