380 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



ation on the particular classes educated at college 

 will show the weakness of such reasoning: they 

 consist almost exclusively of the sons of the nobility, 

 of the clergy, and of the wealthy gentry : the first 

 and the last are almost exempt from the necessity 

 of following any profession, while those who are in- 

 tended for the church are equally freed from the 

 obligation of acquiring a theoretic knowledge of 

 their calling (as the physician and the lawyer are 

 obliged to do), after they have quitted the walls of 

 the university. Academic studies are rather 

 intellectual than practical ; that is to say, they 

 have no fellowship with the commercial and manu- 

 facturing — the military, the naval, or the empirical 

 arts : how important is it, then, to the future happi- 

 ness of young men, educated and nurtured with such 

 feelings, to infuse into their minds a love of physical 

 science, — tc supply them with intellectual and pure 

 resources in after life, suited at once to those habits 

 of abstract reflection they have acquired at college, 

 and to the leisure which attends upon rank and 

 wealth ? Some, indeed, will be called into active life, 

 and will be destined to fill important stations in the 

 state ; but these, in comparison to the majority, are 

 few ; and if our statesmen and legislators had been 

 early impressed with the beauties or imbued with a 

 taste only for philosophy, and had been better in- 

 structed in its objects, the science of Britain would 

 not, at this time, be so utterly neglected. 



(261.) But by far the larger portion of those 

 young collegians, not destined for the church, on 

 finishing their education, enter upon a life of indo- 

 lence and pleasure, without having imbibed a taste 



