Till now there has been no man to claim this new and magnificent collection in natural science: it is a legacy that came to us without a donor;--this new and vast collection in natural history, which is put down here, all along, as _that which is wanting_--as that which is wanting to the science of man, to the science of his advancement to his place in nature, and to the perfection of his form,--as that which is wanting to the science of the larger wholes, and the art of their conservation. There was no _man_ to claim it, for the _boast_, the very boast made on behalf of the thing for whom it was claimed--was-- he _did not know it was worth preserving_!--he _did not know_ that this mass of new and profoundly scientific observation--this so new and subtle observation, so artistically digested, with all the precepts concluded on it, strewn, crowded everywhere with those aphorisms, those axioms of practice, that are made out of the pith and heart of sciences--he did not know it was of any value! That is his history. That is the sum of it, and surely it is enough. Who, that is himself at all above the condition of an oyster, will undertake to say, deliberately and upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we have that one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply disgraceful, to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography. There is enough of it and to spare. With that fact in our possession, we ought to have been able to dispense long ago with some, at least, of those details that we have of it. The only fault to be found with the biography of this individual as it stands at present is, that there is too much of it, and the public mind is labouring under a plethora of information. If that fact be not enough, it is our own fault and not the author's. He was perfectly willing to lie by, till it was. He would not take the trouble to come out for a time that had not studied his philosophy enough to find it, and to put the books of it together.