augment our stock of information in relation to the 

 laws of physics. It may be true, that the undue pre- 

 dominance of the specializing and disintegrating spirit 

 may have, temporarily, tended to repress those general 

 views so favorable to the excitement of the imagination. 

 But such a state must be transitory. It is only a short- 

 sighted and narrow-minded view which looks upon the 

 exercise of those powers by which it is permitted man 

 to comprehend Nature, to lift the veil that shrouds her 

 phenomena, and submit the results of observation to 

 the test of reason and of intellect — as necessarily un- 

 favorable to the development of the aesthetic feelings. 

 The mere accumulation of unconnected details, devoid 

 of generalization of ideas, may have tended to create 

 and foster this deep-rooted prejudice against the Physical 

 Sciences. Those who still continue to cherish such 

 erroneous views in the present age, and amid the ad- 

 vancement of all branches of knowledge, fail in duly 

 appreciating the value of every enlargement of the sphere 

 of mind, and the importance of the detail of isolated 

 facts in conducting us to general results, alike ennobling 

 to the intellect and to the soul of man. It is true that 

 the imagination is not the faculty of mind we evoke to 

 preside over the laborious and elaborate observations by 

 which we strive to attain a knowledge of the greatness 

 and excellence of the universe. The astronomer who, 

 day after day, and year after year, measures patiently 

 the relative distances between two stars composing a 

 binary system, does not feel his imagination more excited 

 than the botanist who examines the fructification of a 

 moss. Indeed, the total absence of all excitement of 

 the imaginative faculties, is the very guarantee of the 



