392 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. VI. 



but this discipline is salutary, and, for the sake of being able 

 to do something more for science, and I hope for humanity, 

 I submit to it, believing that the Great Source of intellec- 

 tual being so wills it for good. 



One of the last thoughts in his note-book, written at 

 Ravenna, shows his mind : 



' Our real knoivledge is but to be sure that we know 

 nothing, and I can but doubt if this be a curse or 

 blessing. Those who hop'e, trust, and believe are 

 surely happier far than those who doubt ; and the sub- 

 missive child, who of his father's goodness is secure, 

 is far more blessed than the froward one, who sets 

 himself against his powerful will, which, after all his 

 struggles and vain efforts, he must at last obey, rebelling 

 against the love which would have made him happy. 

 Is not this the history of man ? of that bright and 

 beauteous garden where in innocence and ignorance 

 he lived and loved till the false taste of knowledge 

 made him wretched and he knew that he must die. 

 And is not .this the glory and the consummation of 

 the Christian faith, which gives him back his innocence, 

 his hopes, his confidence in God, which through his 

 life still gilds the future with a golden blessing of an 

 expected immortality ? Man fell in Adam ; knowledge 

 was his bane ; man rose in Christ, recovering his 

 ignorance or substituting hope for what was doubt.' 



Four or five days before he left Ravenna he wrote, 

 April 6, ' Did not shoot, but returned thanks to the 

 Great Cause of all being for all His mercies to me, an 

 undeserving and often ungrateful creature, but now 

 most grateful. May I become better and more grate- 

 ful and more humble-minded every day ! ' 



