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Article ON THE LOVE OF NOVELTY. ← Page 2 of 3 →
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On The Love Of Novelty.
wiser than he who , to an extreme old age , spent a life in purchasiuo- ; furniture , which ; no sooner bought than packed up-into garrets , served neither for use nor ornament . Indeed the heads of these " children of a larger growth " may justly be deemed lumber-rooms , where the refuse of understanding and knowledge are indiscriminatel y jumbled together , and where it soon loses its value even to the- possessor , as it loses its novelty .
T 5 consider the ardour , vehemence , and toil , that men employ in their pursuits , one would suppose their enquiries to be of the greatest importance ; but if we turn to the objects of these pursuits , we see them as they are , serious trifles , an insect , a muscle-shell , a weed , or a flower .
It is not long since I met with an oration which , upon looking into ' , I imagined had been a panegyric upon Hercules ; or Theseus , or some such monater-killers of antiquity . The hero ' s traversing the globe from east to west , from north to south , through heats ancl colds , and storms , was emphatically described , and the clangers he was exposed to worked up in the highest colours ;¦ sometimes scorched on the
burning plains of Africa ; sometimes almost perished with the piercingcold of Lapland ; sometimes impending from the brow of a steep rock , which nodded horrid over the swelling ocean , the winds , and rainsy and waves bursting upon him ; sometimes in the deep caverns of the earth , dismal in gloom ! From all this pomp 1 expected to hear of the Nemean lion , the Hydra , the Eryraantheaii boar , and the bringing Cerberus from hell . But nothing like that occurred ' : upon reading a little further , I found the Hero was a Botanist , and his toils Sim * pling * . . '
' This Simpler , for aught I know , might be useful enough iu his particular way , and stand the foremost amongst his own vegetative tribes ; yet surely his Panegyrist could not have taken a more efl . ee--tual way to render both himself and his friend ridiculous . The toils and labour of a Botanist or Butterfly-catcher will ' hardly admit of oratory or panegyric : so necessary it is in our actions , that the end should be of importance to render the means considerable and where
; newness merely is the end of our pursuits , the labour' of the means only heightens the ridicule . What is more ridiculous than to see a Florist , at four every morning , hanging over a tuli p with as much anxiety as . an Afcliyinist waits the happy moment of projection ? Why all this assiduity to catch the instant of its blowing , merely to observe whether it opens
with a streak more or less than he had yet seen ? He who thus grows over a flower , leads a life of very little higher vegetation than the Sower itself . The contemplation of the relation each part of the universe bears to the whole ; how mere vegetation through various degrees rises almost to life , and seems of kindred to the lowest sensation ; the gradation , again , of sensitive beings , from the Insect to Matr himself , ancl regarding every thing as part of an infinite scale , is undoubtedly
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On The Love Of Novelty.
wiser than he who , to an extreme old age , spent a life in purchasiuo- ; furniture , which ; no sooner bought than packed up-into garrets , served neither for use nor ornament . Indeed the heads of these " children of a larger growth " may justly be deemed lumber-rooms , where the refuse of understanding and knowledge are indiscriminatel y jumbled together , and where it soon loses its value even to the- possessor , as it loses its novelty .
T 5 consider the ardour , vehemence , and toil , that men employ in their pursuits , one would suppose their enquiries to be of the greatest importance ; but if we turn to the objects of these pursuits , we see them as they are , serious trifles , an insect , a muscle-shell , a weed , or a flower .
It is not long since I met with an oration which , upon looking into ' , I imagined had been a panegyric upon Hercules ; or Theseus , or some such monater-killers of antiquity . The hero ' s traversing the globe from east to west , from north to south , through heats ancl colds , and storms , was emphatically described , and the clangers he was exposed to worked up in the highest colours ;¦ sometimes scorched on the
burning plains of Africa ; sometimes almost perished with the piercingcold of Lapland ; sometimes impending from the brow of a steep rock , which nodded horrid over the swelling ocean , the winds , and rainsy and waves bursting upon him ; sometimes in the deep caverns of the earth , dismal in gloom ! From all this pomp 1 expected to hear of the Nemean lion , the Hydra , the Eryraantheaii boar , and the bringing Cerberus from hell . But nothing like that occurred ' : upon reading a little further , I found the Hero was a Botanist , and his toils Sim * pling * . . '
' This Simpler , for aught I know , might be useful enough iu his particular way , and stand the foremost amongst his own vegetative tribes ; yet surely his Panegyrist could not have taken a more efl . ee--tual way to render both himself and his friend ridiculous . The toils and labour of a Botanist or Butterfly-catcher will ' hardly admit of oratory or panegyric : so necessary it is in our actions , that the end should be of importance to render the means considerable and where
; newness merely is the end of our pursuits , the labour' of the means only heightens the ridicule . What is more ridiculous than to see a Florist , at four every morning , hanging over a tuli p with as much anxiety as . an Afcliyinist waits the happy moment of projection ? Why all this assiduity to catch the instant of its blowing , merely to observe whether it opens
with a streak more or less than he had yet seen ? He who thus grows over a flower , leads a life of very little higher vegetation than the Sower itself . The contemplation of the relation each part of the universe bears to the whole ; how mere vegetation through various degrees rises almost to life , and seems of kindred to the lowest sensation ; the gradation , again , of sensitive beings , from the Insect to Matr himself , ancl regarding every thing as part of an infinite scale , is undoubtedly