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Show 98 BEGINNING OF STUDY. tha~ through the plant on which it. grew., to the gram winch produced that plant; and after we had known all _the steps of growth and ripening, between one g-ram and another, we might repeat the same circle over and over, bnt would never get any additional information. Eut at every stage between tlte one perfect grain and the next in succession, the plant has a different appearance, and is fitted to a different use; and the maltster knows thnt if the natuntl progress of the plant be arrested, nnd its power of again returning to that progress destroyed when it is in the sugary st~1te, it will become malt, and the hrewr:!r will purchase it. So, as ~won as the maJtster hRs steeped it to perfection, he tosses it about, and hrenks off tl1e sprout., and dries it; whereas, when it is left in the edrth it roots itself there, and sends up its stem, and becomes a plant; and if the man can wait and will attend to it, and collect each year's produce, and sow it again next year, his one bushel will soon become a thousand bushels. In these instances, again, there is nothina- but a succession of motions· and in them all there~ is a point at which the thing gets too fine for weighing or mee~suring, and there it glioes slowly beyond our comprehension altogether; and the very minutest guess, as it were, that we can get of a thing, is the proper point at which to begin the study of it. The neglect of ::;n1all things is, indeed, the grand error, in consequence of whieh so many pass in ignorance and heaviness that life which nature and art (for, after all, art is merely the application of nature) are capable of rendering so intelligent and so full of happiness. The fable of "The boy and the goose with golden eggs" applies in most things to many people, and in many things to all people. The eggs of the goose were brought to their proper size by a process of nature, which the owner of the goose could forward in no other way than by giving the goose plenty of wholesome food, and DEVIATION FROM THE RIGHT COlJRSE. 99 otherwise keAping it comfortable; and when the silly bvy killed and opened the goose, and found the germes of the eggs no bigger than grains of mustardseed, he was not only disappointed in his expectations, but he was deprived of those eggs which, if he had waited, he would have got in the course of nature. Just so, in every process, whether of nature or of art, there is one succession of events which leads to the proper result; and if at any stage of those events the least change be made, the result will be changed, and the labour will fail and be useless. The nearer the beginning that the deviation from the right course is, the farther are matters put wrong. One-tenth part of an inch of error in the levelling of a gun, may throw the bullet fifty yards wide of its mark. One pace taken six inches longer or shorter than the one before it, will turn quite aside and cause to lose his way, on a trackless moor and enveloped in fog, a man who started in the proper direction to where he was going. Life is to us all not unlike the moor in the fog, we must find our way much more by that which is in us than from external things ; and if we are heedless of steps! we never can get straight on to our purpose, but wi1l often wander so obliquely as, without being at all aware of it, to turn completely round, and end where we beg-an. That is the case with those who go occasiomllly to the foggy and pathless moors. They set out from the cottage on the one side in exactly the proper direction, but as they have been accustomed to follow beaten tracks-to be mere copyists of others, they deviate without knowing it, and very often night brings them back hungry and exhausted, though all the time they have. a firm belief that they are going in the direction of that place on the opposite side, which they ought to have reached before mid-day. Indeed, to those who do not take heed how they walk, sunshine and surrounding objects are not to be del)ended on. because, in places |