henceforth into its proper place, from the ascidians and polypes of the
sea to the virtues and the vices--yea, to that Great Deity and Prime
Cause (which indeed was all things), Noesis Noeseon, "the Thought of
Thoughts," whom he discovered by irrefragable processes of logic, and in
whom the philosophers believe privately, leaving Serapis to the women
and the sailors? All they had to do was to follow in his steps; to take
each of them a branch, of science or literature, or as many branches as
one man conveniently can; and working them out on the approved methods,
end in a few years, as Alexander did, by weeping on the utmost shore of
creation that there are no more worlds left to conquer.

Alas! the Muses are shy and wild; and though they will haunt, like
skylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny
hills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet
they are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and
plentifully stored with comforts. Royal societies, associations of
savants, and the like, are good for many things, but not for the
breeding of art and genius: for they are things which cannot be bred.
Such institutions are excellent for physical science, when, as among us
now, physical science is going on the right method: but where, as in
Alexandria, it was going on an utterly wrong method, they stereotype the
errors of the age, and invest them with the prestige of authority, and
produce mere Sorbonnes, and schools of pedants. To literature, too,
they do some good, that is, in a literary age--an age of reflection
rather than of production, of antiquarian research, criticism,
imitation, when book-making has become an easy and respectable pursuit
for the many who cannot dig, and are ashamed to beg. And yet, by adding
that same prestige of authority, not to mention of good society and
Court favour, to the popular mania for literature, they help on the
growing evil, and increase the multitude of prophets who prophesy out of