4i8 • Description of the Aurora Borealis 



upon such occasions, are rarely more than imperfect pic- 

 tures, presenting but feeble likenesses, and either deficient 

 or excessive in the amount of beauty, or of the reverse, of 

 whatever kind, which they attempt to copy from their originals ; 

 and the inconvenience is seriously great, whenever the object 

 portrayed is wholly strange to the mind before which it is placed. 

 The imperfect power, both of words and written characters, 

 to convey precise, and sometimes even tolerable ideas, of 

 th6 objects, either sensible or abstract, which they are intended 

 to represent, and the superior intelligibility so often belonging 

 to diagrams or figures, or other resources of the art of drawing, 

 (the primitive, and, for so many purposes, the most instructive 

 mode of writing *,) would have led the present writer, had 

 time permitted, to endeavotir, feis often as possible, to elu- 

 cidate by such means the sieveral parts of the foregoing 

 observations ; but which means, at last, and in reference to the 

 actual phenomena of the Aurora, would necessarily fail to 

 convey the due, and yet no more than the due impression, to 

 such as are wholly without its ocular acquaintance. We are 

 little aware how much, upon ordinary occasions, our under- 

 standing of words heard or read is assisted by our previous 

 knowledge of the sensible objects, or of the acquired notions, 

 to ^hich they refer ; and the examples would be endless, of 

 the sensible objects preposterously misconceived, as well as 

 the propositions made false or ridiculous, through the frequent 

 inadequacy of words to communicate truths entirely neW 



* The individual, social, and political importance of making the art of 

 drawing a branch of general education, is a subject which the author can 

 never cease to urge upon the attention of his fellow-countrymen, and of all 

 the civilised world. It is more than ten years since he first endeavoured to 

 lead the public eye .to its regard. In England, and with a view to the 

 subsistence of a large and always increasing population, it is an Education 

 IN THE Arts which is the great want; and the art of drawing^ besides being 

 the assistant of all knowledge whatever, is peculiarly so of all other arts than 

 itself, or of all other works of the hand. A recent Sermon, by the Lord Bishop 

 of Bath and Wells, preached at Wells, for the benefit of the Diocesan National 

 Schools, bears ample testimony to the deficiency, and even the dangers, to 

 the poor not less than to others, in all the present popular education ; and, so 

 far, therefore, to the soundness of the author's principles, and to the fitness 

 of his remedy. His own design, however, is not only to remedy an evil arising 

 from the present practice, but also to produce an independent good; and, 

 not merely to aid the poor, nor merely to promote the political welfare of this 

 kingdom, but to increase the resources, physical and intellectual, of all classes, 

 and to promote the welfare of the whole world. 



