transcendent genius, which age after age has added to the stores of antiquity-this mind, we know well, was once as ignorant as the dullest and feeblest of those minds, which scarcely know enough, even to wonder at its superiority.

But, without taking into our consideration the rich endowments of a mind like this, let us think of one of those humble minds to which I have alluded. How vast are the acquirements even of a mind of this humble rank,—and acquirements, too, which a few years, that may be said almost to be years of infancy and apparent imbecility, have formed! Indeed, if all human science were to be divided, as Rousseau says, into two portions, the one comprehending what is common to all mankind, and the other only that stock of truths, which is peculiar to the wise and learned, he can scarcely be regarded as delivering a very extravagant paradox, in asserting, that this latter portion, which is the subject of so much pride, would seem very trifling in comparison of the other. But of this greater portion, we do not think, as he truly says, partly because the knowledge which it comprehends is acquired so very early, that we scarcely remember the acquisition of it, and still more, perhaps, because since knowledge becomes remarkable only by its differences, the elements that are common in all, like the common quantities in algebraic equations, are counted as nothing.

When we think, however, of the elements that are truly contained in this portion of knowledge, which the humblest of mankind partakes, how much is involved in the possession and mastering even of one language,-in the accurate adaptation of each arbitrary sign to the thing signified,—and the adaptation, not merely of the signs of things to the things themselves, but of the nicer inflections of the signs to the faint and abstract relations of objects! If we knew nothing more of the mind of man, than its capacity of becoming acquainted with the powers of so vast and so complicated an instrument as that of speech, and of acquiring this knowledge in circumstances the most unfavourable to the acquisition-without any of the aids,-which lessen so greatly our labour in acquiring any other language far less perfectly in after-life,and amid the continual distractions of pains and pleasures, that seem to render any fixed effort absolutely impossible--we might, indeed, find cause to wonder at a capacity so admira ble. But,

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when we think of all the other knowledge which is acquired at the same time, even by this mind, which we have selected as one of the humblest,-what observations of phenomena, what inductions, what reasonings downward, from the results of general observation to particular cases that are analogous, must have occurred, and been formed, almost unconsciously, into a system of physics, of which the reasoner himself, perhaps, does not think as a system, but on which he founds his practical conclusions, exactly in the same way as the philosopher applies his general principles to the complicated contrivances of mechanics, or the different arts,when we think of all this, and know that all this, or at least a great part of all this, must have been done, before it could be safe for the little reasoner to be trusted, for a single moment, at the slightest distance from the parental eye,-how astonishing does the whole process appear; and if we had not opportunities of observation, and in some measure, too, the consciousness of our own memory, in our later acquisitions, to tell us how all this has been done, what a variety of means must we conceive nature to have employed, for producing so rapidly and so efficaciously, this astonishing result! She has employed, however, no complicated variety of means; and she has produced the effect the more surely, from the very simplicity of the means which she has employed. The simple desire of knowledge explains a mystery which nothing else could explain. She has made it delightful to man to know -disquieting to him to know only imperfectly, while any thing remains in his power that can make his knowledge more accurate or comprehensive; and she has done more than all this;—she has not waited till we reflect on the pleasure which we are to enjoy, or the pain which we are to suffer. She has given us these, indeed, to stimulate our search, and in part to reward it, but she has prompted us to begin our search without reflection on the mere pleasure or pain which is to reward our activity, or to punish our inactivity. It is sufficient, that there is something unknown, which has a relation to something that is known to us. instantly, the desire of knowing this too.-Begin to the child, in the nursery, some ballad, which involves a tale of marvellous incident, and stop in the very middle of the tale;—his little heart will be almost in agony, till you resume the narrative; but his eye, before you ceased, was still expressive of that curiosity, of that mere

We feel

desire of knowing what is to come, which is not painful in itself, -producing the pain, but not rising from it, when the narrative is broken, and affording the pleasure, but not rising from the pleasure, when the narrative is continued. Why is it, that in such a case we feel delight? It is because our previous curiosity has been gratified. Why do we feel pain? It is because our previous curiosity has not been gratified; and to suppose that but for the pleasure of the gratified curiosity, and the pain of the ungratified curiosity, we should have had no curiosity to afford the pleasure or the pain, is a reversal of the order of causes and effects, as absurd as it would be to suppose, that, but for the existence of the flower, we should not have had the root or the stem which supports the flower,-that it is the light which flows around us that is the cause of the existence of the sun,-and that he who created the sun, and every thing which the sun enlightens, is not merely revealed to us by that world of splendour and beauty which he has formed, but that it is the beauty of the universe which is the cause of the existence of Him who created it to be beautiful.

