62 



present age, and you are disposed to ask by what right I make these 

 strictures, let me make answer that I claim none, and that I shall be 

 the last to deny the impeachment if I am accused of being one who 

 whilst he — 



Shows you the steep and thorny way to heaven, 

 Himself the j)rinirose jjath of dalliance treads, 

 And recks not his own rede. 



MR. ALD. MAYALL, M.R.I., F.C.S., ON "ASTRONOMY, 

 ANCIENT AND MODERN, CONTRASTED." 



Man is more content with no intellectual light, than with a little, 

 and whenever he has been taught to acquire some knowledge to please 

 others, he generally plods onwards to acquire more to please himself. 

 " So far shalt thou go and no f;irther " is as inapplicable to wisdom as 

 to the wave. The fruit of the tree of knowledge may stand in the 

 garden, undesired ; only, so long as it is untouched, — but the moment 

 it is tasted prohibition is in vain. This has been truthfully designated 

 " the age of enquiry ; " everything is, or is not. There can, logically 

 speaking, be no middle path, so far as the things themselves are 

 concerned ; but only so far as our limited powers of investigation 

 permit. About the things we know, there can be no doubt ; and at 

 the point where this latter operation begins, our knowledge ends. 

 Truth is the real object of some, the avowed object of all ; but truth 

 can neither be divided against herself, nor rendered destructive of 

 herself. As she courts investigation and solicits encpiry, it follows 

 that her votaries grow with her growth, strengthen with her strength. 

 What a pity she is little subservient to the interests of party ! Oh ! 

 how I should love her if she would stick to my church, and believe as 

 I do ! but, in her pure, unadulterated state, she is as unfit for currency 

 as pure gold for circulation. Sir Walter Raleigh has observed that he 

 who follows truth too closely must take care that she does not knock 

 out his teeth. But the votaries of truth have little to fear from herself, 

 though much from her pretended friends. Sir John Herschel, speaking 

 of mental purity, observes, " It is the ' euphrasy and rue ' with which 

 we must ' purge our sight ' before we can receive and contemplate, as 



