arranged beautiful pieces of bird-stuffing, boxes and drawers too, made by the same hands that stuffed the birds. The hands of the owner of the cottage were filled with all varieties of insect and leaf, rock and shell; the laboratory and the study of our friend in this cottage, had been Nature's wide and ample domain; he had scaled the summit of the highest hill, again and again; he had penetrated to the depths of the lowest ghyll: every dingle, every forest path, every meadow walk had been the scene of communings of Nature. Twinkling streams, that flashed and rippled along the worn stones; the waving branches of old trees; quiet solitudes seldom trodden by human feet; these were the various chambers of the same great study, the various pages covered with the same hand-writing. Taking down the catalogue of the Botanical Society of London, with a pride which was truly beautiful, because the legitimate child of Self-respect and Industry, he showed his name, given and appended to some rare variety of herb or plant he had discovered. This man had little book knowledge, but he had a kind of knowledge, out of which the most valuable books are made; a knowledge which can never be acquired by books alone, because the result of observation, reflection, and experiment; and all this without tools. What a proof of mental independence! What an illustration of the power of mind to conquer difficulties, and make the diffi- culties, indeed, tributary to its resources and its energies. Yet, another visit was paid that afternoon, to another labourer for a few shillings a week, and, although he was not an illustrious example, like the last, he also attested to the principle we are elucidating. He, poor glorious labourer, was a sober book man. Pleasant little cottage it is, there, down there, quite visible to the eye, so clean, so neat; and its small book case so well filled with books; so well chosen. After a long and weary walk there, a regaling cup of tea was the reward; and what a talk we had, while the good wife wondered to hear her husband so learned, as the witty things of Butler, and Swift, and Shakespear, and the wise things of Milton, and Foster, and Brown, and the folly of old Sancho, and the mirthfulness of hearty Sir Walter, were bandaged about between us. But knowledge and education find one of their most valuable ends in the furnishing of other and better tools to man. This is the meaning of the so often quoted phrase, "Knowledge is Power." It is power principally because it teaches us to economise our strength. Ever since man commenced the travels of his ingenuity, he has bent his energies to the compelling others, or other things to work for him: as the Negro laughably but truly said of the Englishman, so we may say of the whole of the race, "Him catche horse, make him work; catche iron, make him work; catche smoke, make him work; catche Negro, make him work." Every advance towards civilization beholds man making water, wind, the metals, and the beasts of the field, all alike obedient to him. This is the product of knowledge-knowledge of causes and their effects. Not a tool is used in labour but it results from this, and proclaims loudly that knowledge is power. What are the chisels of the sculptor, the last of the shoemaker, the instruments of the surgeon, the needles of the tailor, the pencils of the artist? Man, it must be remembered, is a learner, and a learner from Nature. 66 66 Man," says Dr. Whewell, can construct exquisite machines; can call in vast powers; can form extensive combinations, in order to bring about results which he has in view. But in all this he is only taking advantage of the laws of Nature which already exist; he is applying to his use qualities which Matter already possesses. Nor can he by any effort do more. He can establish no new law of Nature, which is not a result of the existing ones; he can invest Matter with no new properties which are not modifications of its present attributes. His greatest advances in skill and power are made when he calls to his aid forces which before existed unemployed, or when he discovers so much of the habits of some of the elements as to be able to bend them to his purpose. He navigates the ocean by the assistance of the winds, which he cannot raise or still; and even if we suppose him able to control the forces of these, his yet unsubjugated ministers, this could only be done by studying their characters, by learning more thoroughly the laws of air, of heat, of moisture. He cannot give the minutest portion of the atmosphere new relations, a new course of expansion, new laws of motion." Thus we find ourselves everywhere bound in; everywhere we are fenced round by laws, beyond which we cannot pass; everywhere an iron necessity exclaims to us-" Thus far-no farther;" but by watching Nature we obtain dominion over Nature; and thus every accession man makes to his knowledge, enlarges his power, for knowledge is property, and property is power. Ideas, when they come to the mind, enrich it; and far more good is done for a man when you have imparted to him knowledge and ideas, than when you have given to him gold, although few people perhaps would be able to reason thus. In fact, whenever we look through the world we behold some illustrious instances, proving that KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Man, knowing by observation the method of Nature, has contrived and designed, and in many instances apparently defeated her original intentions from the doings of Knowledge. England and many parts of the world beside, are covered with magnificent marvels, to which all the widest flights of man's fancy are but the ravings of delirium. At the moment that I write, a considerable portion of the land, very long submerged beneath the waters in the eastern parts of England, is being brought under cultivation; and very soon another county will be added to the Queen's dominions. We walk beneath the beds of rivers; we are borne along with certain and almost inconceivable rapidity upon the waves of the old ocean; the whole kingdom, too, is made to wear the appearance of a garden, or a manufactory; the most worthless things, apparently, have been seized by Industry and Science, and made available to useful purposes. Light and Lightning have both been pounced upon by Mind and Magnetism, if the last, is yet coming in now to aid the cause of human developement still more; the last, but the most wonderful chapter of human attainment. The most striking characteristic of the knowledge of the present age, is its practical tendency. Perhaps we are not so much superior to the ancients in skill, but in the application of new agents. It is computed that the cost to Egypt of the great pyramid of Ghiza was the labour of 200,000 men for twenty years. Some twenty years ago a calculation was made in England, that the steam-engine, then in work, would do the same work in twenty-four hours. The broad Atlantic is already shrunk into a stream |