false; you will sometimes fall into utter despair and think that nothing can be ascertained. If you go on desiring light-though it may come slowly, though it may come through much darkness-I am satisfied it will come. You will be ready for the entrance of fresh light-you prize dearly that which has been granted you; the sense of your ignorance will be always deepening, and with it the security of your knowledge.

I say this confidently about these sciences, though I am very unfit to speak of them; for the experience of those who have profited most in them goes with me; they will support me and not contradict me. I say it with equal confidence about studies into which I have entered in a very slight degree-those which we sometimes suppose are made entirely loose and irregular by human passions, human taste, and human will. The mathematician and the natural philosopher are often contrasted with the poet and the man of letters. The contrast, I am sure, need not exist, and ought not to exist. The English University which is most devoted to Mathematics has been the most fertile in poets; some of the most eminent of our literary men in this day are intensely attached to physical science. Where the opposition between them exists, it arises, I think, from the cause which I have pointed out in this lecture. Some men try to acquire a great many notions about poetical and prose compositions. They try to practise, perhaps, a little in that way themselves. They magnify their own craft at the expense of every other; they

scorn what they call the dryness of mathematics-the cold treatment of Nature and its beauties by the man of Science. It is not so with those who come to the poet, or to the novel writer, for instruction. They find that either of them is good so far as he enables them to see more into the meaning and order of Nature, or of their own lives; to understand better what relations exist between them and their fellow-creatures. They do not care for either, if his diction is ever so fine, if he exhibits ever so many of what the wise in such matters tell them are the proper characteristics of poetical or prose fiction, provided he fails to impart this light. In plain words, they do not care for fiction. They like Mr. Tennyson, they like Mr. Kingsley, just as they like Mr. Faraday or Mr. Huxley, for telling them truth, not for telling them lies. And so the study of what we call works of fiction, becomes naturally connected with the study of History. The books of an age explain the events of an age; the events of an age help us to understand what was special in the writers of its books. Those who bid us acquire a knowledge of English history are greatly divided about the nature of that knowledge, and the way we are to seek for it. Some of them point out the importance of mastering facts, and ascertaining when and where they occurred; some say that the facts are in themselves worthless, but that they may help us in arriving at some general notions or propositions, which may be useful in judging our fellow-creatures, and in guiding our own conduct. I cannot tell you how much disputing there has been about these

two methods, and how much time that might be spent in learning, we may waste in considering which of them is the right one. Those who support the first course call the champions of the other very hard names. "They put" so their revilers affirm-"certain fine speculations of their own in place of what has actually been done, and call it philosophy." These answer by calling the reporters of fact, dry, jejune creatures, who cannot discriminate between that which is precious, and that which is insignificant, but count anything which comes to their net good if they only label it a fact. I do not like any of these railings, or wish to take part in them; though I cannot deny that both have much plausibility. And so I am driven back in this case as in all the rest, upon my old doctrine. I have no hope of acquiring a knowledge of even a small portion of the smallest history. But I feel that I want the light which history gives me, that I cannot do without it. I find that I am connected, in my own individual life, with a past and a future as well as a present. I cannot make out either without the other. I find that I am connected with a nation which has had a past as well as a present, and which must have a future. I am confident that our life is meant to be a whole; that its days, as the poet says, should be linked each to each in natural piety. They fall to pieces very easily; it is hard, often it seems impossible, to recover the links between them. But there comes an illumination to us ever and anon over our past years, and over the persons gone out of our sight who worked in them. Places we have

visited with them, help to bring them back; to recollect the year and the month and the day is of great use, for so the events and the persons are seen, not confusedly, but clearly, standing as they actually stood. Thus it is with the ages gone by. Every one of them is telling upon us; every man who has thought and worked in them has contributed to the good or evil which is about us. The ages are not dead; they cannot be. If we listen, they will speak

to us.

Times and places will be great helps in understanding their voice, as in understanding the voices that come to us from our own boyhood and childhood. The death of a king may make a crisis in the progress of a nation, as the death of a personal friend makes a crisis in our own lives. An old town-hall, or the relics that tell of a battle which has once been fought, may be like some house or room that reminds us of those from whose lips we have learnt, or of some struggle that we have had to pass through. The times and places will not in themselves be the precious things; but that which was done in them, those who dwelt in them. We shall care more for the things than for any propositions which we make about them; for our propositions may be very good or wise, but they are limited by the minds that form them. A truth is full and living, and contains a thousand different lessons, one of which may commend itself to one man, one to another, according to his deeds. Each of us may help the other to find the lessons which he wants; but we must not

put ourselves between him and the truth whence all the lessons proceed.

I have one more subject to speak of. In that German play to which I have referred already, the hero laments that he has studied Jurisprudence, Medicine, and all other arts, and alas! also THEOLOGY, and that he is just as wise as he was before. I doubt not that a man who seeks to acquire Jurisprudence, Medicine, or any art, will some day be obliged to utter that complaint. I am sure that the "alas!" of Dr. Faustus will proceed from the soul of the theological student who has laboured with that aim. His pursuit must seem utterly bewildering, an utter self-contradiction. must feel that he has been making continual efforts to attain the unattainable, to grasp the infinite. He must regard his study, either as standing aloof from all others, condemning them all, or as a chain which is to bind them all.

He

Just because I believe what I have been saying to you this evening respecting other studies, I hold that this one condemns none of them, but justifies them all-is meant not to bind any, but to break its chains. When Columbus first caught sight of the land which was the reward of years of toil and disappointment, we called him the discoverer of America. He would have said that America discovered itself to him, or that God discovered it to him. A veil was withdrawn, a world that Europe was intended to know became known; it was his high honour to say, "There it is; every one of those poor sailors shares the discovery with me. Το