thoughtful divine of the seventeenth century-wrote for himself: "Fuller's earth," and, taking a hint from him, we here close our little essay not unfitly, recommending his example to those who may have the painful duty devolve upon them of writing Epitaphs.

SCIENCE AND POETRY.

MUCH has been said recently about the relations of Science and Poetry; and chapters, nay volumes, have been written to demonstrate on the one hand that Poetry suffers from the progress of Science, and, on the other, that it does not do so. Principal Shairp, and Professor Dowden, and Doctor John Nichol, and Mr. James Sully, have each said his say, with no end of accompanying comment from the daily and weekly press. Reasoning that may confuse as well as clear-up has been used, and many illustrations more or less apt, and fine writing has also played its part. To our thinking the matter can be made pretty plain in two short paragraphs.

The man of science is concerned simply with the truth for the intellect that lies amid external objects. His business is to classify, and to bring varied objects under one law. So far as specific

emotion intrudes it is a hindrance, and nothing but a hindrance, to him in his work. He fails if he does. not either add individuals to the group he is concerned with, or does not do something to merge one group into another, in the application of a wider law. For the poet, again, the classifications of the man of science exist merely as so many possible symbols subservient to the musical expression of emotion and, thus viewed, the truths of Science in relation to the poet are only modified truths of natural appearance no more. The very fact that he can find in them fit vehicles or symbols for the expression of emotion assumes that already they are accepted truths in the circle that he would appeal to; and no modification of scientific knowledge can ever affect such truth in relation to that emotion for which he has found it fitting. The two are by him "matched as cymbals fine," and wherever there is a heart capable of experiencing that emotion in an adequate degree, it must perforce acknowledge the harmony that the poet has exhibited. In truth, the poet is not primarily in any respect an "interpreter of nature," but an interpreter of that which is most common and universal in human nature emotion, or thought saturated by emotion, and his relation to scientific truths.

of nature is indirect and dependent totally on that other; unless, indeed, he descends from the vantage-point of the poet and becomes descriptive merely, on which ground it is quite possible that the scientific writer may run abreast with him.

Science, therefore, instead of narrowing the field of Poetry, extends it, by presenting the greater and more varied field of symbol and image. The immense field of Shakespere's knowledge (which seemed to embrace so wide a sweep of all that was then known) did not lessen him as a poet, but supported him; and precisely the same would it be now, supposing the appearance of a genius with equal depth and dramatic universality; and even where modern Science corrects Shakespere on separate points it does not detract an iota from the value of his images as interpreters of poetic feeling. Within his circle they are as fresh and as valid as the day on which he wrote them, just as is the figure of the Psalmist about the sun coming forth like a bridegroom to run a race.

THE ANT AS A MORALIST.

OF the "scientific spirit" it may be said, in the language of the laureate, that it sits apart,—

Holding no form of creed,

But contemplating all;"

and greatly piques itself on its immunity from "disturbing elements." Though sometimes the common interpreters disagree among themselves, and flatly contradict each other, yet the "spirit" remains untouched, and yields, even in this, its unceasing testimony to unity, to evolution, and to "design in nature." Of course there are "degeneracies in transmission" here too, but that only adds force to the law of development, as the exception proves the rule. We can never forget how much struck