FASCINATION OF STUDY. 35 



subject of the book, and hurry them away to the stage of the 

 Microscope, where the heart of some embryo was pulsating. 

 I could not look at anything intently, but the chance was 

 that some play of light would transform itself into the image 

 of a mollusc or a polype. The things I have seen in 

 Tapioca pudding . . . ! 



This intense absorption in one study was wrong, and I 

 tried to vary my employments ; but intellectual passions are 

 not obedient to abstract convictions ; they will exert their 

 jealous exclusiveness. " No array of terms can tell how much 

 I was at ease" on matters agitating the majority of my 

 countrymen. I utterly declined to look at the Times. 

 What cared I about Palmer and his trial ? or about the im- 

 pending quarrel with America? As much as the stock- 

 broker towards the close of 'Change, or the Opposition 

 member during the vote of confidence, would care for your 

 attempt to interest him in the " extraordinary little organ 

 discovered this morning in the tail of a tadpole — quite un- 

 suspected by anatomists, I assure you." 



I admit this was exclusive — say narrow, if you will. I 

 had really interest in little but what the Scalpel and Micro- 

 scoj)e would disclose. Everything was new to me, so that 

 every step was delightful. When I discovered what had long 

 been known to others, the jileasure of discovery was some- 

 thing essentially different from that of mere learning ; and 

 when I was fortunate enough to discover what had not been 

 known before, the delight in novelty was heightened by the 

 triumph (surely not a guilty one ?) of amour propre. Three 

 months of such study were worth years of lectures and read- 



