mind, and the great
objects which were the result, PEIRESC replied, that "a small matter
suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, whose true wealth
consists in the monuments of arts, the treasures of his library, and the
brotherly affections of the ingenious." PEIRESC was a French judge, but he
supported his rank more by his own character than by luxury or parade. He
would not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented his apartments;
but the walls were covered with the portraits of his literary friends; and
in the unadorned simplicity of his study, his books, his papers, and his
letters were scattered about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor.
There, stealing from the world, he would sometimes admit to his spare
supper his friend Gassendi, "content," says that amiable philosopher, "to
have me for his guest."

PEIRESC, like PINELLI, never published any work. These men of letters
derived their pleasure, and perhaps their pride, from those vast strata of
knowledge which their curiosity had heaped together in their mighty
collections. They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius
which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of
composition which embellishes minute ones. This deficiency in the minds of
such men may be attributed to a thirst of learning, which the very means
to allay can only inflame. From all sides they are gathering information;
and that knowledge seems never perfect to which every day brings new
acquisitions. With these men, to compose is to hesitate; and to revise is
to be mortified by fresh doubts and unsupplied omissions. PEIRESC was
employed all his life on a history of Provence; but, observes Gassendi,
"He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into
any shape of elegant form; he was therefore content to take the midwife's
part, by helping the happier labours of others."

Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely authors, but who are
often, however, contributing to the works of others; and without whose
secret labours the public would not have possessed many valued ones. The
delightful instruction which these men are constantly offering to authors
and to artists, flows from their silent but uninterrupted cultivation of
literature and the arts.

When Robertson, after his successful "History of Scotland," was long
irresolute in his designs, and still unpractised in that curious research
which habitually occupie