Of the lively curiosity of which I speak, with relation to the tales of our nursery, you must all have some remembrance; and, indeed, it is a curiosity which, even with respect to such tales of fiction, does not cease wholly when we are obliged to assume the airs and the dignity of manhood. We vary our tales in these graver years, and call them romances, dramas, epics; but we are equally ready, in any moment of leisure, to be led away by any narrative of strange incidents; which is to us exactly what the simplest ballad was to us then. The pain which attends ungratified curiosity, is most strikingly proved by those tales which are often intentionally suspended at some most interesting moment, and printed as fragments. We feel, in such a case, a vexation that almost amounts to anger, as if the writer of the fragment were wilfully and wantonly inflicting on us pain; and there are many little injuries, which we could perhaps much more readily forgive. To be forced to read a succession of such fragments, would be truly, to any mind which can take interest in the adventures of others, a species of torture,-and of torture that, to such a mind, would be far from being the slightest which could be devised.

The curiosity, which is thus strikingly exemplified in the eagerness with which we listen to fictitious narratives, is not less

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strikingly, as it is certainly far more usefully exemplified, in the interest which we feel in the wonders of science. How many nights of sleepless expectation would be given to the chemist, if he could be informed, on authority which he could not doubt, that in some neighbouring country a discovery had been made, which threw a new light, not merely on what had before been considered as obscure, but on all, or almost all, the phenomena which had been considered as perfectly well known;-that, in consequence of this discovery, it had become easy to analyse what had before resisted every attempt of the analytic art, and to force into combination substances which before had seemed incapable of any permanent union! With what eagerness would he await the communication that was to put into his own hands this admirable power! It must be a distress indeed, of no common sort, which could at such a period withdraw his mind wholly, for any length of time, from that desire which every thing that met his eye would seem to him to recal, because it would be in truth forever present to his mind.

It is needless to extend the illustration through the variety of the sciences. We have a desire of knowledge which nothing can abate, a desire that, in some greater or less degree, extends itself to every thing which we are capable of knowing, and not to realities merely, but to all the extravagancies of fiction. We are formed to know; we cannot exist without knowledge; and nature, therefore, has given us the desire of that knowledge, which is essential not to our pleasure merely, but to our very being.

"Witness the sprightly joy, when ought unknown
Strikes the quick sense, and wakes each active power
To brisker measures;-witness the neglect

Of all familiar objects, though beheld

With transport once ;-the fond attentive gaze
Of young astonishment, the sober zeal

Of age commenting on prodigious things.
For such the bounteous providence of heaven,
In every breast implanting this desire

Of objects new and strange,-to urge us on,
With unremitted labour, to pursue

Those sacred stores, that wait the ripening soul,
In Truth's exhaustless bosom.-What need words
To paint its power?-For this the daring youth

Breaks from his weeping mother's anxious arms
In foreign climes to rove,-the pensive sage,
Heedless of sleep, or midnight's harmful damp,
Hangs o'er the sickly taper,-and untired
The virgin follows, with enchanted step,
The mazes of some wild and wondrous tale
From morn to eve,-unmindful of her form,
Unmindful of the happy dress, that stole
The wishes of the youth, when every maid
With envy pined.-Hence, finally, by night,
The village matron, round the blazing hearth,
Suspends the infant audience with her tales,
Breathing astonishment,—of witching rhymes,
And evil spirits,-of the death-bed call,
To him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd
The orphan's portion,—of unquiet souls
Ris'n from the grave, to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life conceal'd,-of shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave
The torch of hell around the murderer's bed.

At every solemn pause, the crowd recoil,
Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd
With shivering sighs,—till, eager for the event,

Around the beldame, all arrect, they hang,

Each trembling heart with grateful terrors quell'd."*

If man could have been made to know, that his existence depended upon certain acquisitions of knowledge, without any love of the knowledge itself, he might, perhaps, have made the acquisition, that was believed to be so important. But to learn,—if there had been no curiosity or pleasure in learning, would then have been a task; and, like other mere tasks, would probably have been imperfectly executed. Something would have been neglected altogether, or very inaccurately examined, the accurate knowledge of which might have been essential to life itself. Nature, by the constitution which she has given us, has attained the same end, and attained it without leaving to us the possibility of failure. She has given us the desire of knowing what it is of importance for us to know; she has made the knowledge delightful in itself; she has made it painful to us to know imperfectly. There is no

* Pleasures of Imagination, B. I. v. 232-270.