Not so! a thousand times, no! Knowledge, like Virtue, is not good because it is useful, but useful because it is good. It is useful contingently, and good essentially. The joy of it is simple, and not only needs not to be supplemented by accessory advantages, but is well worth the forfeit of many advantages to obtain. The most miserable wretch we can imagine is the ignorant convict locked up in a solitary cell, with nothing to employ his thoughts but unattainable vice and frustrated crime, whereon his stupid judges leave him to ruminate as if such poison were moral medicine to heal the diseases of his soul. And, on the other hand, one of the happiest beings we can imagine is the man at the opposite end of the intellectual scale, who lives in the free acquirement of noble knowledge. What is any “increase of sorrow” incurred thereby, compared to the joy of it? To build Memory like a gallery hung round with all the loveliest scenes of nature and all the masterpieces of art; to make the divine chorus of the poets sing for us their choicest strains whenever we beckon them from their cells; to talk familiarly, as if they were our living friends, with the best and wisest men who have ever lived on earth, and link our arms in theirs in the never-withering groves of an eternal Academe,—this is to burst the bounds of space and bring the ages together, and lift ourselves out of the sordid dust to sit at the banquet of heroes and of gods. ESSAY VI. THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE.