that parent to unravel the mysterious secrets of nature, and enable her to behold the wonderful arcana of its Holy of Holies. This is the purpose for which we should read, and this the glorious end for which we should collect facts; instead of merely contenting ourselves with being employed, as Playfair too truly says we have been since the time of Bacon, “in recording facts in ten thousand several volumes,” with no higher aspiration than that some laborious stable-cleaner may sweep them up, hay and straw, corn and rubbish, into one vast heap. Since this was written, it pleases us to see that the able author of “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” has in his “Explanations” spoken to the same effect and added another instance of the low estimate formed by modern scientific minds of the uses of facts. “From year to year and from age to age we see scientific men at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. Experiments, in however narrow a walk, facts, of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies. All beyond is regarded with suspicion find distrust. The consequence is, that _philosophy_, as it exists among us, _does nothing to raise its votaries above the common ideas of their time_. Let me call upon the reader to bring to his remembrance the impressions which have been usually made upon him by the transactions of learned societies, and the pursuits of individual men of science. Did he not always feel that while there was laudable industry and zeal there was also an intellectual timidity, rendering all the results philosophically barren? “Perhaps a more lively illustration of their deficiency in the _life and soul of nature-seeking_ could not be presented than in the view which Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science, in a Treatise reputed as one of the most philosophical ever produced in our country. These uses, according to the learned knight, are strictly material—it might be said sordid—namely, ‘to show us how to avoid attempting impossibilities, to secure us from important mistakes, in attempting what is in itself possible by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in view; to enable us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest and most economical and most effectual manner; to induce us to attempt and enable us to accomplish, objects which, but for such knowledge, we should never have thought of undertaking.’