WE are about to select from the records of Philosophy, Literature, and Art, in all ages and countries, a body of examples, to show how the most unpropitious circumstances have been unable to conquer an ardent desire for the acquisition of knowledge. Every man has difficulties to encounter in this pursuit; and therefore every man is interested in learning what are the real hindrances which have opposed themselves to the progress of some of the most distinguished persons, and how those obstacles have been surmounted.

The love of knowledge will of itself do a great deal towards its acquisition; and if it exist with that force and constancy which it exhibits in the cha

racters of all truly great men, it will induce that ardent but humble spirit of observation and inquiry, without which there can be no success. Sir ISAAC NEWTON, of all men that ever lived, is the one who has most extended the territory of human knowledge; and he used to speak of himself as having been all his life but 'a child gathering pebbles on the sea-shore,'probably meaning by that allusion not only to express his modest conviction how mere an outskirt the field of his discoveries was, compared with the vastness of universal Nature, but to describe likewise the spirit in which he had pursued his investigations. That was a spirit, not of selection and system-building, but of child