he found a musician that held the soul was but a harmony, saith pleasantly, "Hic ab arte sua non recessit,"* &c. But of these conceits Aristotle speaketh seriously and wisely, when he saith, "Qui respiciunt ad pauca de facili pronunciant."+

Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion, without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after awhile fair and even so it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but, if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest believed, and not easiliest examined. It is true that, in compendious treatises for practice that form is not to be disallowed; but, in the true handling of knowledge, men ought not to fall, either, on the one side, into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean: "Nil tam metuens, quàm ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur:" nor, on the other side, into Socrates' ironical doubting of all things; but to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as they stand in a man's own judgment proved more or less.

Other errors there are in the scope that men propound to themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours; for whereas the more constant and devoted kind of professors of any science ought to propound to themselves to make some additions to their science, they convert their labours to aspire to certain second prizes: as to be a profound interpreter or commentor, to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a methodical compounder or abridger, and so the patrimony of knowledge cometh to be sometimes improved, but seldom augmented.

But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge; for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity, and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch, whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate. But this is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straightly conjoined and united together than they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planct of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civi society and action: howbeit I do not mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before mentioned of the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession; for I am not ignorant how much that diverteth and interrupteth the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take up, the race is hindered;

"Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit."§

Neither is my meaning, as was spoken of Socrates, to call philosophy down from *He did not step out of his profession.

+ Those who attend to few matters can easily give an opinion.

Fearing nothing so much as lest he should seem to doubt of any thing.

$ Turns from the course, to grasp the rolling gold.

heaven to converse upon the earth; that is to leave natural philosophy aside, and to apply knowledge only to manners and policy. But as both heaven and earth do conspire and contribute to the use and benefit of man; so the end ought to be, from both philosophies, to separate and reject vain speculations and whatsoever is empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatsoever is solid and fruitful: that knowledge may not be, as a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity only, or as a bondwoman, to acquire and gain to her master's use; but as a spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort.

352.-ANOTHER YEAR.

[WE are arrived at the period, when that series of our poetical extracts, which may be called 'The Year of the Poets,' must at length close. Upon the threshold of ‘Another Year,' we give passages from Tennyson,-from Herrick, the great poet of old festivals,and from Keats.]

He gave me a friend, and a true true- The cricket chirps: the light burns low:

Begin then to choose

This night as ye use,

Who shall for the present delight here,

Be a king by the lot,

And who shall not

Next, crown the bowl full

With gentle lamb's wool;
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale too;

And thus ye must do

Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here. To make the wassail a swinger.

St. Agnes' Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.

HERRICK.

And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require

Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

KEATS.

353. THE YOUNG GEOLOGIST.

HUGH MILLER.

[The following is an extract from a book, at once scientific and amusing-"The Old Red Sandstone." The author, in the passage which we give, describes the circumstances which led him to the study of Geology. The volume before us is dedicated to Sir Roderick Murchison; and it is pleasing to learn from this dedication, that the hard-working mason, when prosecuting his researches in obscurity and solitude, had encouragement and assistance from one of such eminent acquirements.]

My advice to young working men desirous of bettering their circumstances, and adding to the amount of their enjoyment, is a very simple one. Do not seek happiness in what is misnamed pleasure; seek it rather in what is termed study. Keep your consciences clear, your curiosity fresh, and embrace every opportunity of cultivating your minds. You will gain nothing by attending Chartist meetings, The fellows who speak nonsense with fluency at these assemblies, and deem their nonsense eloquence, are totally unable to help either you or themselves; or, if they do succeed in helping themselves, it will be all at your expense. Leave them to harangue unheeded, and set yourselves to occupy your leisure hours in making yourselves wiser men. Learn to make a right use of your eyes: the commonest things are worth looking at-even stones and weeds, and the most familiar animals. Read good books, not forgetting the best of all: there is more true philosophy in the Bible than in every work of every sceptic that ever wrote; and we would be all miserable creatures without it, and none more miserable than you. You are jealous of the upper classes; and perhaps it is too true that, with some good, you have received much evil at their hands. It must be confessed they have hitherto been doing comparatively little for you, and a great deal for themselves. But upper and lower classes there must be, so long as the world lasts; and there is only one way in which your jealousy of them can be well directed. Do not let them get ahead of you in intelligence. It would be alike unwise and unjust to attempt casting them down to your own level, and no class would suffer more in the attempt than yourselves, for you would only be clearing the way, at an immense expense of blood, and under a tremendous pressure of misery, for another and perhaps worse aristocracy, with some second Cromwell or Napoleon at their head. Society, however, is in a state of continual flux : some in the upper classes are from time to time going down, and some of you from time to time mounting up to take their places-always the more steady and intelligent among you, remember; and if all your minds were cultivated, not merely intellectually, but morally also, you would find yourselves, as a body, in the possession of a power which every charter in the world could not confer upon you, and which all the tyranny or injustice of the world could not withstand,

I intended, however, to speak rather of the pleasure to be derived, by even the humblest, in the pursuit of knowledge, than of the power with which knowledge in the masses is invariably accompanied. For it is surely of greater importance that men should receive accessions to their own happiness, than to the influence which they exert over other men. There is none of the intellectual, and none of the moral faculties, the exercise of which does not lead to enjoyment; nay it is chiefly in the active employment of these that all enjoyment consists; and hence it is that happiness bears so little reference to station. It is a truth which has been often told, but very little heeded or little calculated upon, that though one nobleman may be happier than another, and one labourer happier than another, yet it cannot be at all premised of their respective orders, that the one is in any degree happier than the other. Simple as the fact may scem, if universally recognized, it would save a great deal of useless discontent, and a great deal of envy. Will my humbler readers permit me at once to illustrate this subject, and to introduce the chapters which follow, by a piece of simple narrative? I wish to shew them how possible

it is to enjoy much happiness in very mean employments. Cowper tells us that labour, though the primal curse, “has been softened into mercy ;" and I think that, even had he not done so, I would have found out the fact for myself.

It was twenty years last February since I set out a little before sunrise to make my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint, and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a thin, loose-jointed boy at the time-fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has instanced in his "Twa Dogs," as one of the most disagreeable of all employments-to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and woods-a reader of curious books when I could get them—a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams, and all my amusements, for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and cat every day that they may be enabled to toil!

The quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or frith rather, with a little clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened in the old red sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the pain was by no means very severe, and I wrought hard, and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below, which presented so firm and unbroken a frontage, were to be torn up and removed. Picks, and wedges, and levers, were applied by my brother workmen; and simple and rude as I had been accustomed to regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of using them. They all proved inefficient, however, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly amusing one: it had the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of its novelty. We had a few capital shots: the fragments flew in every direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermillion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things, more disposed to be sentimental, perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts, and the cold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our employer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. I looked up and saw the sun sinking behind the thick fir wood beside us, and the long dark shadows of the trees stretching downwards towards the shore.

This was no very formidable beginning of the course of life I had so much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were a little sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued, as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. It was no small matter, too, that the evening, converted by a rare transmutation, into the delicious "blink of rest" which