Yet the mere mob of triflers, I know more than they; The doctor, the master, the clerk, and the priest,

No scruple plagues me, no doubt stands in my way,
Neither devil nor hell startles me in the least.
'Tis so all enjoyment to me is denied,

I fancy the truth that I never can reach,
I fancy that nothing I ever can teach

Can better mankind, or their conduct can guide.
Then in the world, nor land, nor gold,

Nor rank, nor station, I my own can call.
A life like this no dog would longer hold,
And therefore to the supernatural
Have I myself devoted, that the force
Of elemental spirits and their discourse

May bring forth many hidden things to light;
May spare me the abhorred necessity,

That bitter sweat from my hot forehead wrings,
Of talking what I do not understand;

That I may measure the eternal band

That holds the earth together, and

may see What power quickens the still seeds of things

creasing abundance; and that, as the study of one prepares him to understand and appreciate another, refinement follows on refinement, wonder on wonder, till the faculties become bewildered in admiration, and his intellect falls back upon itself in utter hopelessness of arriving at the end."- Herschel.

Into production's boundless energy,

And retail words no more in petty traffickry.

Thou radiant moon, oh! might thy last
Gleam be upon my sorrow cast,

For whom so oft my vigil deep,
Into the night I've loved to keep.
Then over books and papers, thou

Friend of my sorrows, gladdest my sight:

Oh would that on the mountain brow

I wandered in thy much loved light,

With spirits might float through the caverns beneath ; In thy silvery glimmer the meadows might rove,* And far from Philosophy's pestilent breath,

Might bathe me to health in the dew of thy love.

Wretch still within this dungeon pent,

This cursed hole do I remain,

Where the sweet light from heaven sent
Streams sadly through each painted pane.
This hole, with heaps of books begirt,
Worm-gnawed, begrimed with dust and dirt;
Which from the ceiling to the floor
A smoke dried paper covers o'er

Weben, to move. In ihm leben, weben und sind wir. In him we live and move, and have our being. Acts xvii, 28.

The wall, which cases, glasses line,
And instruments all over crammed,
With furniture as old as Adam jammed.

This is thy world-and what a world is thine.
And dost thou ask, by what restrained
Thy heart is heavy in thy breast?
Why, by some suffering unexplained
Are all thy springs of life repressed?
Instead of nature life abounding,
In which the Lord created men,
Are bones and skeletons surrounding
Thee in thy smoky mouldy den.

Fly! up into the distant land:

Does not this book, with secrets stored,

By Nostradamus** very hand,

Sufficient company afford?

Then shalt thou know how planets roll;
And then with nature for a guide,
Forth comes the power of thy soul,
For spirits' converse qualified.
The Holy Sign-to thee in vain
Mere meditation would explain.

* Nostradamus, Michel de Notre Dame, an astrologer and physician of the 16th century, was born at St. Remi, a small town of the Diocese of Avignon, in 1503.

Spirits ye, that hover near me,

Give me answer if ye hear me.

He opens the book and sees the sign of the
Macrocosmos *

Ha, what a gushing of delight

Bursts on my senses at the sight;
Each glowing nerve and vein is rife
With young and holy joy in life.

Traced a god this sign that stilled
Within my breast the raging strife?

My woeworn heart with gladness filled,
And that through a mysterious instinct threw,
The powers of nature open to my view.
Am I a God? what light breaks in on me,
In these pure features I can clearly see
Nature at work, before my soul displayed,
Now understand I what the wise man said.
Closed is the world of spirits never,

'Tis thy mind fails-thy heart is dead. Up Student, bathe unwearied ever

Thine earthly breast in morning red.

"The whole world or visible system, in opposition to the microcosm or world of man."-JOHNSON.

He gazes on the Sign.

How to the whole, each itself interweaves,*
Each on the other acting works and lives;

"The researches of chemists have shewn that what the vulgar call corruption, destruction, &c., is nothing but a change of arrangement, of the same ingredient elements, the disposition of the same materials into other forms, without the loss or actual destruction of a single atom, and thus any doubts of the permanence of natural laws are discountenanced, and the whole weight of appearances thrown into the opposite scale. One of the most obvious cases of apparent destruction, is, when any thing is ground to dust, and scattered to the winds. But it is one thing to grind a fabric to powder, and another to annihilate its materials; scattered as they may be, they must fall somewhere, and continue, if only as ingredients to the soil, to perform their humble, but useful part, in the economy of nature. The destruction produced by fire is more striking; in many cases, as in the burning of a piece of charcoal, or a taper, there is no smoke, nothing visibly dissipated or carried away; the burning body wastes and disappears, whilst nothing seems to be produced but warmth and light, which we are not in the habit of considering as substances. When all has disappeared, excepting, perhaps, some trifling ashes, we naturally enough suppose that it is gone, lost, destroyed. But when the question is examined more exactly, we detect in the invisible stream of heated air, which ascends from the glowing coal, or flaming wax, the whole ponderable matter only united in a new combination with the air, and dissolved in it. Yet, so far from being thereby destroyed, it is only become again what it was before it