And passers-by asked if the youth were blind; Think you he fancied visions of the blest,— Not so;-for him arose no scenes of rest; O Poverty thy dark and spectral wings He felt thy keenness and thy bitter stings; 'Tis true he saw, in his entranced oken, While hastening on, his fancy pictured Home, But some dark spirit would not let him roam, Nor gaze The door was open, and his mother stood, Upon the chilly hearth there was no wood; And there his father sat, with haggard face, His goldless purse had kept him slow of pace; Then shook the boy! I thought to give his dream; Too poignant long to last. But rather like a reverie did it seem; No vision, but a kind of daylight dream, Then, lifting up his eyes, he turned his feet He met his sister,-such her ill-paid lot,- And then, poor things! with blue and quivering lips, To carry home, or have no fire, perhaps ; He raised the latch, and strided to a chair; They all were gathered there! I would his day-dream had been but thus brief- Nor did it care! J. F. WEISHAMPEL, Jr. CXLV. THE PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. To pass our time in the study of the sciences has, in all ages, been reckoned one of the most dignified and happy of human occupations, and the name of Philosopher or Lover of Wisdom, is given to those who lead such a life. But it is by no means necessary that a man should do nothing else than study known truths, and explore new, in order to earn this high title. Some of the greatest philosophers, in all ages, have been engaged in the pursuits of active life; and he who, in whatever station his lot may be cast, prefers the refined and elevating pleasures of knowledge to the low gratification of the senses, richly deserves the name of a philosopher. It is easy to show, that there is a positive gratification resulting from the study of the sciences. If it be a pleasure to gratify curiosity-to know what we were ignorant of-to have our feelings of wonder called forth, how pure a delight of this very kind does natural science hold out to its students! Recollect some of the extraordinary discoveries of mechanical philosophy. Is there anything in all the idle books of tales and horrors, with which youthful readers are so much delighted, more truly astonishing than the fact, that a few pounds of water may, without any machinery, by merely being placed in a particular way, produce an irresistible force? What can be more strange, than that an ounce weight should balance hundreds of pounds, by the intervention of a few bars of thin iron? Observe the extraordinary truths which optical science discloses! Can anything surprise us more, than to find that the color of white is a mixture of all others; that red, and blue, and green, and all the rest, merely by being blended into certain proportions, formed what we had fancied rather to be no color at all than all other colors together? Chemistry is not behind in its wonders. That the diamond should be made of the same material with coal; that water should be chiefly composed of an inflammable substance; that acids should be almost all formed of different kinds of air; and that one of those acids, whose strength can dissolve almost any of the metals, should be made of the self-same ingredients with the common air we breathe: these, surely, are things to excite the wonder of any reflecting mind-nay, of any one but little accustomed to reflect. And yet these are trifling when compared to the prodigies which astronomy opens to our view: the enormous masses of the heavenly bodies; their immense distances; their countless numbers, and their motions, whose swiftness mocks the uttermost efforts of the imagination. Akin to this pleasure of contemplating new and extraordinary truths, is the gratification of a more learnèd curiosity, by tracing resemblances and relations between things which, to common apprehension, seem widely different. It is surely a satisfaction, for instance, to know that the same thing which causes the sensation of heat causes also fluidity; that electricity, the light which is seen on the back of a cat when slightly rubbed on a frosty evening, is the very same matter with the lightning of the clouds: that plants breathe like ourselves, but differently by day and by night; that the air which burns in our lamps enables a balloon to mount. Nothing can at first sight appear less like, or less likely to be caused by the same thing, than the processes of burning and of breathing,the rust of metals and burning, the influence of a plant on the air it grows in by night, and of an animal on the same air at any time, nay, and of a body burning in that air; and yet all these operations, so unlike to common eyes, when examined by the light of science, are the same. Nothing can be less like than the working of a vast steam-engine and the crawling of a fly upon the window; yet wo find that these two operations are performed by the same means— the weight of the atmosphere; and that a sea-horse climbs the icehills by no other power. Can anything be more strange to contemplate? Is there in all the fâiry tales that were ever fancied, anything more calculated to arrest the attention, and to occupy and to gratify the mind, than this most unexpected resemblance between things so unlike to the eyes of ordinary beholders? Then, if we raise our views to the structure of the heavens, we are again gratified with tracing accurate but most unexpected resemblances. Is it not in the highest degree interesting to find, that the power which keeps the earth in its shape and in its path, wheeling round the sun, extends over all the other worlds that compose the universe, and gives to each its proper place and motion; that the same power keeps the moon in her path round the earth; that the same power causes the tides upon our earth, and the peculiar form of the earth itself; and that, after all, it is the same power which makes a stone fall to the ground? To learn these things, and to reflect upon them, fills the mind, and produces certain as well as pure gratification. The highest of all our gratifications in the study of science remains. We are raised by science to an understanding of the infinite wisdom and goodness which the Creator has displayed in all his works. Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we can feel no hesitation in concluding, that if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence. Independently, however, of this most consoling influence, the delight is inexpressible, of being able to follow, as it were with our eyes, the marvelous works of the great Architect of Nature, and to trace the unbounded power and exquisite skill which are exhibited in the most minute as well as in the mightiest parts of his system. LORD BROUGHAM. CXLVI.-A FABLE. ONE day a 'sage knocked at a chemist's door, 'Behold;" said he, as from his vest he drew it, To gain that treasure, now my search must stop, And now the learnèd chemist strove to guess, With more success the chemist next imparts Two curious phials next he brings to view, Essence of friendship from the former flows; Long from the next a trembling drop suspends, |