AS RELATED TO INTELLECT. 21 



The lives of such men men never to be spoken 

 of but with admiration would be enough, one 

 might think, to insure the study of nature from neg- 

 lect. But this general assent which their commen- 

 dation might imply, is still withheld from a multi- 

 tude of objects on which naturalists spend their 

 lives. Newton, we may be told, was an astronomer, 

 and that walking among the stars is a very different 

 thing from groping in mud and water for the puny 

 objects of Natural History. It is true, Newton 

 seems to us, now, always surrounded with a halo of 

 stellar light ; but when on earth he excited the com- 

 passion of his neighbors by his, to them, senseless 

 employment of blowing soap-bubbles. How that 

 act has become dignified in the opinion of men by 

 the results which have flowed from it ! It was to 

 Newton then, more than it can be to them now. 

 He saw in the prismatic colors of the trembling bub- 

 ble, laws of matter wonderful in their possible 

 results with all the charm of novelty, if we can 

 apply this tame expression novelty to that happy 

 emotion which calls pleasure from every fiber of the 

 intellectual being when a new relation, or law of 



