The

journals, or in the minds of sensible public-spirited men. necessity of the States' appropriating money to this purpose, or ordering the towns to do it, has in this country, we believe, never been formally denied. The only shadow of argument, which we have ever seen brought against it, arises from a mistake or a misconstruction of those leading, indisputable principles in political economy, that things naturally tend to find their own level; that the supply of the wants of a prosperous or opulent society will be in full proportion to the demand; and that government ought never to interfere in the direction of private interests, or to aid in the profitable appropriation of private property, because individuals will do this much better themselves. It is said, that, on these maxims, the supply of education will regulate itself, and that statesmen should not trouble themselves to guide it, much less to levy a high and most unequal tax for its support. Nothing can be more false and abusive than such an application of those great and admirable principles. If so understood, they must go to the abolition of every tax, however slight, or however important it might be. Smith, the profound author of them, did not think them so to be applied, for he was the master advocate of great national institutions for popular and general instruction, and has devoted a large department in his inestimable work on the Wealth of Nations, in defence of them. Those maxims can be applied with propriety only to the investment of capital for pecuniary profit or emolument. Every body must be convinced that the individual owners can dispose of this most productively to themselves, because they can see their own little interests quicker, and more keenly, than any legislature, however wise or impartial. Not so, however, with education. This stands on a far different footing. The ignorant know not, and are wholly incapable of estimating its value, until it is too late to acquire it. It is here alone, we believe, that a government can rightly and profitably step in to the direction of its subjects, and point out to them their truest interests. We think it bound to aid them in the acquisition of intelligence, and, as far as possible, force them to it. Our own, we have said, must owe to this alone its power of selfpreservation. This is no modern opinion. It was held by the most renowned statesmen of antiquity. The latest great historian of Greece tells us, in a passage referred to by Mr. Carter in these Essays, that Lycurgus resolved the whole business of legislation into the education of youth.

MISCELLANY.

MICROMEGAS.

TRANSLATED FROM VOLTAIRE.

IN one of the planets which revolve round the star called Sirius, lived a young man, of fine understanding, whom I had the honor being introduced to, during his last visit to the little ant-hill, which we call the earth. His name was Micromegas. His height was about eight leagues, or twenty-four miles. The algebraists, who are a class of men of great service to the public, will immediately fall to calculating, and will find, since Mr. Micromegas is twenty-four miles high, and the little creatures who dwell on this earth, measure but about five feet and a half, and our globe is only nine thousand leagues in circumference; they will find, I say, that the globe which gave him birth, must be just twenty-one million six hundred thousand times larger round than our earth. My readers may stare, but, nevertheless, what I say is perfectly agreeable to the laws of nature. The territories of certain potentates in Germany and Italy, which you may travel round in half an hour, if placed side by side with the great empires of Turkey, Russia, or China, would give but a faint idea of the prodigious difference of size, to be found in the works of nature.

Allowing him to be of the height abovementioned, all our sculptors and painters will agree, that he must have measured fifty thousand feet round the waist; and this being the case, no one can deny that his figure was fine. His understanding was highly cultivated, and his knowledge very extensive; he was, moreover, the author of several rare inventions. While he was studying at a Jesuit college, according to the custom of his country, and had but just reached his two hundred and fiftieth year, he discovered, by the mere force of his genius, fifty of Euclid's theorems. In this, he beat Blaise Pascal by eighteen problems, who, as his sister says, found out thirty-two in his childhood, and, afterwards, as we all know, became an indifferent geometrician, and a very bad metaphysician.

At the age of four hundred and fifty years, when his beard was just beginning to grow, he dissected an immense number of insects less than an hundred feet in length, and too small to be discerned by ordinary miscroscopes. He was much interested in this study, and wrote a capital treatise on the subject, which

brought him into trouble; for the high priest of his country, who was a great stickler about trifles, and a perfect ignoramus, discovered in his book, several propositions which he denounced as suspicious, and savoring strongly of heresy. In consequence of these unlucky propositions, he persecuted the author bitterly. The matter in dispute was, whether the substantial form of the flea was the same as that of the snail. Micromegas defended his own side of the question with spirit. The quarrel lasted two hundred and fifty years. At last, the high priest had the book condemned by lawyers, who had never read it, and the author was forbidden to appear at court for the next eight hundred years.

This sentence did not trouble him much, as he was already disgusted with the trifling pleasures and bickerings which occupied every one's attention there. He wrote a lively song, in ridicule of the high priest, for whom he cared not a fig, and determined to spend the time of his banishment in travelling from planet to planet, in order to complete his education.

