Thus, then, as a means of intellectual culture, the study of Physics exercises and sharpens observation: it brings the most exhaustive logic into play: it compares, abstracts, and generalizes, and provides a mental scenery appropriate to these processes. The strictest precision of thought is everywhere enforced, and prudence, foresight, and sagacity are demanded. By its appeals to experiment, it continually checks itself, and thus walks on a foundation of facts. Hence the exercise it invokes does not end in a mere game of intellectual gymnastics, such as the ancients delighted in, but tends to the mastery of Nature. This gradual conquest of the external world, and the consciousness of augmented strength which accompanies it, render the study of Physics as delightful as it is important. With regard to the effect on the imagination, certain it is that the cool results of physical induction furnish conceptions which transcend the most daring flights of that faculty. Take for example the idea of an all-pervading aether which transmits a tingle, so to speak, to the finger ends of the universe every time a street lamp is lighted. The invisible billows of this aether can be measured with the same ease and certainty as that with which an engineer measures a base and two angles, and from these finds the distance across the Thames. Now it is to be confessed that there may be just as little poetry in the measurement of an aethereal undulation as in that of the river; for the intellect, during the acts of measurement and calculation, destroys those notions of size which appeal to the poetic sense. It is a mistake to suppose, with Dr. Young, that An undevout astronomer is mad; there being no necessary connexion between a devout state of mind and the observations and calculations of a practical astronomer. It is not until the man withdraws from his calculation, as a painter from his work, and thus realizes the great idea on which he has been engaged, that imagination and wonder are excited. There is, I admit, a possible danger here. If the arithmetical processes of science be too exclusively pursued, they may impair the imagination, and thus the study of Physics is open to the same objection as philological, theological, or political studies, when carried to excess. But even in this case, the injury done is to the investigator himself: it does not reach the mass of mankind. Indeed, the conceptions furnished by his cold unimaginative reckonings may furnish themes for the poet, and excite in the highest degree that sentiment of wonder which, notwithstanding all its foolish vagaries, table-turning included, I, for my part, should be sorry to see banished from the world.