Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/199

Rh knowledge of hieroglyphics is still regarded as the most useful of acquirements, though its utility, if it ever had any, has long been inappreciable; just as transcendental geography is generally acknowledged to be the most consummate of all studies, though nobody can explain what good it can do, and certain persons, who are held by the transcendentalists to be shallow and frivolous, roundly assert that it does harm and no good; so the Academy of Science is held to be the greatest and best of institutions, the true foster-mother of genius, the liberal patron of rising merit—though all know it is just the reverse of all these.

"What a happy contrast," I mentally exclaimed, "does not my dear native country present to these shams! I suppose it is the lighter medium in which we live that enables us at once to discard everything after its inutility has been shown. What reality there is in our glorious system of constitutional government, with its King, Lords and Commons, whose duties and rights are so accurately defined that none can trench on those of the rest! What a splendid and perdurable creation is not the glorious union of Church and State—a church regulated by fixed rules of divine origin, deriving influence and beauty from its connection with the secular government; a state acquiring divine illumination from its connection with such a church! The best years of our youth are not employed in the acquirement of useless knowledge, and the portals of our science halls are always wide open for the reception and encouragement of struggling genius."

But though admission among the self-elected elect of science is difficult to the unknown and 5em