NEW AND OLD PLACES. 371 



beings ; and we have reason to expect that there 

 should, because, in as far as man is material and 

 mortal, he is just as dependent upon circumstances 

 as any other material production. Hence we find 

 that when a town or a district is busy and bust- 

 ling, and strangers resort to it, both the popula- 

 tion and the energy increase far faster than the 

 numerical addition of strangers. But, on the other 

 hand, when it becomes dull, and strangers cease 

 to resort to it, it dies away, both in population 

 and in mental energy, even though none- of the 

 people leave it. Thus, it is not leisure that mankind 

 need, it is stimulus and activity ; and study, even 

 the most profound and abstruse study, thrives bet- 

 ter in the few snatches of time which the busy 

 man can spare for it, than in all the listless and 

 loitering days of him who has nothing to do. 



That is as true of the study of the productions 

 and phenomena of nature, as it is of those sciences 

 which are more immediately the tools of art. 

 [But if these are the tools, nature furnishes the 

 materials, which are of primary importance.] And 

 there are many advantages. Nature is always at 

 hand ; our own senses are all the apparatus that 

 we need ; and we have only to look at the con- 

 nexion in which any thing or appearance that we 

 observe is placed, both in juxta-position in space, 

 and in succession in time, in order to get a lesson 

 from every thing that comes in our way. Could 

 the whole people, according to their opportunities, 

 bring themselves to do that upon all occasions, the 

 extent, the correctness, the usefulness of the know- 

 ledge that must be obtained would be immense. 

 As they would have no hypothesis of a school or 

 dogma of a sect to support, each would commu- 



