93 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
which govern the universe remain in force. Here 
is no extinction of the species, no power of detecting 
imperfections, no regrets at the insufficiency of the 
artificer, no lamentations that such things will pass © 
from the earth, and be forgotten. Nature is ever 
the same—ever young — ever the handmaid of One 
who cannot err. Her operations in the physical 
world were the same a thousand years ago as they 
are now; and if the works of her commentators are 
no more remembered, this oblivion originates not in 
any change in the things they treated of, but in the 
errors or insufficiency of the describers. 
(47.) The mutability proverbially belonging to 
human learning, has been indiscriminately applied 
both to arts and sciences ; whereas it is by no means 
equally shared between both, nor is it so universal 
as some would lead us to imagine. Art more correctly 
implies physical dexterity : science, on the contrary, 
is purely intellectual. The first cannot exist in any 
eminent degree, without the second ; but science re- 
quires not the auxiliary help of her sister. The one 
is transient, and, however great, dies with its posses- 
sor. The painter cannot bequeath to his disciple that 
skill which it has cost him his life to attain; the 
poet cannot infuse his “ unutterable thoughts” into 
another before his death; nor can the musician, 
while he transfers his instrument, delegate also the 
pathos or the dexterity which gave it utterance. The 
degree of perfection to which each of these artists 
has attained, dies with its possessor ; and those who 
succeed him have to begin, themselves, at the foot of 
the ladder, and not from that height which their pre- 
decessors had reached. Hence it is, and the infer- 
