82 THE APPRENTICE. 



those silly would-be misanthropes who, while they affect 

 a hatred of their kind, take care to inform them of that 

 hatred lest they should fail of attracting their notice/ 



' I was advised by this man/ proceeds Miller, ' to 

 study geometry and architecture. With the latter I 

 had previously been acquainted; of the former I was 

 entirely ignorant. I had not even a single correct idea 

 of it. The study of a few detached hours, though 

 passed amid the distraction of a barrack, made me 

 master of the language peculiar to the science; and I 

 was then surprised to find how wide a province it opens 

 to the mental powers, and to discover that what is termed 

 mathematical skill means only an ability of reasoning on 

 the forms and properties of lines and figures, acquired 

 by good sense being patiently directed to their con- 

 sideration. I perceived, however, that from prosecuting 

 this study, 1 could derive only amusement ; and that 

 too not of a kind the most congenial to my particular 

 cast of mind. I had no ambition to rise by any of the 

 professions in which it is necessary ; and I chose rather 

 to exercise the faculties proper to be employed in it, in 

 the wide field of nature and of human affairs, in tracing 

 causes to their effects and effects to their causes ; in 

 classing together things similar, and in marking the 

 differences of things unlike. The study of architecture I 

 found more amusing ; partly, I believe, because it tasked 

 me less ; partly because it gratified my taste, and 

 exercised my powers of invention. In geometry I saw 

 that I could only follow the footsteps of others ; and 

 that I would be necessitated to pursue the beaten track 

 for whole years before I could reach that latest discovered 

 extremity of it, beyond which there lies undiscovered 

 untrodden regions in which it would be a delight to 

 expatiate. Architecture, on the contrary, appeared to me 



