scholarship and classical erudition; and is not the power which the great classical scholars possess of interpreting the thoughts of the classical authors, and of reproducing their life, the great element of difference between the two? So scientific culture implies the ability to interpret Nature, to observe her phenomena, and to investigate her laws. The scholar, to whom Nature presents merely an orderly succession of facts and phenomena, knows nothing of true scientific culture. As there is a spirit in the great writers of classical antiquity which ennobles the study of the forms in which the thoughts of these authors were expressed, so also is there a spirit in Nature without which facts and phenomena, however well classified, create no intellectual elevation. The last century of the world's history has been marked, more than by anything else, by the increase of our knowledge of Nature, and it will be known in history as the age of great discoveries; but valuable as the facts and principles of science certainly are, greatly as they have promoted the well-being of mankind, and important, therefore, as the knowledge of these facts and principles must be to man, yet nevertheless I should never urge the claims of physical science as a basis of liberal education if they could be defended on no other grounds than these. It is here as elsewhere "the spirit which giveth life"; and the power to interpret Nature, and to commune with the intelligence that rules the universe, is the one acquisition which, above all others, gives worth and dignity to the form of culture we have endeavored to advocate in these essays.