glory of God. Let me lie down in the gráve and hide me from the prosecution of the infinite; for énd, I see, there is none."

7. And from all the listening stárs that shone around issued a choral voice: "The man speaks truly: énd there is nóne, that ever yet we heard of." End' is there nóne?" the angel solemnly demanded. Is there indeed no end?-and is this the sorrow that kills you ?" But no voice answered, that he might answer himself. Then the ángel threw up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens, saying, "End' is there none to the universe of God. Ló! álso, there is no beginning.”

13. EDUCATION.

1. Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight?

2. Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the

universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.

3. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated-without haste, but without remorse.

4. Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.

5. It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments.

6. Those who take honors in Nature's university, who learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful men in this world. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination.

7. Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature. is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as willful disobedience-incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.

HUXLEY.

14. MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS.

1. For all the higher arts of construction, some acquaintance with mathematics is indispensable. The village carpenter, who, lacking rational instruction, lays out his work by empirical rules learnt in his apprenticeship, equally with the builder of a Britannia Bridge, makes hourly reference to the laws of quantitative relations. The surveyor on whose survey the land is purchased, the architect in designing a mansion to be built on it, the builder in preparing his estimates, his foreman in laying out the foundations, the masons in cutting the stones, and the various artisans who put up the fittings, are all guided by geometrical truths. Railway-making is regulated from beginning to end by mathematics alike in the preparation of plans and sections, in staking out the line, in the mensuration of cuttings and embankments, in the designing, estimating,

and building of bridges, culverts, viaducts, tunnels, stations. And similarly with the harbors, docks, piers, and various engineering and architectural works that fringe the coasts and overspread the face of the country, as well as the mines that run underneath it.

2. Out of geometry, too, as applied to astronomy, the art of navigation has grown; and so, by this science, has been made possible that enormous foreign commerce which supports a large part of our population, and supplies us with many necessaries and most of our luxuries.

3. And nowadays even the farmer, for the correct laying out of his drains, has recourse to the level-that is, to geometrical principles. When from those divisions of mathematics which deal with space, and number, some small smattering of which is given in schools, we turn to that other division which deals with force-of which · even a smattering is scarcely ever given-we meet with another large class of activities which this science presides over.

4. On the application of rational mechanics depends the success of nearly all modern manufacture. The properties of the lever, the wheel and axle, etc., are involved in every machine; every machine is a solidified mechanical theorem; and to machinery in these times we owe nearly all production.

5. Trace the history of the breakfast-roll. The soil out of which it came was drained with machine-made tiles; the surface was turned over by a machine; the seed was put in by a machine; the wheat was reaped, thrashed, and winnowed by machines; by machinery it was ground and bolted; and had the flour been sent to Gosport, it might have been made into biscuits by a

machine.

6. Look round the room in which you sit. If modern, probably the bricks in its walls were machine-made;

by machinery the flooring was sawn and planed, the mantel-shelf sawn and polished, the paper-hangings made and printed; the veneer on the table, the turned legs of the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are all products of machinery.

7. And your clothing-plain, figured, or printed-is it not wholly woven, nay, perhaps even sewed, by machinery? And the volume you are reading-are not its leaves fabricated by one machine and covered with these words by another? Add to which, that, for the means of distribution over both land and sea, we are similarly indebted.

8. And then let it be remembered that according as the principles of mechanics are well or ill used to these ends, comes success or failure-individual and national. The engineer who misapplies his formula for the strength of materials, builds a bridge that breaks down. The manufacturer whose apparatus is badly devised, can not compete with another whose apparatus wastes less in friction and inertia.

9. The ship-builder adhering to the old model is outsailed by one who builds on the mechanically justified wave-line principle. And as the ability of a nation to hold its own against other nations depends on the skilled activity of its units, we see that on such knowledge may turn the national fate. Judge, then, the worth of mathematics.

10. Pass next to physics. Joined with mathematics, it has given us the steam-engine, which does the work of millions of laborers. That section of physics which deals with the laws of heat, has taught us how to economize fuel in our various industries; how to increase the produce of our smelting furnaces by substituting the hot for the cold blast; how to ventilate our mines; how to prevent explosions by using the safety-lamp; and, through the thermometer, how to regulate innumer