People, who journey only in chaises and carriages, will undoubtedly be astonished at his travelling equipage. We, poor ignorant creatures, cannot conceive of the existence of any thing different from what we have been accustomed to, on the little pile of dirt, which makes our world. Our traveller was perfectly acquainted with the laws of gravitation, and made use of them to effect his own purposes. Sometimes by the help of a sunbeam,

sometimes by the aid of a comet, he and his servants continued to pass from globe to globe, as a bird flies about from branch to branch. After running through the milky way, and visiting many different parts of the universe, he lighted at last upon the planet Saturn. Though he was by this time accustomed to novelties, all his wisdom and experience could not prevent him from smiling, when he first beheld the smallness of that globe and its inhabitants; for Saturn is but about nine hundred times larger than our earth, and its inhabitants are dwarfs, only six thousand feet high, or thereabout. So that, at first, he and his servants made themselves very merry at the appearance of the little creatures. But, as our Sirian was a man of sense, he soon perceived, that a thinking being is not ridiculous because he is only six thousand feet high. He, therefore, made himself familiar with the Saturnians, after their first astonishment at the sight of his gigantic figure had subsided. With one of them, a man of superior talents, and secretary of the Saturnian Academy, he contracted an intimate friendship. For the satisfaction of my readers, I will here relate an interesting conversation, which took place, one day, between Micromegas and the secretary.

66

After the former had lain down, to allow the Saturnian to approach his face; "I must confess," said he, "that nature is full of variety." "Yes," replied the secretary, "nature resembles a flower-bed, in which-" "Ah," said Micromegas, "we will dispense with your flower-bed." "It is," resumed the secretary, "like an assembly of blonds and brunettes, whose dresses-" "What do I care about your brunettes," answered the other. "It is, then, like a gallery of paintings, where-" "No, no," said our traveller, "nature is like nature. Why do you seek for objects to compare her with?" "In order to please you," replied the secretary. "I do not wish to be pleased," replied Micromegas, "I wish to be instructed. Tell me, in the first place, how many senses people have in your globe.' Seventytwo," said the Saturnian, " and we are always complaining of the smallness of the number. Our imagination goes beyond our wants. We find, notwithstanding our seventy-two senses, our ring and our five moons, that our sphere of action is much too limited; and in spite of our curiosity, and the great number of passions which spring from our seventy-two senses, we are constantly tormented with ennui." "I readily believe you," said Micromegas, "for in our globe we have nearly a thousand senses, and still are haunted with an undefined desire, an inexplicable restlessness, constantly suggesting to us that we are creatures of small account, and that the universe contains orders of beings far more exalted. I have travelled a little, I have seen beings far inferior to my own race, and others as far superior; but I have seen none, who had not more desires than wants, and more wants than means of satisfying them. I may, perhaps, one day, reach a country where no man complains, but hitherto I have not been able to learn where it lies."

66

The two companions then wandered into the regions of speculation; but after much reasoning, equally ingenious and inconclusive, were obliged to return to facts. "What is the length of life here," said the Sirian? "Alas, very short," replied the little citizen of Saturn. "That is just the case with us," returned the Sirian. "We are always complaining of its briefness. It is clear that such is the universal law of nature." "Our life is limited to five hundred of the sun's revolutions," said the Saturnian secretary. (These amount to about fifteen thousand years, according to our way of reckoning.) You see that we die, almost as soon as we are born, our existence is a point, our duration an instant, our globe an atom. We have scarcely begun to learn, before death overtakes us, and puts a stop to our acquisitions. As for

me, I hardly dare lay any plans. I am a drop of water in the ocean. I am ashamed, in your presence especially, of the ridiculous figure I make in the world."

Micromegas replied, "If you were not a philosopher, I should fear that I might add to your affliction, by informing you that life in our planet is seven hundred times longer than in yours. I have been in worlds where life was a thousand times longer than in my native planet, and have found myself still in the region of complaint. But there are some men of sense every where, who accommodate themselves to their situation, and return thanks to the Author of nature. Under a system of admirable uniformity, he hath filled the universe with variety. For example, all thinking beings differ, yet each resembles the rest in the gift of thought and desire. Matter exists every where, yet in each globe it has peculiar properties. How many of these properties do you compute in the matter of your planet? "If you speak of the properties," said the Saturnian, "without which, this globe could not remain such as it is, we reckon three hundred, as extent, impenetrability, mobility, gravitation, divisibility, and so on.' "This small number," replied our traveller, " appears sufficient to answer the purposes of the Almighty, in the creation of your little habitation. Every where his wisdom is admirable; every where differences are visible, but every where proportion is equally manifest. Your globe is small, and your inhabitants are so likewise, you have few sensations, your matter has few properties. All this is the work of Providence. Of what color does your sun appear on examination?" "Of a yellowish white," said the Saturnian," and when we divide one of his rays, we find that it contains seven colors.” "The color of our sun is reddish," returned the Sirian," and we reckon thirty-nine primitive colors. There is not one sun among all that I have approached, which resembles the rest, as, among you, every man's face differs from his neighbour's.' After several questions of this sort, he inquired how many existences, essentially different, were known to the Saturnians. He was told, that the number was limited to thirty, comprehending God, space, matter, beings possessed of extension and sensation, &c. The Sirian, who came from a globe where three hundred were known, and had discovered three thousand others, in the course of his travels, astonished the philosopher of Saturn, prodigiously, by the extent of his knowledge. At last, after imparting to each other a little of what they knew, and a great deal of which they knew nothing, after reasoning together during one revolution of the sun, they resolved to keep each other company in a short philosophical excursion.