24 KNOWLEDGE IS IMMORTAL. 



All this, and much more, may be done by any one 

 who has studied the birds, even of one little nook 

 of earth, so in their connexions that they may be 

 (which they never fail to be when rightly studied,) 

 an artificial memory ; and in proportion as this spe- 

 cies of knowledge extends to the tribes of other lands, 

 the enjoyment the real and substantial value for, 



THERK IS NO VALVE BUT IN ENJOYMENT, extends and 



multiplies in a progression far more rapid than even 

 the knowledge ; so that he who has studied the whole 

 in all their connexions, may, literally and -without 

 any figure, be said to have won the whole world for 

 his heritage. And it is a heritage secured under the 

 charter of the Almighty, of which the possession 

 cannot be taken away by all the power and all the arts 

 of man ; neither can the possessor himself squander 

 it, as external possessions are often squandered. In 

 life, we are constantly hearing of cases in which those, 

 who but a few years before had wealth suffi cient for 

 enriching a parish, sink down to the level of the 

 mendicant in the streets. 



But no man who has once acquired knowledge can 

 despoil himself of that. The mental perception is as 

 immortal as the mind itself; and the attempt to 

 extinguish the one, were as vain as that to annihilate 

 the other. ONCE KNOWN, ALWAYS KNOWN, is an 

 aphorism to which there is no exception. When a 

 man says that he has lost, or forgotten, the knowledge 

 of any thing, be it what it may, he merely tells us 

 in other words that he never had it. In this way we 

 often hear people complaining that they have for- 

 gotten what they learned at school; but that is a 

 mistake, they have forgotten only those subjects 

 which they were occupied about, but did not learn ; 

 and in all these cases the cause of the failure is the 

 want of the relations or connexions, by means of 



