114 JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



But why continue the touching details ! You must know the 

 rest already. You who have often focused down upon the float- 

 ing specks in a trembling drop of water, have groped your 

 way in search of the nervous rotifer, and at last have 

 " caught" him in the wavering field of your objective, can per- 

 haps bring to your minds the sensations of this accomplished 

 " Scientist" when at last he turned his truly wonderful lens from 

 the floating dust of the atmosphere upon a materializing human 

 spirit and beheld it " gather its forces into a little sphere and 

 pass out into the sunlight of the everlasting morrow." 



This I take to be the very sublimity of humbuggery, but a 

 useful lesson may be learned from even such nonsense if, upon 

 seeing to what absurd lengths a pretence of knowledge and the 

 spirit of wonder-working can go, we are strengthened in our 

 determination to resist every temptation to exaggeration, — to 

 oppose every tendency to mere sensation. Old George Baker' 

 pointed out the only good and safe position, when he said, 

 " Some People have made false Pretences and ridiculous Boasts 

 of seeing, by their Glasses, the Atoms of Epicurus, the subtile 

 Matter of Des Cartes, the Effluvia of Bodies, the Emanations 

 from the Stars and other such like Impossibilities. But let no 

 ingenious and honest Observer give Credit to these romantic 

 Stories, or misspend his Time and bewilder his Brains in follow- 

 ing such idle Imaginations, when there lies before him an In- 

 finity of real Objects, that may be examined with Ease, Profit 

 and Delight." 



Now, I have not spoken of this subject because I suppose 

 that this society has any special need of the warning conveyed 

 in the quotations just made. Indeed, I may say with entire 

 sincerity that there is here as little necessity to preach a health- 

 ful conservatism as in any organization with which I have ever 

 been connected. I have, however, purposely brought into 

 juxtaposition the two extremes of error with reference to our 

 favorite instrument, because I cannot see anything better in 

 underrating the value of our mechanical appliances than in 

 overestimating the capabilities of our lenses ; and I have hoped 

 to point a moral which, perhaps, might be expressed in 

 Wordsworth's couplet : 



1. The Microscope Made Easy. London, 1743. 



