the cargo is like to know. I
find myself, at certain intervals, in the society of a number of experts
in science, literature, and art, who cover a pretty wide range, taking
them all together, of human knowledge. I have not the least doubt that
if the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should come in and sit with this company
at one of their Saturday dinners, he would be listened to, as he always
was, with respect and attention. But there are subjects upon which the
great talker could speak magisterially in his time and at his club, upon
which so wise a man would express himself guardedly at the meeting where
I have supposed him a guest. We have a scientific man or two among
us, for instance, who would be entitled to smile at the good Doctor's
estimate of their labors, as I give it here:

"Of those that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many
flatter themselves with high opinion of their own importance and imagine
that they are every day adding some improvement to human life."--"Some
turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone,
and find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some
register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind
is changeable.

"There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless
liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will
grow hot if they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the effect
expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again."

I cannot transcribe this extract without an intense inward delight in
its wit and a full recognition of its thorough half-truthfulness. Yet
if while the great moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be
imagined as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or Mrs. Thrale flashed
through the depths of the ocean, we can suppose he might be tempted to
indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this:---A wise
man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to
the authority of a particular fact. He who would bound the possibilities
of human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take
the dimensions of the infant in ordering the habiliments of the adult.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of
wisdom to listen. Will the Professor have the kindness to inform me by
what steps of gradual development the ring and the loadstone, which were
but yesterday the toys of children and idlers, h