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Show 74 THE EYE, THE EAK, AND THE HAND to the freshness and simplicity of nature. And it is even so in every thing. When cold sweat bede~s the temples of the monarch-when artery and _ve~n have forsaken each other, and the curdling flmd IS breeding corruption in the little capillary tubes between- when the heart's feeble pulse is flung back upon it by the dying vessels, and it is about to ~e broken by its very strength-when the lun_gs will no longer remove the charcoal, but make, as It were, the fire of life to smoulder in its own ashes-when the currentless throat begins to be choked up by its own refuse-when the angel of death stands ready to loosen the "silver cord," and break the "wheei at the cistern, and the pitcher at the fountain,"what then reeks the monarch for his state and his diadems! Cast aside that sceptre, it is a bawble; doff that crown, it is nothing; rend away the velvet and the tinsel, they are trash ; remove that coverlet of satin, it is a burden: give him the fresh air of heaven-the first draught of nature that he drew~ so that the king may die easily and in peace ; free the monarch of aL the trappings of his grandeurso that the spirit of the man may mount in triumph to its God. Our other organs of observation, the eye, the ear, and the hand,-though in the last case we make the hand a tyrant, by appropriating in language to it a faculty which really belongs to the whole fibrous or muscular part of our frame,-admit of more improvement by cultivation; and their improvement by cultivation is like that of all other natural things-plant them in the right soil, and keep them from weeds, and thP-y will grow of themselves. We cannot ana-lyze the process of tasting so as to find any thing ' intermediate between the sapid food and the sapent · palate ; and though we know that scent is wafted to a distance through the air, wbile taste is not, we can discover no medium between the delighting flower and the delighted organ. In the one of those cases, ADMIT OF CULTIVATION. 75 therefore, there is probably nothing that we can dis~ ove_r so a3_ to improve it, and in the other there is nothmg which we do discover. All that we know of t~e~e. two sens~s is, that their acuteness of perceptiOn Is always m proportion to the wholesomeness of the st~te of the body; and therefore, study them as we will, we can derive from them only one lesson, and that, too, merely a surface lesson-a les . son as palpable to the man who knows not a letter as to him who is most deeply read in all the sciences. Yet that surface lesson is one of great importance and value. We sho~ld be regular, and preserve our health, because that Is the only way in which we can rna~~ sure that nature will smell sweetly and taste dehcwusly; and even that is a secret worth knowing. <?f all th~ human powers, the hand is perhaps that which . adm~ts of the most education, because its educ3:t10n IS ~wofold-it may be educated in known;tg, and It may be educated in doing. The educa~wn of the hand in doing is a matter of observatwn, and any one_ hand can improve either upon other _hands or upon _Itself; but still that improvement In perfo~mance IS grounded upon improvement of th~ hand m knowledge; and of its process in 1 knowmg we know about as little as we do of that of the ~alate in tasting, or of the nose in smelling. It consists but of one process-the contact of one substance with another; and the most acute observation ~at~not divide that into parts so as to obtain a more mtimate acquaintance with it ; and whenever we can no further divide or analyze, we come to the ultimate fact, and can know n? morP than simply-that it is. And yet the ed_ucat_wn of the hand in knowing, and the state to whtch It may be brought by circumstances, are very wonderful, and in some instances would appear almost incredible. The hand of the 1~lacksmith is so educated as to handle iron that would ~urn, and the hand of the sailor is so educated that It can glide safely along a rope which would cut any other person to the bones |