Let me be didactic for a moment!  I assume this solemn—­oh, call it not pedantic!—­attitude because my eye catches the small but select corner which constitutes my library of Science.  I wanted to say that if I were advising a young man who was beginning life, I should counsel him to devote one evening a week to scientific reading.  Had he the perseverance to adhere to his resolution, and if he began it at twenty, he would certainly find himself with an unusually well-furnished mind at thirty, which would stand him in right good stead in whatever line of life he might walk.  When I advise him to read science, I do not mean that he should choke himself with the dust of the pedants, and lose himself in the subdivisions of the Lepidoptera, or the classifications of the dicotyledonous plants.  These dreary details are the prickly bushes in that enchanted garden, and you are foolish indeed if you begin your walks by butting your head into one.  Keep very clear of them until you have explored the open beds and wandered down every easy path.  For this reason avoid the text-books, which repel, and cultivate that popular science which attracts.  You cannot hope to be a specialist upon all these varied subjects.  Better far to have a broad idea of general results, and to understand their relations to each other.  A very little reading will give a man such a knowledge of geology, for example, as will make every quarry and railway cutting an object of interest.  A very little zoology will enable you to satisfy your curiosity as to what is the proper name and style of this buff-ermine moth which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp.  A very little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest when you chance upon one which is beyond your ken.  A very little archaeology will tell you all about yonder British tumulus, or help you to fill in the outline of the broken Roman camp upon the downs.  A very little astronomy will cause you to look more intently at the heavens, to pick out your brothers the planets, who move in your own circles, from the stranger stars, and to appreciate the order, beauty, and majesty of that material universe which is most surely the outward sign of the spiritual force behind it.  How a man of science can be a materialist is as amazing to me as how a sectarian can limit the possibilities of the Creator.  Show me a picture without an artist, show me a bust without a sculptor, show me music without a musician, and then you may begin to talk to me of a universe without a Universe-maker, call Him by what name you will.

Here is Flammarion’s “L’Atmosphere”—­a very gorgeous though weather-stained copy in faded scarlet and gold.  The book has a small history, and I value it.  A young Frenchman, dying of fever on the west coast of Africa, gave it to me as a professional fee.  The sight of it takes me back to a little ship’s bunk, and a sallow face with large, sad eyes looking out at me.  Poor boy, I fear that he never saw his beloved Marseilles again!