892 Comparative Encouragement to the Study, ^c. 



its great merit, is one of the handsomest volumes the American 

 press has ever produced, — we were not quite prepared ; as it 

 was our intention, to close our observations, by a general view 

 of Mr. Audubon's labours. We perceive, it will not be consistent 

 with the arrangements made for the present number, to include all 

 we have to say in the limited monthly pages at our command, and 

 as we give, in the present number, a very interesting letter from 

 Mr. Audubon, we have determined to divide the subject; to give 

 our remarks on the comparative encouragement which the study 

 of natural history receives in Europe and America, in the pre- 

 sent number, and our review of Mr. Audubon's labours in the 

 next. 



It is an exceedingly difficult thing to persuade those who have 

 never expended a thought on the subject, that all the comfort 

 of civilized nations, depends upon the proper application of that 

 sort of knowledge, which is only to be attained by the study of 

 nature itself. It is equally difficult to persuade them, that the 

 most charming moments in life, are those when the mind clearly 

 perceives the simple fitness and beauty of nature's ways, so dis- 

 similar to the tortuous labyrinths of human conduct, as it is ex- 

 emplified in the actions of men. We live in the midst of nature, 

 it is nature who teaches us every thing ; who taught Newton the 

 laws of matter, the properties of light ; who taught Watt how 

 to manage heat for the benefit of mankind ; — nay, if we look to 

 the moral power possessed by nations and individuals, it is al- 

 ways the result of a profound and various attention given to 

 nature — and yet there are thousands who are told this, who do 

 not believe it, or will not take the trouble to think on the sub- 

 ject. In the history of the progress of the human mind, we see 

 the manifestation of this great truth. During the fourteenth 

 century, the annals of European literature are altogether barren 

 of natural history, and with a few solitary exceptions, none ap- 

 pear who had successfully cultivated the physical sciences, or 

 who excelled in mathematics or astronomy. Nature was at 

 that time a sealed book. Roger Bacon, in the preceding cen- 

 tury, had been stigmatized as a necromancer, because he de- 

 lighted in experimental philosophy, and because he was free 

 from that spirit, which had turned all Europe into a scholastic 

 logomachy, where speculative absurdities were discussed in a 

 barbarous jargon, and a corrupted theology defended, by the 



