f feeling, which his
studied compression, his deep sagacity, and his analytical
genius, so frequently exhibit.

[254] Sprat makes an ingenious observation on the notion of those who
declared that "_the most learned ages are still the most
atheistical, and the ignorant the most devout_." He says this
had become almost proverbial, but he shows that piety is
little beholden to those who make this distinction. "The
Jewish law forbids us to offer up to God a sacrifice that has
a blemish; but these men bestow the most excellent of men on
the devil, and only assign to religion those men and those
times which have the greatest blemish of human nature, even a
defect in their knowledge and understanding."--_History of the
Royal Society_, p. 356.

[255] Science, at its birth, is as much the child of imagination as
curiosity; and, in rapture at the new instrument it has
discovered, it impatiently magnifies its power. To the
infant, all improvements are wonders; it chronicles even its
dreams, and has often described what it never has seen,
delightfully deceived; the cold insults of the cynics, the
wits, the dull, and the idle, maliciously mortify the
infant in its sports, till it returns to slow labour and
patient observation. It is rather curious, however, that
when science obtains a certain state of maturity, it is
liable to be attacked by the same fits of the marvellous
which affected its infancy;--and the following extract from
one of the enthusiastic _Virtuosi_ in the infancy of science,
rivals the visions of "the perfectibility of man" of which we
hear so much at this late period. Some, perhaps, may consider
these strong tendencies of the imagination, breaking out at
these different periods in the history of science, to
indicate results, of which the mind feels a consciousness,
which the philosopher should neither indulge nor check.

"Should these heroes go on (the Royal Society) as they
have happily begun, they will fill the world with wonders;
and posterity will find many things that are now but
_rumours_, verified into practical _realities_. It may be,
some ages hence, a _voyage_ to the southern unknown tracts,
yea, possibly the _Moo