16–22 May 1831

Blind men in Rome complained that the streets were dark. To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light. You read a poor essayist and you feel humiliated at the poverty of human wit ; a few oft repeated saws seem to be all it has attained. You read Burton, or Montaigne, or Sir Thomas Browne — you read Bacon, and you are in wonder at the profusion of wise observations which they seem to have barrelled up from the vast common- places of mankind. The more a man knows, he is the more prepared scholar. The magazine shows more inexhaustible, and the particulars of greater price every moment. Every weed, every atom, discloses its relations. Mens agitat molem. " To virtue every day is bright, and every hour propitious to diligence " ; and that is the virtue of increased intelligence that it imparts worth to what was counted worthless. The progress of manufactures finds a yellow dye in a crumbling rubbish stone ; plants a thistle for its teazel ; plucks a whortleberry bush for unwinding silk ; saves the coke after the coal is burned, and saves the ashes after the 'Coke is consumed ; and so works up into its processes the refuse and dung of the world with the frugality of nature herself. Mens agitat molem. The whole is instinct with life.