PLEASURES CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE. 



nlted in the assurance of having the Creator for 

 her father, anticipated with great joy the vision 

 of him in the next world, and calculated with un 

 hesitating confidence on the sufficiency of his 

 boundless nature to engage her most intense in 

 terest, and to render her unspeakably happy for 

 ever.&quot; It is well known that the late lamented 

 Princess Charlotte, and her consort Prince Leo 

 pold, lived together in the greatest harmony and 

 affection ; and from what her biographers have 

 stated respecting her education and pursuits, it 

 appears that the mutual friendship of these illus 

 trious individuals was heightened and cemented 

 by the rational conversation in which they in 

 dulged, and the elevated studies to which they 

 were devoted. Her course of education em 

 braced the English, classical, French, German, 

 and Italian languages ; arithmetic, geography, 

 astronomy, the first six books of Euclid, algebra, 

 mechanics, and the principles of optics and per 

 spective, along with history, the policy of govern 

 ments, and particularly the principles of the 

 Christian religion. She was a skilful musician, 

 had a fine perception of the picturesque in na 

 ture, and was fond of drawing. She took great 

 pleasure in strolling on the beach, in marine ex 

 cursions, in walking in the country, in rural 

 scenery, ia conversing freely with the rustic in 

 habitants, and in investigating every object that 

 seemed worthy of her attention. She was an 

 enthusiastic admirer of the grand and beautiful 

 in nature, and the ocean was to her an object of 

 peculiar interest. After her union with the 

 prince, as their tastes were similar, they engaged 

 in the same studies. Gardening, drawing, mu 

 sic, and rational conversation, diversified their 

 leisure hours. They took great pleasure in the 

 culture of flowers in the classification of them 

 and in the formation, with scientific skill, of a 

 hortus siccux. But the library, which was fur 

 nished with the best books in our language, was 

 their favourite place of resort ; and their chief 

 daily pleasure, mutual instruction. They were 

 seldom apart either in their occupations or in 

 their amusements ; nor were they separated in 

 their religious duties. &quot; They took sweet coun 

 sel together, and walked to the house of God in 

 company ,&quot; and it is also stated,- on good autho 

 rity, that they had established the worship of 

 God in their family, which was regularly attended 

 by every branch of their household. No won 

 der, then, that they exhibited an auspicious and 

 a delightful example of private and domestic vir 

 tue, of conjugal attachment, and of unobtrusive 

 charity and benevolence. In the higher circles 

 of society, as well as in the lower, it would be of 

 immense importance to the interests of domestic 

 happiness, Chat the taste of the Princess Char 

 lotte was more closely imitated, and that the 

 fashionable frivolity and dissipation which so 

 generally prevail were exchanged for the pursuits 

 of knowledge, and the delights of rational and 



improving conversation. Then those family 

 feuds, contentions, and separations, and those 

 prosecutions for matrimonial infidelity which are 

 now so common, would be less frequently ob 

 truded on public view, and examples of virtue, 

 affection, and rational conduct, would be set be* 

 fore the subordinate ranks of the community, 

 which might be attended with the most beneficial 

 and permanent results, not only to the present, 

 but to future generations. 



In short, the possession of a large store -M 

 intellectual wealth would fortify the soul in the 

 prospect of every evil to which humanity is 

 subjected, and would afford consolation and 

 solace when fortune is diminished, and the 

 greater portion of external comforts is with 

 drawn. Under the frowns of adversity, those 

 worldly losses and calamities which drive un 

 thinking men to desperation and despair, would 

 be borne with a becoming magnanimity ; the 

 mind having within itself the chief resources of 

 its happiness, and becoming almost independent 

 of the world around it. For to the individual 

 whose happiness chiefly depends on intellectual 

 pleasures, retirement from general society, and 

 the bustle of the world, is often the state of his 

 highest enjoyment. 



Thus I have endeavoured briefly to illustrate 

 the enjoyments which a general diffusion of 

 knowledge would produce from a considera 

 tion of the limited conceptions of the untutored 

 mind contrasted with the ample and diversified 

 range of view presented to the enlightened un 

 derstanding from the delightful tendency of 

 scientific pursuits, in enabling us to trace, from 

 a single principle, an immense variety of effects, 

 and surprising and unexpected resemblances 

 where we least expected to find them, from 

 the grand and sublime objects it presents before 

 us from the variety of novel and interesting 

 scenes which the different departments of phy 

 sical science unfold from the exercise of tracing 

 the steps by which scientific discoveries have 

 been made and from the influence of such 

 studies on the affections and on social and do 

 mestic enjoyment. 



For want of the knowledge to which I have 

 alluded, it happens that few persons who have 

 been engaged in commercial or agricultural pur 

 suits feel much enjoyment, when, in the decline 

 of life, they reti-e from the active labours in 

 which they had been previously engaged. Re 

 tirement and respite from the cares of business 

 atford them little gratification, and they feel a 

 vacuity within which nothing around them or 

 within the range of their conceptions can fill up. 

 Being destitute of a taste for intellectual pur 

 suits, and devoiJ of that subsi.. rtum of thought 

 which is the grouna-vvork of mental activity and 

 of rational contemplation, they enjoy nothing of 

 that mental liberty and expansion of soul Which 



