The ideas of Currie have almost vanished with his times; still even yet we occasionally hear some small-souled cynic, some snail-shell philosopher, who thinks himself of those sages with whom wisdom is to perish, sneer scornfully at popular knowledge. Popular knowledge, it is true, is not the wisdom of Solomon; it has not the depth of Bacon, or the sublimity of Newton; still, so far as it goes, it is a good, and though the pedant may deride, the philanthropist will rejoice. And what, after all, is the ground of Mr. Pedant Wiseacre’s pride? Perhaps some learned investigation on the contraction of the Greek kai, or the tail of the Greek gamma. Seriously, the critic and the scholar, when true to their noble office, deserve our admiration and our gratitude; but those who grub merely for withered roots, which never produce either fruits or flowers; and, then, with insect vanity, give themselves airs of scorn, are themselves saved from contempt, only because all creatures have their uses. It is well for society that there should always be men of great and solid learning; and evil would be the day when slight acquirement should be a substitute for laborious thought; but it is also desirable that these accumulated treasures should be widely and bountifully distributed. It is good to have deep fountains in our munitions of rocks, but it is not good that these fountains should waste themselves in darkness; it is not good that they should merely feed the gorgeous river, and the mighty cataract, they should also steal along in the sunny streamlet, and give beauty to the secluded nook. Let there be rich men, and let them rejoice in their riches; let there be great men, and let them exult in their greatness; let there be men of strong intellect, but let them in their strength be merciful; it is not, however, the great, the noble, or the strong, that are ever of destructive nature; it was the lean kine of Egypt that became the devourers—and yet were as skinny as before; so there are poor, lean, hungry animals of the critic species—unproductive as they are voracious, that are naturally the most unsparing and the most ferocious.