98 STUDY Off 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- 



