Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/215

 particulars of the moon, on which the whole of my fanciful story is founded, and read them at least twenty times over to your hearers; else the whole will escape you before I have even begun.

I take it uncommonly ill of your parents, that they have not instead of French, which like a bundle of supernumerary keys (as useless as so many honorary lords of the bed-chamber) is used only to keep up the tinkling of a soul-destroying prattle, and never to unlock a single French book,—for you like stories of knight-errantry far better.—I say, I take it ill of them that they have not rather caused you to learn astronomy, a science which bestows on man an elevated heart, an eye which reaches above the earth, wings which elevate him into the immensity of space, and the knowledge of a God who is not finite but eternal.

We may have our fancies about all that is under the moon, or above it either, provided we do not mistake those fancies for realities,—take a magic lantern for a cabinet of pictures,—or a cabinet of pictures for one of natural objects. The astronomer makes an inventory and valuation of the heavens, and comes within a few pounds of the truth; the poet furnishes and adorns them; the former constructs the map of meadows, through which the latter conducts pearly streams, swarming with golden fishes; the former throws mea-